Read Online Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by Khaled El-Rouayheb - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Khaled El-Rouayheb
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limits of this study. I would expect that many of the points I make (though probably not all) are valid for Turkey and Persia between 1500 and 1800, as well as for the Arab-Islamic world in the Abbasid and Mamluk periods (750 - 1516).
The questions raised concerning the scope of the present study are certainly legitimate, especially given the above-mentioned tendency to make undifferentiated statements about attitudes in “Islam” or “Islamic civilization.” However, a justified suspicion of this approach can easily lead to an overemphasis on the differences between periods, regions, or social groups. Current discussions of attitudes toward homosexuality in Arab-Islamic history often present “religious scholars” and “Sufis” and “poets” and “the upper classes” as distinct groups with distinct and competing mentalities and values. However, this is a caricature of social reality. 28 At least in the period under consideration, a substantial number of individuals were all of these things at once. A person might be an Islamic religious jurist, and as such committed to the principles of Islamic law. However, being an Islamic religious jurist would almost certainly be one of several social roles he assumed. The same individual would also think of himself as a “man,” as opposed to a woman or a child or an “effeminate” man. This social role carried with it certain demands on behavior that were independent of, and sometimes in tension with, the demands of Islamic law. Similarly, the same individual might also think of himself as a “refined” and “urbane” individual, in contrast to “rustic” and “coarse” common people, peasants, and nomads. This again involved certain expectations as to behavior, taste, and demeanor, expectations that had little or nothing to do with religion. In other words, a literate, urban male Muslim would be under the influence of distinct cultural strands. These cultural strands were independent of each other, and embodied values and assumptions that were potentially or actually in tension with each other. A study that ignores this fact will fail to do justice to this complex reality.
Rather than trying to recover attitudes that were supposedly characteristic of particular social groups, I will focus on distinct but coexisting strands in the culture of the urban elite. 29 In particular, I will focus on three cultural strands that were relevant to perceptions and evaluations of what we might be inclined to call homosexual behavior or sentiments. In the first chapter of the study, I will present one cultural strand according to which the “active” or “insertive” role in sexual intercourse was uniquely appropriate to a man, and the “passive” or “receptive” role was uniquely appropriate to a woman. A man who willingly assumed the latter role was violating conventional gender roles, and was often stereotyped as effeminate and thought to suffer from an abnormal or pathological condition. However, a man who sought to have “active” or “insertive” intercourse with a beardless male youth was not violating gender roles, nor was he stereotyped in the same way. In the second chapter, I will present another cultural strand, one which valued passionate love and a general aesthetic sensibility toward human beauty in the form of women or beardless youths. Such a sensibility was thought to be the hallmark of urbane and refined people, and to lie at the root of evocative love poetry. In some Islamic mystical circles, such an aestheticist regard for beautiful women or handsome youths was given a metaphysical dimension, and held to be a means of personally experiencing the overwhelming beauty of God. In the third chapter, I discuss the cultural strand that receives expression in Islamic law, and the related disciplines of commentaries on the Qur’an and on the canonical sayings (ḥadīth) of the Prophet Muhammad. This strand perceived sexual relations between men as
The questions raised concerning the scope of the present study are certainly legitimate, especially given the above-mentioned tendency to make undifferentiated statements about attitudes in “Islam” or “Islamic civilization.” However, a justified suspicion of this approach can easily lead to an overemphasis on the differences between periods, regions, or social groups. Current discussions of attitudes toward homosexuality in Arab-Islamic history often present “religious scholars” and “Sufis” and “poets” and “the upper classes” as distinct groups with distinct and competing mentalities and values. However, this is a caricature of social reality. 28 At least in the period under consideration, a substantial number of individuals were all of these things at once. A person might be an Islamic religious jurist, and as such committed to the principles of Islamic law. However, being an Islamic religious jurist would almost certainly be one of several social roles he assumed. The same individual would also think of himself as a “man,” as opposed to a woman or a child or an “effeminate” man. This social role carried with it certain demands on behavior that were independent of, and sometimes in tension with, the demands of Islamic law. Similarly, the same individual might also think of himself as a “refined” and “urbane” individual, in contrast to “rustic” and “coarse” common people, peasants, and nomads. This again involved certain expectations as to behavior, taste, and demeanor, expectations that had little or nothing to do with religion. In other words, a literate, urban male Muslim would be under the influence of distinct cultural strands. These cultural strands were independent of each other, and embodied values and assumptions that were potentially or actually in tension with each other. A study that ignores this fact will fail to do justice to this complex reality.
Rather than trying to recover attitudes that were supposedly characteristic of particular social groups, I will focus on distinct but coexisting strands in the culture of the urban elite. 29 In particular, I will focus on three cultural strands that were relevant to perceptions and evaluations of what we might be inclined to call homosexual behavior or sentiments. In the first chapter of the study, I will present one cultural strand according to which the “active” or “insertive” role in sexual intercourse was uniquely appropriate to a man, and the “passive” or “receptive” role was uniquely appropriate to a woman. A man who willingly assumed the latter role was violating conventional gender roles, and was often stereotyped as effeminate and thought to suffer from an abnormal or pathological condition. However, a man who sought to have “active” or “insertive” intercourse with a beardless male youth was not violating gender roles, nor was he stereotyped in the same way. In the second chapter, I will present another cultural strand, one which valued passionate love and a general aesthetic sensibility toward human beauty in the form of women or beardless youths. Such a sensibility was thought to be the hallmark of urbane and refined people, and to lie at the root of evocative love poetry. In some Islamic mystical circles, such an aestheticist regard for beautiful women or handsome youths was given a metaphysical dimension, and held to be a means of personally experiencing the overwhelming beauty of God. In the third chapter, I discuss the cultural strand that receives expression in Islamic law, and the related disciplines of commentaries on the Qur’an and on the canonical sayings (ḥadīth) of the Prophet Muhammad. This strand perceived sexual relations between men as
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