Etymology

Noun

1. A harem on the Indian subcontinent, a part of the house reserved for high-caste women; a system of segregating women into harems.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Bisara of Pooree’, Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio Society 2005, p. 173:

     Depend upon it, Solomon would never have built altars to Ashtaroth and all those ladies with queer names, if there had not been trouble of some kind in his zenana, and nowhere else.