In Muslim countries men and women would live in separate quarters. The average house would be segmented into 2 parts. The word "harem" comes from the word "haram", which means "forbidden": men who were not part of the immediate family were forbidden to enter the women's quarters when they visited their friends. In ordinary houses it would be the section where women do their everyday tasks, cooking, sewing, gossiping with friends and minding the children. 

Men from outside the family were allowed to visit the men's side of the household, but the women's side was haram, forbidden, which is how it came to be named the harem. The intent was to protect the women and children of the household from inappropriate attentions by outsiders.

A screen between these two sections of the household allowed women to view the activities on the men's side without themselves being seen.

The men would typically come home for lunch, then return to their work. During the afternoon, the women found time to socialize with their female family members, friends, and relatives. Often, this socializing would include playing music and dancing for each other.

At the other extreme at the Sultan's palaces the Hareem would be a complete and self contained section within the Palace. There are splendid examples in Istanbul in Turkey. This section would be a female subworld of its own with hundreds of occupants, with no contact with the outside. The Sultan's wife of the evening, if there was one, was generally picked by his mother or chief wife, or some elder woman who ruled over the harem. 

If we consider that most of the women in the Middle East until fairly recently lived in these Harems, we are talking a most unbelievable collection of "women only" groups. Now we have to consider the role of dance. As a generalisation Middle Eastern women are more at ease with their own bodies , they mix around only within these "women only" groupings, are completely covered when outside. They then don't have to worry as to how they look and one would speculate that they would evolve this sort of "camaradeship" with each other and the dancing would really serve to reinforce the group unity. A healthy fascination of each other and each other's bodies would emerge. I remember this Turkish woman just spontaneously pulling up my jumper and gently stroking my tummy when we were at her house just sitting around on sofas. A purely innocent act that actually this Irish dancer who was present found most distasteful. The dancing the women would do would correctly be described as Belly Dancing as it would involve the whole body as in my definitions. As regards costumes, well we can safely speculate that because the dancing would be part and parcel of the ongoing life at the harem like talking and eating, nothing particular would be worn other than their normal clothes. Failing to have any "fly on the wall" video footage, I think it would be safe to speculate that the dancing would generally be part of the social interaction, like talking, gossiping, telling jokes and so on. An odd one may get up and others watch in the same way as one person would tell a joke and the others would listen but the performance would be in this sort of context where you would not have an audience and performer relationship. 

So given the vastness of the above it is this aspect of Middle Eastern Dance that is so overwhelmingly strong and deeply ingrained into Humanity and is an important and vital link in the Story of Dance. But of course this dancing in spite of being so widespread would be very hard to document the actual moves and so on. We can only speculate that this dancing would carry on being passed on as the women would integrate more and more into Western society. This is why it is such a pleasure and indeed an honour to see groups of the women dancing with each other at festivities and even more so to be part of it. 

So what of the stories of the exotic seduction chambers filled with naked women lolling on pillows awaiting their turn to seduce the Sultan. This may have happened a lot, just a bit here and there or not at all. The fact is that the Sultan would be very powerful and wealthy and if he so chose could have one or more women, naked or otherwise dance or otherwise fulfill his lustful wishes. But the same would be true of King Henry the VIII, Oliver Cromwell, Louis the XIV, President Kennedy, or for that matter Tony Blair or President Bush. The activities of women for these people in this capacity is irrelevant albeit most interesting for the gutter press, to the story of dance. This is because it is only activities that are of a sufficiently great enough scale to warrant a contribution or feeding on of a "culture" and the activities of the harem women would definitely fall in that category as it would have applied to nearly all Muslim women over a long period in History.