Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (45 page)

In another part of his commentary, Nābulusī stated:

It has been related of the poet—may God bless his heart—that he loved a butcher boy in whose form God the Exalted made him see His manifestation
(kāna
yuhibbu
ghulāman jazzāran ashhadahu al-Ḥaqqu ta ‘ālā tajalliyahu
bi
sūratihi)
.
¹⁹⁵

The difference between loving a boy and loving God manifesting his beauty in a boy would probably not have been obvious to the uninitiated onlooker. At one point, Nābulusī wrote that the “censurers” mentioned in one of Ibn al-Fārid’s poems referred to the people

who think that he loves what is other than God, that is, the worldly images, whereas he loves the One who is apparent, manifesting Himself in these images, that is, God.
¹⁹⁶

Not only uninitiated onlookers but also the beloved person might be unable to distinguish mystical from profane love. On more than one occasion in his commentary, Nābulusī cited the following short poem by ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī (d. 1289), a second-generation disciple of Ibn ‘Arabī:

I looked at Her, and the handsome person thinks I look at him. No, by Her dark-lipped smile!
Rather, She who is lovely has lent him the attribute of beauty which he unjustly claims as his own.
¹⁹⁷

The collection of poems entitled
Tarjumān al-asbwāq
by Ibn ‘Arabī is perhaps the most well known example of a mystic composing poetry which was both a celebration of the love of God and yet inspired by human beauty. In the preface to the work, Ibn ‘Arabī informed the reader that the work was inspired by his affection for a young woman named Nizām, the daughter of a Persian friend he met in Mecca, and that “whenever I mention a name in this book I allude to her.” Yet, when someone dared suggest that he had simply composed worldly love poetry he indignantly wrote a detailed mystical commentary on the poems.
¹⁹⁸

Of the varieties of phenomenal beauty appreciated by the mystical aesthete, pride of place went to instances of human beauty. According to a perfectly orthodox tradition, the Prophet Muhammad had said: “God created Adam in his image.” Some commentators tried to explain away this saying by claiming that the possessive pronoun “his” referred to Adam, so that the intended meaning is “God created Adam in Adam’s image.”
¹⁹⁹However, many mystics were prepared to accept the saying at face value. They held that Man was unique among all creatures in displaying all the divine names, and was thus the most perfect locus of divine manifestation. This thesis was elaborated into somewhat recondite theories of the Perfect Man
(al-insān alkāmil),
in whose image the world is created, and who is the ”spirit
(Rūb)
of the world.”
²⁰⁰

The English Orientalist and traveler Richard Burton, writing in the late nineteenth century, became acquainted with the line of thinking which has been sketched so far. His description is especially interesting since it is presumably derived from oral sources:

We must not forget that the love of boys has its noble, sentimental side. The Platonists and the pupils of the academy, followed by the Sufis or Moslem Gnostics, held such affection, pure and ardent, to be the beau
idéal
which united in a man’s soul the creature with the Creator. Professing to regard youths as the most cleanly and beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared that by loving and extolling the
chef d’œuvre,
corporeal and intellectual, of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any admixture of carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent adoration to the
Causa causans.
They add that such affection, passing as it does the love of women, is far less selfish than fondness for and admiration of the other sex which, however innocent, always suggests sexuality.
²⁰¹

The major modern study of the contemplation of human beauty in Islamic mysticism remains the relevant chapter of Helmut Ritter’s magisterial study, going back to 1955, of the Persian mystical poet Farīd al-Dīn Attār (d. 1220).
²⁰²Ritter showed that this “religious love of beautiful people” is attested in Islamic history at least as far back as the tenth century. Though he emphasized the importance of the theories of Ibn Arabī in providing a sophisticated theoretical justification for the (pre-existing) practice, his chapter focused on the Persian mystical tradition, and traced the theme in the lives and works of such figures as Ahmad Ghazālī (d. 1126), Rūzbihān Baqlī(d. 1209), and Fakhr al-Dīm ‘Irāqi (d. 1289).
²⁰³There has not, to my knowledge, been any modern study that attempts to trace the theme in the Arabic mystical tradition. In what follows, I will discuss three prominent Arab mystics of the early Ottoman period who may be considered mystical aesthetes.

Ayyūb al-‘Adawī
al- Khalwatī (1586-1660)

Ayyūb was born in the Sālihiyyah suburb of Damascus, and studied with several local scholars.
²⁰⁴As his name indicates, he was initiated into the Khalwatī mystical order, and he eventually gained a reputation as a knowledgeable mystic to whom many ascribed supernatural powers. In fact, Ayyūb’s reputation as a living saint seems to have reached the imperial court in Constantinople, and he was asked to come to the capital and extend his blessings to Sultan Ibrāhīm (r. 1640-48). He was described by the Damascene biographer Muhibbī in the following terms: “He was enamored of absolute beauty, and never tired or wearied of love and infatuation.” Some of Ayyūb’s poetry, as for instance the following couplet, attests to this characterization:

I was blamed by mankind for loving beauty, and they do not know my aim, if only they knew!
By means of it I attained the unbounded, and thus my heart approaches a bounded beauty they avoid.

The Damascene scholar Abū al-Mawāhib al-Hanbalī (d. 1714), who was initiated into the Khalwatī order by Ayyūb, confirmed that his master was indeed a somewhat controversial figure, and provided some indication of what Ayyūb’s love for “bounded beauty” involved: “People used to criticize him for frequenting beardless boys.”
²⁰⁵One of the miracle stories related of this mystic had him attending a gathering at which there was a very handsome youth. When night came and those present made preparations for sleeping in the living room, he asked to lie next to the youth. One of those present silently disapproved of this, and remained awake through the night to keep the mystic under observation. When the observer left the room, he saw Ayyūb outside praying. Surprised, he went back in, only to find him sleeping. After checking this a couple of times, the doubter repented and became convinced that he had to do with a saint.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the later Syrian mystic Mustafā al-Bakrī (d. 1749) stated that some mystical groups active in his time used to invoke the dictum that “all beauty is the beauty of God” in defense of their practice of contemplating the beauty of women and boys. Bakrī, who was also a Khalwatī mystic, omitted to mention that the dictum was actually part of a short poem by Ayyūb al-Khalwatī:

All beauty is the beauty of God, there is no doubt, though the proscribing blamers are in doubt.
The essence and the attributes are one, without doubt. You who approach the One, consider and you would not doubt!
²⁰⁶

‘Abd al-Ghanīal-Nābulusī
(1640-1731)

Ayyūb al-Khalwatī’s writings, some of which are extant, seem all to have dealt with mystical topics. ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nabulusī,on the other hand, was one of the most versatile scholars of the early Ottoman Middle East.
²⁰⁷Himself the son of a prominent Hanaf ī jurist, his voluminous writings contribute to such disparate fields as jurisprudence, tradition, Qurʾanic commentary, dogmatic theology, rhetoric, travel literature, dream interpretation, and agronomy. In his own eyes, and those of his contemporaries, he was perhaps first and foremost a mystic (initiated into the Qādirīand Naqshbandī orders), particularly renowned for his mystical poetry, his sympathetic expositions of the idea of the “unity of existence,” and his commentaries on the Dīwān of Ibn al-Fārid and the
Fusūs al-hikam
of Ibn Arabī.
²⁰⁸He was also a vigorous defender of controversial Sufi practices such as listening to music and contemplating human beauty.
²⁰⁹Mystical aestheticism is a recurrent theme in his own
Dīwān
of Sufi poetry:

We are a people who are fond of handsome countenances, and with them God augments His favors to us.
From the Preserver we have an eye, which increases our certainty and insight.
To us has been passed the wine of divine manifestation, and with it our cup has been filled.
²¹⁰

To be sure, the mystic does not love the countenances as such. A particular collection of skin and bones is an insubstantial and inert form that only appears beautiful insofar as it is the locus of the manifestation of divine Beauty:

O He who is apparent in His creation, while being hidden; 0 He who is hidden in Himself while being apparent.
You appeared to me in everything, and I was no one but You, the seen as well as the seer ...
In everyone handsome
[masc. ],
indeed in everyone pretty
[fem. ],
you became visible until you were affirmed by hearts.
And it is not my creed to love appearances, but I love what the appearances indicate.
²¹¹

Base, carnal love aims at satisfying the self’s desires. By contrast, the mystical love of beauty involves an annihilation of the self—an attempt to become a transparent medium for the outflow of divine love directed at divine beauty:

“0 boy,” if I regard you as a body, and if I ascend to a higher level I say, “Spirit of essences,”
And if I reduce you and me to nothing I say, “0 Lord, in his most comprehensive attribute.”
²¹²

The contemplation of phenomenal beauty is not only permissible but also necessary if one is to transcend the phenomenal world, including one’s own self, and experience the omnipresence of God. As Nābulusī wrote in his commentary on the
Dīwān
of Ibn al-Fārid:

It is not simply by reciting supererogatory prayers and incessant invocations, without applying yourself to perceiving the manifestations of Truth the Exalted, that you raise yourself from the depths of your self and your nature to the peak of being united with the Beloved of unbounded Beauty.
²¹³

Nābulusī expressed the same idea in verse, alluding to a saying controversially attributed to the Prophet:

He who is lost in love, is the one who in Truth exists,
And he is dead [as a self] and alive [fading away in God’s Attributes], the witness and the witnessed,
And every door to God except that is locked ...
The best of all mankind [the Prophet Muhammad], the sea of beneficence and munificence, says:
“Have recourse to the handsome countenances and the large-pupiled eyes.”
²¹⁴

In his valuable study The
Sufi Orders in Islam
(1971), J. S. Trimingham inserted a rather curious footnote in which he claimed that after the fifteenth century, the mystical contemplation of beardless boys “was prohibited altogether in the Arab world, the occasional reference, as in ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī’s works, does not mean anything.”
²¹⁵It is not clear what lies behind Trimingham’s cursory dismissal. He possibly believed that a prominent and respectable Islamic scholar like Nābulusī simply could not have condoned such a practice, and that this theme in his mystical poetry was simply a literary convention which should not be taken literally. This would be in line with the more general view that Islamic mystical poetry eventually became fossilized, and continued to make use of the daring images of earlier poets but without any genuine conviction.
²¹⁶However, the idea that the theme of the mystical love of boys in Nābulusī’s poetry was a mere literary convention is untenable. It is clear from, say, Nābulusī’s commentary on the
Dīwān
of Ibn al-Fārid that he wholeheartedly accepted the appropriateness of Ibn al-Farid falling in love with a butcher boy and regarding the manifestation of divine beauty in that human form. Furthermore, the recently edited tract by Nābulusī entitled
Ghāyat al-matlūb
fī
mahabbat al-mahbūb
is a lengthy and esoteric defense (in prose) of the permissibility of loving handsome beardless boys. The thesis of this remarkable work is adumbrated already in the preamble, where he invokes blessings on the Prophet Muhammad,

who made it part of his tradition to love comeliness and made it permissible to perceive beauty, so that this becomes part of moral excellence, and he who considers it a defect, and criticizes those who follow and imitate this lead, is an unbeliever.
²¹⁷

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