Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (74 page)

BOOK: Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800
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43
Winter,
Egyptian Society under (Ottoman Rule
, 9-10 (citing the chronicle of Ibn Iyyas), 230 (citing the chronicle of Ahmad Çelebī).
 
44
Būrīnī,
Tarājim al-a‘yān,
2: 280; Jabartī,
‘Ajā’ib al-āthār,
I : 413.
 
45
Tietze,
Mustafa ‘Ali’s Descriptions of Egypt
51-54.
 
46
Ibn Ayyub,
al-Rawd al-‘āṭir,
87-88; Mamayah al-Rūmī,
Rawḍat al-mushtāq,
fol. 219b. Majnun and Laylah and Kuthayyir and ‘Azzah are legendary (male/female) love couples from the early Islamic period.
 
47
Dardīr,
al-Sharḥ al-kabīr,
4 : 339.
 
48
Ḥaṣkafī
al-Durr al-muntaqā
, I : 609-10.
 
49
See the anecdotes in Isḥāqī,
Akhbār al-uwal,
113-16; and Tīfāshī,
Nuzhat al-albāb,
99-126.
 
50
Bullough,
Sexual variance in Society and History,
232; Irwin,
The Arabian Nights, 175
. Both works cite
The Arabian Nights
.
 
51
Shaykhzāde,
Majma‘al anhur
, I :595-96; Ibn Nujaym,
al-Baḥr al-rā’iq
, 5 :17-18.
 
52
Gilmore, “Introduction: The Shame of Dishonour,” 9.
 
53
‘Amilī, Baha’ al-Dīn,
al-Kashkūl,
I 361; Jazā’irī,
Zahr al-rabī’ ,
45.
 
54
For example, Buhūtī,
Sharb muntaha al-irādāt,
3:345:
“wa lūṭī fā ‘il wa maf ‘ūl bihi...”
 
55
Būrīnī,
Tarājim al-a‘yān,
I : 252.
 
56
Būrīnī,
Tarājim al-a‘yān,
2:73-74. For another independent allusion to this incident, see Ibn Ayyub,
al-Rawḍ al-‘āṭir,
30.
 
57
Nābulusī,
Ta‘ṭīr al-anām
, 2 :21O
(liwāt),
236-38
(mujama‘ah),
294
(nikāh).
Compare the strikingly similar interpretations of Artemidorus (2nd century AD), analyzed in Foucault,
The History of Sexuality
, 3 : 4-36, and Winkler,
The Constraints of Desire
, 17-44. On this theme, see also Oberhelman, “Hierarchies of Gender, Ideology, and Power in Medieval Greek and Arabic Dream Literature.”
 
58
Nuzhat al-udabā’
, MS I, fol. 95a; MS II, fol. 208a-b.
 
59
This is one of the main points in Bourdieu,
The Logic of Practice;
see especially “The Social Uses of Kinship,” 162-99.
 
60
Pitt-Rivers,
The Fate of Shechem,
16.
 
61
Gilmore, “Introduction: The Shame of Dishonour,” 10-11 (speaking of contemporary Mediterranean culture in general).
 
62
Nabulusi,
Ta‘ṭīr al-anām,
I: 223
27
(dhakar insān),
19
(unthayān),
192
(khaṣī
). See also Munāwī,
al-Fuyūḍāt al-ilābiyyah,
fol. 68b-69a. For a similar observation concerning the contemporary Mediterranean area, see Pitt-Rivers,
The Fate of Shechem,
22.
 
63
For example, Jabartī,
‘Ajā’ib al-āthār,
I: IOO,III; see also Lane,
An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,
37, 56I (n. 4); and
Volney Travels though Syria and Egypt
, I : IIB.
 
64
Nābulusī
Ta‘ṭīr al-anām,
2: 206-8 (
liḥya)
,I:223
27 (
dhakar insān
). See also Munāwī,
al-Fuyūḍātal-ilāhiyyah,
fol. 66b
(al-ṭūl fī al-liḥyah
) and fol. 68
(kibr al-dhakar wa ṭūluhu).
On the symbolic importance of the beard or moustache in the Mediterranean area, see Gilmore
, Manhood in the Making,
31, 47 (Italy and Greece); and Bourdieu,
The logic of
Practice
, 2II(the Kabyle of Algeria).
 
65
Ibn al-Ḥanbalī,
Durr al-babab,
2 : 145; Ghazzī
al-Kawākib al-sā’irah,
3:23.
 
66
Jabartī,
ʿAjāʾib al-āthār,
2:217. For al-Khashshāb’s love of the scribe, see ibid, 4:238-4I.
 
67
Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al
-athar,
4: 35-36; Muḥibbī,
Nafḥat al-rayḥānah,
I : 380.
 
68
The theme will be dealt with at greater length in the following chapter.
 
69
Shawkānā,
al-Badr al-ṭāli‘,
I : 281-82 (the editor’s footnote, quoting an unpublished biographical dictionary of eighteenth-century Yemeni poets).
 
70
Barbir,
al-Sharb al-jalī,
220.
 
71
Ibn Hajar al-Haytamī,
al-Fatāwā al-kubrā al-fiqbiyyah,
4 : 359.
 
72
Ibn al-Wakīl al- Mallawī,
Bughyat al-musāmir,
fol. 131b
I33a.
 
73
Ibn al-Ḥanbaī,
Durr al-habab,
I: 688-89, 2:159.
 
74
Ibn Ayyub al-Anṣārī,
al-Rawd al-‘āṭir,
23.
 
75
Būrīnī,
Tarījim al-a‘yān,
1:108. For another example, see Ghazzī,
Lutf al-samar,
2 :581
82.
 
76
Mamayah al-Rūmī,
Rawḍat al-mushtāq,
fol. 331b-334a.
 
77
‘Urḍī,
Maʿādin al-dhahab,
244-45; Ibn al-Ḥanbalī,
Durr al-babab,
I : 687-93; al-Budayri al-Ḥallāq
, Ḥawādith Dimashq al-yawmiyyah,
185.
 
78
Lane,
An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,
I59-60; Russell,
The Natural History of Aleppo,
I: 28I-82; Volney,
Travels through Syria and Egypt
, 2: 485- 86; Marcus,
The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity,
I96
.
 
79
Jabartī,
‘Ajā’ib al-āthār
, I : 67, 36I.
 
80
Pitts,
A Faithful Account,
98-lOO; Burckhardt,
Travels in Arabia
, I: 364; Jabartī,
‘Ajā’ib al-āthār,
I : 144, 3:219; al-Budayrī al-Ḥallāq,
Ḥawādith Dimashq al-yawmiyyah,
39, 57, 92, II2, I34; al-Suwaydī ‘Abdallah,
al-Nafḥah al-miskiyyah,
fol. 95a.
 
81
For related remarks on courtship of boys in ancient Greece, see Cohen,
Law, Sexuality, and Society, I85-87
.
 
82
Volney,
Travels through Syrian and Egypt,
I
:
I
85.
 
83
Zabīdī,
Tāj al- ‘arūs, 9
: I66 (m-r-d).
 
84
Shirbīnī,
Hazz al-quḥūf,
94. This is strikingly similar to the pre-Meiji Japanese views analyzed in Pflugfelder,
Cartographies of Desire,
31.
 
85
Ibn Kannan,
al-Ḥawādith al-yawmiyyah,
417.
 
86
Būrīnī,
Tarājim al-a‘yān,
2:24I; Muḥibbī,
Nafḥat
al-rayḥānah,
I:412; Khafājī,
Rayḥānat al-alibbā,
1:247. An eighteenth-century Turkish work of bawdy comedy also states that for pederasts the ideal age of boys is fourteen (see Schmidt, “Sünbülzāde,” 24).
 
87
Blount,
A Voyage into the Levant,
14.
 
88
Murādī,
Silk al-durar,
I: 247; Ghazzī,
al- Wird al-unsī,
fol. IIOb-IIIa; al-Alūsī, Mahmud Shukri,
al-Misk al-adhfar,
98-99. In these cases, the last hemistich of the poems contains the date of composition in letter-code. Together with the date of birth, they allow the calculation of the age of the youth at the time.

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