This paper examines a distinctly gendered space which, I will argue was a central location for negotiations between tradition and modernity in late 19th century Iran - namely, the Golestan harem, during Nasser al-Din Shah’s reign (1848 to 1896). The concept of a harem denotes a certain specific arrangement of domestic space that has been common to a wide variety of Islamicate societies across many centuries and with great variations. As such, it is not limited to any single architectural or class-defined elaboration of that concept. I aim to engage with the Golestan harem as the site of a unique familial formation that at once reflects certain Islamic traditions, and yet takes shape and even expands at the height of Persian engagement with the processes of urban modernization. Under Nasser al-Din’s reign the Golestan harem, located in what was at the time, the very core of Tehran, grew both physically and in terms of the number of its residents as compared to the harem of his predecessor Mohamad Shah Qajar who reigned from 1834-1848. This expansion presents an interesting contradiction since this is a period that is generally understood as the emergence of modernity in Iran and since in both European accounts, and Persian nationalist accounts, the harem as an institution is thought to be an outdated and traditional form of kinship that represents Islamic backwardness. As such, its simultaneous expansion in the face of greater contact with Europe and Western modernity then presents us with an interesting paradox that I hope to explore. This paper will focus on the spatial dimensions of Nasser al-Din Shah’s harem, and the ways in which different bodies, ideologies and commodities were distributed within it. I hope to offer new insight about the physical and material organization of this social institution and the ways in which it was controlled, lived in, and subverted.