Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (35 page)
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Authors: Khaled El-Rouayheb
BOOK: Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800
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, ʿAbdallah al-Shabra
wi
, Muhammad al-Ghula
mi
, ʿAbdallah al-Suwaydi
.
133
The aesthetic and amorous ideal seems also to have been influential in these circles.
The Ideal of Lovewi, Muhammad al-Ghulami, ʿAbdallah al-Suwaydi.133
The aesthetic and amorous ideal seems also to have been influential in these circles.
Ardent, passionate love (ʿ
ishq)
was apparently a topic that many in the early Ottoman Middle East found fascinating. It was directly or indirectly the subject matter of most of the poetry and much of the belletristic prose of the period. Determining its nature, symptoms, and stages was a task that invited the efforts of scholars, poets, lexicographers, mystics, and physicians. Yet it remained (and largely still remains) a somewhat elusive phenomenon. According to the Shiʿite scholar Baha
ʾ al-Di
n al-ʿA
mili
(d. 1621):
ishq)
was apparently a topic that many in the early Ottoman Middle East found fascinating. It was directly or indirectly the subject matter of most of the poetry and much of the belletristic prose of the period. Determining its nature, symptoms, and stages was a task that invited the efforts of scholars, poets, lexicographers, mystics, and physicians. Yet it remained (and largely still remains) a somewhat elusive phenomenon. According to the Shiʿite scholar Baha
ʾ al-Din al-ʿAmili(d. 1621):ʿishq
is an attraction of the heart to the magnet of beauty. One cannot hope to know the true nature of this attraction, only to express it in ways that increase its obscurity. It is like beauty and poetic meter in that it can be experienced but not expressed in words, and how apposite is the statement of one of the sages: He who describes love has not known it.
134
An agnostic position of
ʿishq
was also propounded by the Cairo-based scholar Muhammad Murtad
a
al-Zabi
di
(d. 1791). In his commentary on the dictionary
(Qa
mu
s)
of al-Fayru
zaba
di
(d. 1415), he wrote:
ʿishq
was also propounded by the Cairo-based scholar Muhammad Murtad
aal-Zabidi(d. 1791). In his commentary on the dictionary(Qa
mus)of al-Fayru
zabadi(d. 1415), he wrote:Its meaning cannot be known or discovered, and describing it in words just increases its obscurity. It is like beauty in being unknowable and ineffable, and like poetic meter and other such things that are only discoverable by sound taste and upright character.
135
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