Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (47 page)

Indeed, the contemplation of human beauty was controversial even within the ranks of Islamic mystics. As was mentioned in the first chapter of the present study, the practice was condemned by several prominent Sufis. For example, the Egyptian ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Sha‘rānī (d. 1565), in a handbook for Sufi novices, wrote:

He [the novice] ought to avert his eyes from attractive forms as much as possible, for looking at them is like an arrow which hits the heart and kills it, especially if he looks with lust, for that is like a poison arrow which melts a man’s body instantly... And he who raises himself from the condition of mere libertinage and asserts that this love is spiritual rather than bodily, we say to him: that is an interpolation from the self and the devil. The devil may make someone imagine that there is no harm in that [i.e., looking at attractive forms], and that all beauty in existence derives its beauty from the beauty of God the Exalted. To this we say: He whose beauty you claim to be seeing is the one who has prohibited this seeing.
²⁴⁷

Later in the same work, Sha‘rānī expressed himself even more vehemently:

No one claims that it is permissible to look at the attractions declared out of bounds by the Lawgiver, except those who are debauched and have abandoned the Way, and disguised themselves for the commoners so that one who does not know the Holy Law thinks they are saints, though they are the most libertine of libertines ... Satan has insinuated to them to appear ecstatic and listen to music with women and male youths... and insinuated to them to incline to sit with them and talk with them, until he succeeded in making them incline to seek debauchery with them.
²⁴⁸

It is possible that Sha‘rārī’s warnings were aimed specifically at novices, and not to more advanced mystics. In other words, it may be that the difference in opinion between Sha‘rānī and, say, Nābulusī is exaggerated when passages from a handbook for novices by one author are juxtaposed to passages from an esoteric work by the other. This said, the vehemence of Sha‘rānī’s condemnation seems to indicate sincerity. It is plausible that Sha‘rānī simply represents a different, more ascetic streak in the Sufi tradition than Nābulusī. He defended Ibn ‘Arabī against detractors, but did so in a spirit that seems much closer to his teacher Zakariyya al-Anṣārī than to Nābulusī: he simply insisted that all problematic passages in Ibn ‘Arabī’s works were later interpolations, and rejected the idea of “the unity of existence.”
²⁴⁹He also advised his readers to shun works which were even bolder in expressing monist ideas, such as the ʿ
Ayniyyah
(ode rhyming in the letter
‘Ayn
) by ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (d. 1428), whereas Nābulusī composed a commentary on the work.
²⁵⁰In a work enumerating the spiritual virtues conferred on him by God, Sha‘rānī stated:

One of the blessings conferred on me by God the Exalted is His shielding me constantly from looking at unrelated women and beardless boys, even without lust, ever since I was young... My master ‘Alī al-Khawāṣ—may God have mercy on him—used to say: The true reason for the prohibition of looking at what is out of bounds is that it occupies the mind with what is other than God, for God the Exalted has made the heart his home and the locus of His secrets and the believer ought not introduce into it any of the things that souls desire, for the love of God will then depart [from the heart] because He is jealous... From this it is clear that the prohibition of looking at women and what is considered analogous to them [i.e., beardless boys] is not based on the fear that this will lead to debauchery, but on this leading to the introduction into the heart of the love of what is other than God, without His permission.
²⁵¹

Sha‘rānī’s assumption was that the love of God precludes the love of other creatures. For mystical aestheticism, on the other hand, the love of God consists in loving his creatures with the right attitude. According to Nābulusī :

Some have divided love into two parts, and distinguished between a love that is worldly because its object is a created entity, and a love that is divine because its object is the Creator, and the truth of the matter as I see it is that it [i.e., love] is one thing... Its object is in the beginning a created entity which is an act of the Creator. It then takes on God as an object if it is accompanied by Islam and faith
(īmān)
and charity
(īḥsān)
and is devoid of outward or inward disobedience.
²⁵²

To the ascetic claim that loving a created individual is incompatible with exclusive devotion to God, Nābulusī replied:

To become enamored of a created being insofar as it is created will usually imply lust in the case of handsome forms; to become enamored of it insofar as it is a particular trace of the Possessor of infinite beauty is not to be preoccupied with a created being at all, and thus the Prophet (God bless him and grant him salvation) loved Usāmah ibn Zayd and loved his father Zayd before him ... and ‘Ā’ishah [the favorite wife of Muhammad] was the beloved of the Prophet (God bless him and grant him salvation) and this was not to preoccupy the heart with a created being.
²⁵³

The preceding two quotations are from Nābulusī’s above-mentioned tract
Ghāyat al-maṭlūb fī maḥabbat al-maḥbūb
. It is worth reiterating that this was an esoteric tract that Nābulusī—according to a great-grandson—had asked his sons not to show except to the select few.
²⁵⁴As will become clear in the following chapter, Nābulusī in that work clearly moved beyond what mainstream religious scholars would have accepted.

CHAPTER THREE

Sodomites

The Controversy over Gazing
(
Naẓar
)

Descriptions of the physical features of the beloved loomed large in the love poetry of the Arab-Islamic Middle East in the early Ottoman period. Poets typically dwelled on the eyes, skin, cheeks, neck, hair, figure, and gait—among other things—of the portrayed woman or boy. The descriptions, if taken as realistic representations of actual emotions and experiences, presupposed a fair amount of “looking” or “gazing” (
naẓar
). However, such a taking in of the charms of women or beardless youths was deeply problematic from the perspective of Islamic law. To be sure, the love poetry was often
not
taken realistically. The Meccan scholar Ibn Hajar al-Haytamī (d. 1566), one of the most prominent jurists of the early Ottoman period, based his conclusion that love poetry was religiously permissible on the following principle:

Amorous verse is not an indication of having looked with lust; as a rule the poet says it by way of making his poetry more delicate and to exhibit his craftsmanship, not because he is really in love... The composition of amorous verse is a craft, and the intention of the poet is to produce attractive discourse, not the verisimilitude of what is mentioned.
¹

The idea that “poets say what they do not do” thus made room for a peaceful coexistence between the sensual ideals often celebrated in love poetry and the rather more austere ideals upheld by religious jurists. As argued in the previous chapter, poets did not
always
“say what they do not do,” but the assumption that they did so “as a rule” allowed them to express a fondness for wine, women, or boys, without compromising themselves.
²Had it not been for this view of poetry, the coexistence would presumably have been more problematic than it was. The drinking of alcoholic beverages was strictly forbidden by the recognized interpreters of Islamic law, and transgressors were in principle liable to flogging. The visual appreciation (
istiḥsān)
of a “foreign” woman (i.e., a woman who was neither a close relative nor a wife or concubine) was also legally out of bounds. There was broad agreement among the jurists of the period that a man was not allowed to look at a woman who was not his wife, concubine, or close relative, except for specific purposes such as witnessing in a legal case, medical treatment, or teaching.
³In fact, the jurists of the period tended to agree that young women especially should veil their faces in public, precisely to prevent men from contravening this very principle.
⁴

Some jurists held, more controversially, that the same strictures should apply to looking at beardless youths. According to Ibn Hajar al-Haytamī, “There are beardless boys who surpass women in beauty and so are more tempting... and so more deserving of prohibition.”
⁵Both women and youths were suspected sources of temptation (
maẓinnat al-fitnah
), and consequently neither looking at (
al-naẓar
), touching
(al-lams),
nor being alone with
(al-khalwah
bi) them was allowed: “The most correct [view is] that all of this is prohibited with a woman or a beardless boy, even if lust is absent and one does not fear temptation, by way of severing the means of vice as much as possible.”
⁶If youths, in contrast to women, were not ordered to veil themselves, this was merely due to the practical necessity for them to associate with adult men to learn the various sciences and crafts.
⁷As to the idea of the Platonic contemplation of handsome youths, Ibn Hajar’s opinion was unequivocal:

The claim that there is nothing prohibited in looking at them by way of contemplation (
i‘tibāran
) is a satanic interpolation... There are plenty of other and more marvelous things that may be contemplated, but those who are wicked in soul and corrupt in reason and religion, and who do not comply with religious law, Satan suggests this to them in order to make them fall into what is worse than it [i.e., than looking].
⁸

A position similar to Ibn Hajar’s was propounded by the Syrian scholar and mystic ‘Alwān al-Ḥamawī (d. 1530). In a work devoted to the religious-legal provisions of looking, he wrote:

Looking at the beardless youth is prohibited, whether he is handsome or not, with lust or without it, whether one fears temptation or not... Some of them [scholars] qualify [the ruling], and say: It is permissible when one does not fear temptation, and prohibited when one fears it. Other scholars say: If he is handsome it is prohibited to look at him, otherwise it is not. It is more circumspect to block the openings and sever the means [of vice], and to avert the eyes from the beardless boy except for transactions such as teaching a science or a craft, and similar instances of necessity.
⁹

Both scholars could adduce several elements of the religious tradition in support of their position. Traditions warning against the temptation posed by beardless youths were numerous, some of them attributed to prominent religious figures of the early Islamic period, others to the Prophet Muhammad himself. One tradition related that the Prophet prohibited men from gazing at beardless boys, and another that Muhammad himself had seated a handsome young member of a visiting delegation from the tribe of Qays behind him so as to avoid looking at him.
¹⁰Both traditions were considered to be of dubious authenticity, but they could be buttressed by other traditions, relating how a venerable figure of the early Islamic period such as Sufyan al-Thawrī (d. 778) had fled from a handsome youth in a bath saying that he saw a devil with every woman and seventeen devils with every beardless youth; how Aḥmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), founder of the Ḥanbalī school of law, advised a visiting friend who had brought along a handsome sister’s son not to bring him along on future visits and not to walk with him on the streets, lest he expose himself to malicious rumors; and how Abū Ḥanīfah (d. 767), founder of the Ḥanafī school of law, had seated a handsome student of his behind him “for fear of betrayal by the eye.”
¹¹The declared purpose of such appeals to the deeds and sayings of venerable predecessors was to underline that no one ought to consider himself immune to temptation and exempt from the prohibition of looking at boys. According to ‘Alwān al-Ḥamawī: “Perhaps the wicked souls will tell their possessors: Your looking is free from obscenity and lust and you do not have a [tempting] devil; to him is replied: O conceited self-deceiver, do you have more piety than the outstanding Companions [of the Prophet]?”
¹²Ibn Hajar concurred: “And alike in everything we have mentioned is the look of the righteous, scholars, teachers, and others.”
¹³The emphasis on the universality of the prohibition should probably be seen against the background of the frankly elitist arguments in defense of practices such as listening to music and contemplating human beauty. Mystics who defended these practices often held that the relevant religious rulings should take into account the spiritual station of the persons involved. Listening to music, for instance, could very well be prohibited
(ḥarām
) to warm-blooded young commoners (for whom it was likely to lead to sin), while being indifferently permitted (
mubāḥ
) to others, and positively recommended
(mandūb)
for the mystic.
¹⁴

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