Read Online Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by Khaled El-Rouayheb - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Khaled El-Rouayheb
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between the active pederast and the effeminate pathic. This need not imply that individuals always acted in ways that fit neatly with this distinction. By the same token, it might be possible to establish that in the dominant discourse of the modern West, people tend to be classified according to the gender of their preferred sexual partners, and not according to their preferred role (insertive or receptive) in sexual intercourse. Even if this is the case, it does not follow that certain individuals do not act in ways that confound the dominant categorization—for example, pursuing both women and teenage boys, but never accepting to play the “receptive” role. On the other hand, it does not seem plausible to think of the distinction between representations and behavior as a rigid dichotomy, and to maintain that the former is completely unresponsive to the latter and the latter completely uninfluenced by the former. I therefore think that much of what I have to say about dominant perceptions will also reveal something about broad behavioral patterns.
The culture I shall be studying is the one shared by urban, literate Muslim men in the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire between 1500 and 1800. The textual evidence that I consider was almost invariably written in urban centers such as Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Mecca, and Medina. By textual evidence I mean primarily Arabic literary sources such as chronicles, biographical dictionaries, belletristic works in verse and prose, and Islamic mystical and legal works. This will inevitably imply a bias toward the attitudes and values of the learned male elite, by whom and for whom such works were written. One obviously cannot assume that such values and attitudes can without further ado be thought to apply to other social groups. On the other hand, there would seem to be positive reasons for not supposing that the main cultural strands I shall discuss were narrowly confined to the elite. The cultural significance given to the distinction between active and passive partners was hardly an elite phenomenon. It is still apparent today amongst all social classes in the Middle East. The courting of boys by adult men also does not seem to have been an elite phenomenon. The literary sources suggest that men of non-elite status—bakers, tailors, street-sellers, and “rabble” attending the Saints Fairs of Egypt—could behave likewise. There is also no reason to believe that acceptance of the authority of Islamic law—even if one occasionally failed to live up to all the demands of this authority—was confined to the sociopolitical elite. The attitudes I discuss may have been more significantly correlated with gender than with social class. Unfortunately the literary sources of the period give almost no information on female attitudes to love and sex.
If the focus on the learned male elite seems somewhat narrow, speaking of the Arab-Islamic part of the Ottoman Empire between 1500 and 1800 could appear too broad. It might reasonably be asked whether it is legitimate to assume that there was no significant evolution and/or regional differences in attitudes within the geographic and temporal boundaries of this study. I believe not, and my approach will be essentially systematic rather than diachronic. I should emphasize that I have not started by assuming uniformity within the geographic and temporal scope of my study. The supposition that the culture of the literate classes in the period and area under consideration displayed an overall stability in time and uniformity from city to city is one that I believe is largely substantiated by the textual evidence. This does not preclude the existence of individual differences in outlook, but it is not possible to correlate such differences with period or region; they exist equally between two individuals of the same generation or city. In fact, the geographic and temporal continuity almost certainly extends beyond the
The culture I shall be studying is the one shared by urban, literate Muslim men in the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire between 1500 and 1800. The textual evidence that I consider was almost invariably written in urban centers such as Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Mecca, and Medina. By textual evidence I mean primarily Arabic literary sources such as chronicles, biographical dictionaries, belletristic works in verse and prose, and Islamic mystical and legal works. This will inevitably imply a bias toward the attitudes and values of the learned male elite, by whom and for whom such works were written. One obviously cannot assume that such values and attitudes can without further ado be thought to apply to other social groups. On the other hand, there would seem to be positive reasons for not supposing that the main cultural strands I shall discuss were narrowly confined to the elite. The cultural significance given to the distinction between active and passive partners was hardly an elite phenomenon. It is still apparent today amongst all social classes in the Middle East. The courting of boys by adult men also does not seem to have been an elite phenomenon. The literary sources suggest that men of non-elite status—bakers, tailors, street-sellers, and “rabble” attending the Saints Fairs of Egypt—could behave likewise. There is also no reason to believe that acceptance of the authority of Islamic law—even if one occasionally failed to live up to all the demands of this authority—was confined to the sociopolitical elite. The attitudes I discuss may have been more significantly correlated with gender than with social class. Unfortunately the literary sources of the period give almost no information on female attitudes to love and sex.
If the focus on the learned male elite seems somewhat narrow, speaking of the Arab-Islamic part of the Ottoman Empire between 1500 and 1800 could appear too broad. It might reasonably be asked whether it is legitimate to assume that there was no significant evolution and/or regional differences in attitudes within the geographic and temporal boundaries of this study. I believe not, and my approach will be essentially systematic rather than diachronic. I should emphasize that I have not started by assuming uniformity within the geographic and temporal scope of my study. The supposition that the culture of the literate classes in the period and area under consideration displayed an overall stability in time and uniformity from city to city is one that I believe is largely substantiated by the textual evidence. This does not preclude the existence of individual differences in outlook, but it is not possible to correlate such differences with period or region; they exist equally between two individuals of the same generation or city. In fact, the geographic and temporal continuity almost certainly extends beyond the
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