Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (41 page)

Muhammad Saʿi
d ibn al-Samma
n (d. 1759) proclaimed:

Indeed, the love poetry of the period typically described a love that was tragic, unreciprocated and unconsummated. Criticizing a poem, the Damascene belletrist Abu
al-Fath
al-Ma
liki
(d. 1567/8) pointed out that it inappropriately used the word “generous”
(karim)
of the beloved: “The beloved ought not to be described as such, but as ungenerous
(bakhi
l).”
¹⁵⁸
In a poem, the Egyptian scholar Yu
suf al-H
afni
(d. 1763) quoted a downy-cheeked beloved as telling him:

Scholars who discussed passionate love sometimes pointed out the following paradox: the beloved’s wish was not to be with his lover
(al-mah
bu
b muri
d li-al-fira
q; al-fira
q mura
d al-maʿshu
q),
and the true lover was supposed to adopt the wishes of the beloved, hence a true lover ought not to wish to be with his beloved.
¹⁶⁰
This was indeed a paradoxical conclusion. Composers of love poetry regularly expressed their unhappiness at being separated from the beloved, and their hope for a future “lover’s union”
(wis
a
l).
The poet could also allude to such “lover’s unions” in the past, by way of contrasting past bliss with present suffering. However, such “unions” were not—in this particular genre of poetry—explicitly portrayed as sexual. Indeed their chaste nature was often emphasized. The Damascene poet Ahmad al-Kaywa
ni
(d. 1760), for instance, stated: