Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (14 page)

ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731), the prominent Damascene scholar and mystic, pursued the analogy between insensitivity to beauty and animal behavior in the following lines of verse:

And he for whom there is no difference between the hirsute face
(al-wajh al-shaʿir)
and the comely
(al-ṣabīḥ),
He is an animal, and has no mind ...
²³

Notwithstanding such explicit passages by some of the intellectually towering figures of the age, the connection between refinement and aestheticism is more often encountered as an implicit assumption than an articulated proposition. It is revealed, for instance, in the way that certain anecdotes dealing with pederastic attraction are presented in the literature. The following example is found in the biographical work of Muhibbī: The poet Ahmad alʿInāyātī is sitting in front of one of the shops of Damascus admiring a handsome youth by the name of Aṣlān. The grandfather of Muḥibbī, a close friend of ʿInāyātī, passes by and asks why he is sitting there. The poet replies: “My lord, it has its basis
(aṣl),ʾʾ
whereupon Muḥibbīʾs grandfather, hinting at the name of the youth, puns: ”Rather, two bases
(aṣlān).ʾʾ
²⁴Another example, which served as the inspiration for several poetic compositions, is the following : The Turkish judge and poet Bāqī (d. 1600) composes lines praising the beauty of a certain youth. The youth in question hears the lines, is impressed by them, and resolves to kiss the feet of the poet. But when attempting to do so, Bāqī reminds him that he had composed the poem with his mouth, not his feet.
²⁵A third example was related to the Damascene scholar Ramadan al-ʿUṭayfī (d. 1684) during his trip to Tripoli by the deputy governor of the town, ʿAlī Sayfa: ʿAlī is sitting with a handsome youth at an elevated place at the outskirts of the town. The youth comments on the beautiful view—the red sand, the green meadow, and the blue sea. The governor subsequently asks the youth why he left unmentioned the white dune
(kathīb)
behind him—thereby alluding to the boy’s rear.
²⁶Common to such stories is that they are introduced as
laṭāʾif—
that is, as humorous and entertaining stories that illustrate the sensibility and wit of its main characters. Sure enough, there would be those who disapproved of such stories. One searches in vain for similar anecdotes in the biographical works of, say, Najm al-Dīn Muhammad al-Ghazzī (d. 1651). But there was obviously a considerable and vocal proportion of the educated and articulate elite who, though not necessarily irreligious, considered such disapproval to be an expression of narrow moralism and humorless boorishness. It bears emphasizing that the contradiction was not between a “religious” and a “nonreligious” outlook. Religiosity does not necessarily imply asceticism. The proponents of an enjoyment of life within the bounds of the permissible could support their position by drawing on several aspects of the Islamic religious tradition. According to traditions that were widely accepted as authentic, the Prophet himself had said that “God is beautiful and loves beauty” and that “three things refresh the eyes: looking at greenery, flowing water, and the handsome face.ʾʾ He also reportedly exhorted his followers to ”seek the good from handsome countenances.ʾʾ
²⁷The anecdotes cited did not imply a breach of religious law as interpreted by the majority of the jurists of the age. It was thus possible for the non-ascetically inclined to turn the tables on their opponents, and accuse them of prohibiting what is permissible and of ascribing bad intentions to others, both religiously proscribed acts. Thus ʿAbd al-Ghanī- al-Nābulusī could say the following of those who censure the contemplation of human beauty:

They disapprove of looking at the handsome and, in equating the wolf and the gazelle, annul the difference.
And they would abolish mankind’s seeing any difference between the stale and the tender.
All from the coarseness of their character, and the deficiency of a malignant and impaired mind.
And they think ill of others, which tomorrow will lead them to torment.
²⁸

The moralists and ascetics were also liable, then as now, to be accused of hypocrisy, of not being nearly as pure as they pretended to be. The Iraqi poet Jirjis ibn Darwīsh al-Adīb (d. 1727/8), who was reputed to be fond of wine and beardless boys, struck precisely that note in the following lines of verse:

You blame me for my youthful amusements! You are not my adviser, and I am not listening!
I am someone who does not give up his pleasures, whether you like it or not, blame or let be!
And what have I to do with he who claims asceticism as his station? Leave me be, for I have my place among my boon-companions.
I have rubbed shoulders with ascetics for a time, and did not encounter anything but snakes that bite.
And I came to know their true nature, so follow your every wish and you will still be more pious than them.
²⁹

The ideal of refinement and elegance was partly defined in opposition to the coarse, the uncouth, and the vulgar. As such, it was probably particularly relevant to the more comfortable and educated segments of society. Yet, the urban population as a whole—with the possible exception of the poorest inhabitants and the most recent rural immigrants—seem to have been conscious and proud of the cultural distance separating them from the more rustic peasant or nomad.
³⁰The Egyptian scholar ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Sha‘rānī (d. 1565) thus thanked God for bringing him from his rural birthplace, “the land of coarseness (
jafā’
) and ignorance,” to Cairo, “the town of refinement (
Lutf
) and knowledge.”
³¹The seventeenth-century work
Hazz al-quhūf
by Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī may be regarded as one long satire at the expense of the Egyptian peasant, who is portrayed as irredeemably lacking in
Lutf
by comparison with the inhabitants of the towns.
³²The social parameters of the ideal were therefore not likely to have been sharp or narrow. However, its specifically aesthetic dimension seems to have been especially cultivated by two groups: on the one hand, poets and belletrists and, on the other, mystics influenced by a monist, Neoplatonic worldview.

Love of Boys in Belles-Lettres

Arabic poetry between the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258 and the so-called cultural revival (
nahḍah
) of the nineteenth century has often been dismissed by modern scholars, both Western and Arab, as being of a mediocre, “decadent” quality.
³³Even if one supposes this sweeping judgment to be accurate, the mediocrity can hardly be ascribed to a lack of interest in the art. The literature of the period reveals the extent to which Arab-Islamic high culture was permeated with poetry. A myriad of occasions provided subjects and opportunities for poetic diction: birth, death, circumcision, the attainment of puberty and the appearance of a beard, marriage, return from travel, appointments to posts, the arrival of dignitaries from abroad, major political events, and so on. The educated classes used the medium to praise, condole, congratulate, or to lampoon; to express friendly or amorous feelings; and merely to amuse or display their eloquence
(faṣāḥa)
to their fellows. The volume of poetry committed to writing was remarkable: to the countless collections of an individual’s poetry
(dīwān),
one should add numerous books of poetic exchanges
(muṭārḥāt),
as well as the poetic anthologies, a classical genre which seems to have experienced a renaissance in the early Ottoman period. The taste for poetry also meant that it tended to spill over into other fields. Handbooks on jurisprudence, logic, grammar, and theology were of ten composed in verse, presumably to facilitate memorization, as were many works of a devotional or mystical nature. Much of the travel literature and historical writing of the period also contain extensive quotations of verse, often introduced at the slightest pretence and leading by association to lengthy digressions. Knowledge and appreciation of poetry was widely thought to be one of the hallmarks of the cultivated, refined person. It was also from the ranks of the cultivated and refined that the composition of high-quality poetry was expected. This is shown by the use of terms like “delicate” (
raqīq
) or “refined” (
laṭīf
) or “polished”
(maṣqūl)
to characterize praiseworthy examples of the art. It was of course assumed that it took a delicate, refined, and polished character to produce delicate, refined, and polished verse. Good poetry was said to be
matbū‘—
that is, to flow from the author’s person in a way that was natural and unaffected, and was to that extent considered to mirror his character: “he has poetry that indicates his sensitive character”; “his poetry is, like his character, polished”; “I have mentioned of his poetry what ... bespeaks a sensitive character”; “I mention a short poem that indicates his refined nature and fine character”; “one may infer his coarse character from the poor and uncouth quality of his poetry.”
³⁴The corollary of this belief was that sensibility and refinement was thought especially characteristic of poets (
shu‘arā’
) and belletrists (
udabā’
)
.
Darwīsh al-Ṭālawī, for example, said of a jurist
(faqīh)
that “he has a character like that of a belletrist
(adīb)
in refinement.”
³⁵

By far the most commonly cited genre in the poetic anthologies of the period was love poetry
(ghazal).
³⁶That this genre was especially popular is also apparent from a remark such as the following by Muḥibbī on the Damascene poet Ismā‘īl al-Ḥijāzī (d. 1592/3): “He has a lot of poetry cast in the mold of delicacy, describing longing and affection and mentioning ardent love and infatuation, and for this reason it stuck to hearts and was deemed attractive by most people, and they inclined toward it, memorized it, and circulated it amongst themselves.”
³⁷

When speaking of the beloved, the poets in most cases, but by no means all, used the masculine gender.
³⁸It should be emphasized that this does not automatically imply that the beloved was a male. In classical Arabic it is legitimate to use the masculine form of the word “beloved”
(maḥbūb, ḥabīb)
to refer to a female. In addition, the conventional metaphors for the beloved in Arabic love poetry—gazelle
(ghazāl, shādin, ẓaby, rīm, rasha’)
and moon
(badr, qamar)
—are of masculine gender. Many a modern scholar would like to conclude therefrom that the love celebrated in
ghazal
was, despite appearances, invariably or at least as a rule “heterosexual.” Edward Lane, the great nineteenth-century Arabist, after translating some Arabic love poetry in his
Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,
confidently asserted: “I have substituted the feminine for the masculine pronoun; for in the original, the former is meant, though the latter is used, as is commonly the case in similar compositions of the Egyptians.”
³⁹Perhaps the best retort is to quote again the remark of the Egyptian scholar Rifā‘ah al-Ṭahṭāwī (d. 1873), who was in Paris around the same time that Lane was in Egypt, and commented on the unacceptability of pederasty in that country:

One of the positive aspects of their language and poetry is that it does not permit the saying of
ghazal
of someone of the same sex, so in the French language a man cannot say: I loved a boy
(ghulām),
for that would be an unacceptable and awkward wording, so therefore if one of them translates one of our books he avoids this by changing the wording, so saying in the translation: I loved a young girl
(ghulāmah)
or a person
(dhātan).
⁴⁰

Many modern Arab literary historians likewise seem to assume that premodern
ghazal
is as a rule “heterosexual,” and sometimes preface their discussions of the genre with reflections on what they consider to be the universal, timeless character of love between men and women.
⁴¹‘Umar Mūsā Basha, author of one of the very few modern Arabic monographs on the poetry and belles-lettres of the period, consistently assumes that poets are singing the praises of their beloved women, even though he could hardly have been unaware that many of the poets he discussed were interested in boys. At one point, for instance, Basha indicates briefly that a large number of short verses by the Syrian poet Amīn al-Jundī (d. 1841) are of a “bawdy”
(mājin)
character. The verses he refers to in the footnotes, which are not “bawdy” at all, were all reportedly inspired by handsome boys. Basha pointedly does not mention this fact, nor does he explain by what right he then assumes that the love poetry of the age was “heterosexual.”
⁴²Oussama Anouti, the author of an otherwise useful and pioneering work on Syrian literature in the eighteenth century, even permits himself to say that
ghazal
in which the object of love (and not merely the gender used) was masculine was rare, referring to four such examples from the biographical dictionary of Muhammad Khalīl al-Murādī (d. 1791).
⁴³Such a statement is simply and utterly false. Verses in which poets mentioned the beard-down (ʿ
idhār
or
ʿāriḍ)
of their beloved abound in this work—the number is much more than ten times that mentioned by Anouti—and these should be understood as describing a young male beloved. The terms
‘idhār
and
‘āriḍ
can both denote “cheek” as well as “beard-down,” but in the overwhelming number of occurrences the context clearly indicates which of the meanings is intended. The following lines of verse are a case in point:

‘Uthmān al-‘Umarī (d. 1770/1) : I was infatuated with the honey-lipped when he was beardless, until the myrtle of interlocked
‘idhār
became apparent.
Aḥmad al-Kaywānī (d. 1760): A boy, as
‘idhār
spread on his cheeks, it adorned his roses.
Aḥmad ibn Shāhīn (d. 1644): I was in doubt as to [whether he was] female or male, then his
ʿidhār
imparted certainty.
⁴⁴

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