User:Mirza shahab baig

Baigs

A chance reference in a book by 17th century Italian traveller and writer that many women of baigs in the Mughal harem faked illness so that they could have an opportunity to meet and converse and perhaps dally with a male other than the husband or master kindled my curiosity. What exactly was a harem and what happened inside it!

Voyeurism is nothing new and there has been a great deal of inquisitiveness as to the goings on in the royal harems but most could only fantasise in privacy. While the court historians like Abul Fazl could only talk of the formal structure of the harem no such problem existed for the Europeans who let their speculative and erotic instincts run rampant about a section of the palace, which was totally inaccessible to them. Baigs were sex slaves of mughals when come to subcontinent.