serraglio
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: serraglios
Senses: examples: text: For although (as hath bene ſaid) the Temple of Sancta Sophia, which he moſt vſually frequenteth, is not aboue a ſtones caſt from the out-moſt gate of the Serraglio, yet hath he not ſo few as a thousand horſe (beſides the archers of his guard and other footmen) in that ſhort proceſſion: […]
ref: 1615, George Sandys, “The First Booke”, in The Relation of a Iourney Begun An: Dom: 1610. […], London: […] [Richard Field] for W. Barrett, →OCLC, page 75:
text: Here we ſaw certaine great Serraglios, exceeding high, and propt vp by buttreſſes.
ref: 1625, [Samuel] Purchas, “Relations of Africa, taken out of Master George Sandys his larger discourse obserued in his Iourney, begun Ann. 1610. Lib. 2.”, in Purchas His Pilgrimes. […], 2nd part, London: […] William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, […], →OCLC, 6th book, § III (The Pyramides viewed, Sphynx and other antiquities. Iourney from Cairo to Gaza.), page 912, lines 37–38:
text: When we reached the Babamayun-kapoussi, or the grand gate of the serraglio, we found the infantry of the imperial guard drawn up in lines on each side of the street, from the walls of the serraglio to the hippodrome, and the entrance of the imperial mosque of Achmet, where the Courbann-Bairam namaz was to be offered up by Mahmood and his court, to the one God and to the prophet Mahomet.
ref: 1829, Charles Mac Farlane, Constantinople in 1828. A Residence of Sixteen Months in the Turkish Capital and Provinces: […], London: Saunders and Otley, […], page 364:
text: […] desert: disputing in their shifts by night, candles in hand, in the Throne-room; telling each other fairytales; arming themselves with incomparable buffoonery for great adventures, moving the audience to limitless laughter over their efforts to catch a dove, acting as prime ministers, as admirals on ships, as turnkeys and sausage sellers, as heads of serraglios, and dyers and stableboys and philosophers are the four Masks of the Commedia, Truffaldino, (1) Tartaglia, Brighella and Pantaloon.
ref: 1913, The Mask, volume 6, page 294:
text: “I promised my wife not to swear before the Easter egg was blessed and eaten!” Farther on a boy asked us for a light; “Serraglios!” he said, winking at us, “Easter cigarettes!” There was nothing pious or bigoted about this mood. Rather it was an unconscious retreat to one’s loved ones, as if to test the solidarity of their affections, a feeling which went beyond its almost forgotten occasion.
ref: 1962, Vasco Pratolini, translated by Barbara Kennedy, Two Brothers, New York, N.Y.: The Orion Press, page 83:
text: […] against the altar are « Scorpio », « Pisces », and « Capricorn »; in the outside façade « Aries », « Sagittarius », and along the cornice « Leo »; alongside, actually in the serraglio of the arch, is carved the « Sun », with the eagle at its feet and the python killed.
ref: 1963, Nevio Matteini, translated by C. P. Brooke Westcott, Rimini: Its Surroundings and the Romagna Riviera: Historico-Artistic Guide, Cappelli:
text: « present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern serraglios »
ref: 1966, Vittorio Gabrieli, editor, Friendship’s Garland: Essays Presented to Mario Praz on His Seventieth Birthday, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, page 128:
text: […] arrived at the conclusion that women, at least in the Kabyle society, were not the oppressed, brow-beaten creatures that populated Western Man's dreams of harems and serraglios.
ref: 1993, Sharon Overton Oubouzar, Dzair: Kabyle Mothers, Daughters, and Granddaughters in the Urban Environment of Algiers, University Microfilms, page 2:
text: Despotism is one of the principal causes of serraglios and harems (cf. Montesquieu, De l’Esprit etc. 7: 9 ).
ref: 1993, Antonio Rosmini, translated by Denis Cleary, The Philosophy of Right, Rosmini House, →ISBN, page 13:
text: Avenues, theatres, belltowers, clocks / hospitals, cemeteries, and casinos; / Lyceums, vocational and grade schools are things men prize in cities rightfully. Also serraglios windmills and new squares, paintings and books and kings’ great statues…
ref: 1997, Giuseppe Marco Calvino, translated by Onat Claypole, “To Our Leaders”, in Sicilian Erotica: A Bilingual Anthology of Erotic Poems, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Ottawa, Ont.; Toronto, Ont.: Legas, →ISBN, page 175:
text: The humor in this work maps Turkish history onto the traditional masks of commedia dell’arte: the sultan (Bayezid/Bajazet) is played by “Pantalone” (described as a “virtuoso of the serraglio of the Tartars”), while his daughter Asteria (an accademica “Scordata”) is played by “Flaminia,” and his general Osmano by the “Dottore.”
ref: 2007, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, A New Chronology of Venetian Opera and Related Genres, 1660–1760, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 597, column 2:
text: We know he made this trip in the preface of his narrative about the serraglio of the Turkish emperors.
ref: 2007, Reisen in den Orient vom 13. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Winckelmann-Gesellschaft, →ISBN, page 45:
text: The barred gates of the serragli are pulled back and the lion passes from one cage to another.
ref: 2011, Lucille Turner, Gioconda, Granta Books, →ISBN:
text: The poṭṭukattutal is fundamentally a lifecycle ritual that binds a woman to the sexual economy of the courtesan lifestyle, and for the women of the Tañjāvūr serraglios, the katti kalyānam had the same significance.
ref: 2023, Julia A. B. Hegewald, editor, Embodied Dependencies and Freedoms: Artistic Communities and Patronage in Asia (Dependency and Slavery Studies), De Gruyter, →ISBN:
glosses: Alternative form of seraglio.