Qajar harem

[4][5] Every consort had white and black slave servants (women or eunuchs), whose number varied according to her status.

[10] The harem had its own theatre where passion plays (taʿzia) were performed, and one of the shah's wives was the custodian of all the paraphernalia.

Inside the harem, women performed religious functions such as rawża-ḵᵛāni (commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Ḥosayn at Karbalā); preached from the pulpit on the day of ʿĀšurā (q.v., the 10th of Moḥarram) and directed the ritual of sina-zadan (beating of the chest).

Until a regulated succession order to the throne was established by Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (r. 1848–1896), the harem was a place of intense struggle by mothers of potential heirs to have their own sons elected heir to the throne as well as material benefits for themselves, higher ranks for members of their own families, or precedence for their own children.

Nāṣer-al-Din Shah's mother Jahān Ḵānom Mahd-e ʿOlyā wielded major influence which secured his own succession and the dismissal and subsequent assassination of Prime Minister Mirzā Taqi Khan Amir Kabir,[13] and Nāṣer-al-Din Shah's favorite wife Anis-al-Dawla brought about the dismissal of the Premier Mirza Hosein Khan Moshir od-Dowleh in 1873.