the.com/harem

means A household's women's quarters, traditionally in Muslim societies, and by extension the group of women — wives, concubines, relatives — living under one man's protection and authority.

from From Arabic 'ḥarīm,' meaning 'forbidden' or 'sacred, protected place' — the same root (ḥ-r-m) that gives Arabic 'ḥarām' (forbidden) and 'ḥaram' (sanctuary, as in the sacred precincts of Mecca). The word named the private, off-limits part of a house before it came to mean the people who lived there. It entered English via Turkish usage, filtered through centuries of Western fantasy and Orientalist imagination that flattened a complex domestic and political institution into a stock image of languor and romance — the 'politics' the essence points to is the real history; the 'romance' is the myth outsiders layered on top.