"The Seraglio" may refer specifically to the Topkapı Palace, the residence of the former Ottoman sultansinIstanbul (known as Constantinople in English at the time of Ottoman rule).[1]
The term can also refer to other traditional Turkish palaces (every imperial prince had his own) and other grand houses built around courtyards.
The term seraglio, from Italian,[2][3][4] has been used in English since 1581.[5]
The Italian Treccani dictionary gives two derivations:[4]
one via Turkish: serayorsaray[2][6] (with the variants serayaorsaraya), which comes from Persian: سرای, romanized: sarāy, lit. 'palace'[3] or, per derivation, the enclosed court for the wives and concubines of the harem of a house or palace (see § Harem);
the other — in the sense of enclosure[c] — from Late/Medieval Latin: serraculum, derived from Classical Latinserare, lit.'to close', which comes from sera, lit.'door-bar'.[7][8]
The term may also be spelt serail, via French influence, based on the Italian term.[3]
Since the Topkapı Palace's harem (commonly known as "The Seraglio harem"[9]) grew in prominence and fame, the term saray/serail/seraglio began also being commonly used as a synonym of harem, the sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines in an Ottoman household.[d][9]
Besides the Topkapı Palace ("The Seraglio"), the most famous seray is the Grand Serail (Arabic: السراي الكبير, romanized: Al-Sarāy al-Kabir) in Lebanon, which is the headquarters of the prime minister. It is situated atop a hill in downtown Beirut a few blocks away from the Lebanese Parliament. The hill was the site of an Ottoman army base from the 1840s, which was built up, fortified, and expanded in the 1850s. At first it was known as al quishla, from the Turkish word kışla, meaning barracks.
In modern Italian the word is spelled serraglio. It may refer to a wall or structure, either for defence — such as the Serraglio of Villafranca di Verona, a defensive wall built by the Scaligeri — or for containment, for example of caged wild animals.[c][4] The ghettoes established in many Italian cities following the promulgation by Pope Paul IV in 1555 of the papal bullCum nimis absurdum were initially called serraglio degli ebrei, lit.'enclosure of the Jews'.[10]
Seraglio is also the name of the artificial island on which Mantua is located.
Saraya is also used as a military unit title in the Arab world. In this case the Arabic is سرية, a different word from "saraya" (السرايا) as in a building. The etymology is also different from the building: سرية is from Arabic and communicates the idea of a "private group". However the plural is سرايا (saraya), indistinguishable from the term "saraya" which is a variant (in the singular) of saray (the building).
The normal translation for سريةiscompany (military unit), but in the case of the Lebanese Resistance Saraya the term is often arbitrarily translated as brigades.
