Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (44 page)
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Authors: Khaled El-Rouayheb
BOOK: Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800
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It has hitherto been taken for granted that the adoption of a deflationary or an idealist perspective on love was independent of whether the beloved was a woman or a boy. This seems to have been the rule in the premodern Arab-Islamic Middle East. It was of course not the rule in Europe, where idealization was normally confined to “heterosexual” love. An interesting debate on this issue unfolded in the 1820S between the English traveler James Silk Buckingham and his Iraqi travel companion and guide “Ismael.” Buckingham, familiar from his own culture with idealist perceptions of love between unmarried men and women, initially responded with sympathy when his companion told him that he had a Christian beloved in Baghdad. When he found out that the beloved was a
boy,
he “shrunk back from the confession as a man would recoil from a serpent on which he had unexpectedly trodden.”
177
However, after further talks with his Iraqi companion, Buckingham came to the conclusion that the fact that the amorous feelings were directed at a boy did not automatically imply that they were not “pure” and “honourable.” The point was pressed by Ismael himself during their discussions:
boy,
he “shrunk back from the confession as a man would recoil from a serpent on which he had unexpectedly trodden.”
177
However, after further talks with his Iraqi companion, Buckingham came to the conclusion that the fact that the amorous feelings were directed at a boy did not automatically imply that they were not “pure” and “honourable.” The point was pressed by Ismael himself during their discussions:
He contended that if it were possible for a man to be enamored of every thing that is fair, and lovely, and good and beautiful, in a female form, without a reference to the enjoyment of the person, which feeling may most unquestionably exist [on this Buckingham and Ismael agreed], so the same sentiment might be excited toward similar charms united in a youth of the other sex, without reference to impure desires.
178
Buckingham was helped along to this conclusion by his classical education, which told him that the possibility of a chaste love of boys was countenanced by the ancient Greeks. After drawing the parallel with classical antiquity, he concluded:
From all this, added to many other examples of a similar kind, related as happening between persons who had often been pointed out to me in Arabia and Persia, I could no longer doubt the existence in the East of an affection for male youths, of as pure and honourable a kind as that which is felt in Europe for those of the other sex.
179
The position of Buckingham’s Iraqi companion enjoyed the support of a centuries-old Arabic belletristic tradition. Love poetry could equally be of a boy or a woman, and works on love could relate, in the same breath, the “heterosexual” loves of the legendary ʿ
udhrī
poets,and the pederastic loves of people like Muhammad ibn Dāwūd al-Zāhirī and the famous biographer Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282). The coexistence of a literary idealization of pederastic love with a religious prohibition of sodomy was in principle not more problematic than the coexistence of a literary idealization of “heterosexual” love together with a religious prohibition of fornication. The relatively modern idea that passionate love is a normal prelude to marriage could not have gained much resonance in a culture in which premarital contact between the sexes was forbidden and marriages arranged. In any case, the fascination with love seems in large part to have been dependent on its wild and tragic character, which was difficult to reconcile with the tranquility and orderliness of married life.
180
udhrī
poets,and the pederastic loves of people like Muhammad ibn Dāwūd al-Zāhirī and the famous biographer Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282). The coexistence of a literary idealization of pederastic love with a religious prohibition of sodomy was in principle not more problematic than the coexistence of a literary idealization of “heterosexual” love together with a religious prohibition of fornication. The relatively modern idea that passionate love is a normal prelude to marriage could not have gained much resonance in a culture in which premarital contact between the sexes was forbidden and marriages arranged. In any case, the fascination with love seems in large part to have been dependent on its wild and tragic character, which was difficult to reconcile with the tranquility and orderliness of married life.
180
There were, to be sure, persons even within Arab-Islamic culture in the period under study who would adopt a cynical and deflationary position as regards the love of one sex, and an idealist position as regards love of the other. For example, Dāwūd al-Antākī treated love in general, and the various anecdotes relating to the love of women, with unconcealed sympathy. At the same time his presentation of the anecdotes dealing with pederastic love affairs is prefaced with the reductionist claim that this type of love first emerged among the people of Sodom, and that it should be avoided by means of averting the eyes.
181
On the other hand, the previously mentioned Persian philosopher Mulla Sadrā, whose discussion is cited in the miscellaneous anthology of the Ottoman Grand Vizier Raghib Pasha (d. 1763), identified noble and sublime love with the love of boys, while reducing the love of women to an animalistic desire to perpetuate the species. Muhyī al-Dīn al-Saltī, in his own treatise on love, only cited examples of pederastic love, many of them plagiarized from earlier works, to which he added others that he had heard of or witnessed. The Egyptian belletrist Ibn al-Wakīl al-Mallawī also confined his attention to pederastic love couples, explicitly stating that courting women was in his day fit for libertines rather than lovers.
182
However, against the background of the dominant literary tradition, such restrictions based on the gender of the beloved appear somewhat idiosyncratic. For example, the Palestinian scholar Muhammad al-Saffarīnī(d. 1774),who devoted a short tract to denouncing sodomites, divided passionate love into three evaluative categories: (i) praiseworthy, such as the love of a man for his wife; (ii) blameworthy, such as a man’s love for a boy; (iii) neither praise- nor blameworthy, such as an involuntary, chaste love of an unrelated woman.
183
However, it seems to have been more usual for religious scholars to allow that the involuntary chaste love of a boy should also be evaluated as neither commendable nor reprehensible. The prominent Damascene scholar Ahmad al-Manīnī(d. 1759), for example, commented on a risque poem which said that if the prophet Lot had seen the beauty of the beloved boy, he would not declare him forbidden to mankind. Manīnī argued that this need not be understood in the unacceptable sense that Lot would have permitted sodomizing the boy, but that he would have permitted loving him, “for love is a natural and coercive matter in which the lover does not have any choice ... and love, if it is not associated with a foul deed, is free from blemish since it does not involve committing what is forbidden by religious law.”
184
This was also the position of the Iraqi scholar ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Suwaydī (d. 1786). In a short tract on the love of boys ( ʿ
ishq al-fityān)
which he wrote at the request of a friend, he advised caution and discretion, but clearly allowed for the possibility of a chaste and involuntary love of boys that was neither reprehensible nor commendable from a religious point of view. He wrote: “If it is established that passionate love is involuntary and chaste, with no admixture of pretense, one should not reproach those afflicted, neither in word or in thought.”
185
The position of Manīnī and Suwaydī was apparently the one sanctioned by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s seminal
Ihyā ‘ulūm al-dīn.
To love someone for his beauty and without any carnal lust was, said Ghazālī, possible, since “the beautiful form is pleasurable in itself even if carnal lust is absent.” Such a love was not religiously commendable
(maḥmūd),
but it was not blameworthy
(madhmūm)
either. It was simply indifferently permissible
(mubāḥ)
.
186
Ghazālī did not explicitly claim that he was speaking of the love of handsome boys, but the principle he defended was general. It is therefore safe to assume that his position was widely understood as allowing for the possibility of a chaste and religiously permissible love of beauty in any form.
187
Indeed, the position of Saffārīnī was liable to the objection that it was arbitrary to allow that the passionate love of an unrelated woman was not reprehensible if it was chaste and involuntary, and yet refuse to allow that the chaste and involuntary love of a boy fell into the same category. Such an objection was made by scholars who discussed whether the above-mentioned saying of the Prophet, ”He who loves and is chaste and then dies, dies a martyr,“ only applied to the love of women. For example, one of the most prominent jurists of the period, the Egyptian Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ramlī (d. 1596), replied to the position that the martyrs-of-love tradition did not apply to a man’s love for a boy in the following way:
181
On the other hand, the previously mentioned Persian philosopher Mulla Sadrā, whose discussion is cited in the miscellaneous anthology of the Ottoman Grand Vizier Raghib Pasha (d. 1763), identified noble and sublime love with the love of boys, while reducing the love of women to an animalistic desire to perpetuate the species. Muhyī al-Dīn al-Saltī, in his own treatise on love, only cited examples of pederastic love, many of them plagiarized from earlier works, to which he added others that he had heard of or witnessed. The Egyptian belletrist Ibn al-Wakīl al-Mallawī also confined his attention to pederastic love couples, explicitly stating that courting women was in his day fit for libertines rather than lovers.
182
However, against the background of the dominant literary tradition, such restrictions based on the gender of the beloved appear somewhat idiosyncratic. For example, the Palestinian scholar Muhammad al-Saffarīnī(d. 1774),who devoted a short tract to denouncing sodomites, divided passionate love into three evaluative categories: (i) praiseworthy, such as the love of a man for his wife; (ii) blameworthy, such as a man’s love for a boy; (iii) neither praise- nor blameworthy, such as an involuntary, chaste love of an unrelated woman.
183
However, it seems to have been more usual for religious scholars to allow that the involuntary chaste love of a boy should also be evaluated as neither commendable nor reprehensible. The prominent Damascene scholar Ahmad al-Manīnī(d. 1759), for example, commented on a risque poem which said that if the prophet Lot had seen the beauty of the beloved boy, he would not declare him forbidden to mankind. Manīnī argued that this need not be understood in the unacceptable sense that Lot would have permitted sodomizing the boy, but that he would have permitted loving him, “for love is a natural and coercive matter in which the lover does not have any choice ... and love, if it is not associated with a foul deed, is free from blemish since it does not involve committing what is forbidden by religious law.”
184
This was also the position of the Iraqi scholar ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Suwaydī (d. 1786). In a short tract on the love of boys ( ʿ
ishq al-fityān)
which he wrote at the request of a friend, he advised caution and discretion, but clearly allowed for the possibility of a chaste and involuntary love of boys that was neither reprehensible nor commendable from a religious point of view. He wrote: “If it is established that passionate love is involuntary and chaste, with no admixture of pretense, one should not reproach those afflicted, neither in word or in thought.”
185
The position of Manīnī and Suwaydī was apparently the one sanctioned by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s seminal
Ihyā ‘ulūm al-dīn.
To love someone for his beauty and without any carnal lust was, said Ghazālī, possible, since “the beautiful form is pleasurable in itself even if carnal lust is absent.” Such a love was not religiously commendable
(maḥmūd),
but it was not blameworthy
(madhmūm)
either. It was simply indifferently permissible
(mubāḥ)
.
186
Ghazālī did not explicitly claim that he was speaking of the love of handsome boys, but the principle he defended was general. It is therefore safe to assume that his position was widely understood as allowing for the possibility of a chaste and religiously permissible love of beauty in any form.
187
Indeed, the position of Saffārīnī was liable to the objection that it was arbitrary to allow that the passionate love of an unrelated woman was not reprehensible if it was chaste and involuntary, and yet refuse to allow that the chaste and involuntary love of a boy fell into the same category. Such an objection was made by scholars who discussed whether the above-mentioned saying of the Prophet, ”He who loves and is chaste and then dies, dies a martyr,“ only applied to the love of women. For example, one of the most prominent jurists of the period, the Egyptian Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ramlī (d. 1596), replied to the position that the martyrs-of-love tradition did not apply to a man’s love for a boy in the following way:
This is plausible in the case of voluntary love which he [the lover] can choose to end but does not. However, if we assume that the love is involuntary in the sense that he cannot choose to end it, then there is nothing to prevent him from gaining martyrdom, since in that case there is no transgression of religious precepts.
188
As will be shown in the following chapter, the position of Ramlī concerning the martyrs-of-love tradition was the dominant one among religious jurists. What was important was chastity and involuntariness, not the gender of the beloved.
Mystical AestheticismIn the poetry and prose of the period, eulogies of physical beauty were often combined with exclamations praising its Creator. Such a practice, still widespread in the Arab world today, rested on the theologically unproblematic assumption that God had created all worldly beauty. Far more controversial was a related but more radical conception according to which beauty was, in a deep and intricate sense, divine; to behold it was to behold one of the attributes of God. In the early Ottoman Middle East, such notions tended to be closely associated with mystics influenced by the Andalusian-born mystic Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 1240), and by his younger contemporary, the Egyptian poet ‘Umar ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 1235).
189
The central contention of mystics standing in this tradition was that only God is real—an idea sometimes referred to as “the unity of existence”
(wahdat al-wujūd).
Furthermore, it was believed that this basic metaphysical fact could be experienced by the trained mystic. The mystic could actually perceive the manifestation
(tajallī)
of God, where the uninitiated eye saw only the world of phenomena. This was held to be the true meaning of the Qur’anic assertion “Wherever ye turn there is God’s face” (2:115).
189
The central contention of mystics standing in this tradition was that only God is real—an idea sometimes referred to as “the unity of existence”
(wahdat al-wujūd).
Furthermore, it was believed that this basic metaphysical fact could be experienced by the trained mystic. The mystic could actually perceive the manifestation
(tajallī)
of God, where the uninitiated eye saw only the world of phenomena. This was held to be the true meaning of the Qur’anic assertion “Wherever ye turn there is God’s face” (2:115).
The proponents of this way of thinking were careful to dissociate themselves from crude pantheism. They accepted the idea that God, in essence
(dhāt),
was completely unlike anything that may be sensed or conceived. On the other hand, the Islamic religious tradition sanctioned the use of certain “names”
(asmaʾ)
of God, indicating His attributes
(sifāt)
and acts
(af‘āl),
such as the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Glorious, the κnower, the Creator, the Beautiful. The mystics of the Ibn ‘Arabī school held that these names are manifested in the phenomenal world in much the same way as the Platonic Forms. For example, all instances of worldly beauty are manifestations of the divine name “the Beautiful.”
190
In this sense, it is really impossible to fall in love with anything but God. The uninitiated may think they are enthralled by a beautiful woman or boy, but in reality they are captivated by the Beauty of God. More accurately, since neither lover nor beloved really exists, there is ultimately only God loving Himself. In his famous
al-Tā’iyyah alkubrā
(Greater ode rhyming with T), Ibn al-Fāriḍ stated:
(dhāt),
was completely unlike anything that may be sensed or conceived. On the other hand, the Islamic religious tradition sanctioned the use of certain “names”
(asmaʾ)
of God, indicating His attributes
(sifāt)
and acts
(af‘āl),
such as the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Glorious, the κnower, the Creator, the Beautiful. The mystics of the Ibn ‘Arabī school held that these names are manifested in the phenomenal world in much the same way as the Platonic Forms. For example, all instances of worldly beauty are manifestations of the divine name “the Beautiful.”
190
In this sense, it is really impossible to fall in love with anything but God. The uninitiated may think they are enthralled by a beautiful woman or boy, but in reality they are captivated by the Beauty of God. More accurately, since neither lover nor beloved really exists, there is ultimately only God loving Himself. In his famous
al-Tā’iyyah alkubrā
(Greater ode rhyming with T), Ibn al-Fāriḍ stated:
For everyone handsome
masc
.], his loveliness is from Her beauty, and so too the loveliness of everyone pretty
[fem.].For Her, Lubna’s Qays became infatuated, and also every lover, like Layla’s Majnūn and ‘Azzah’s Kuthayyir.So every lover, I am he, and She is the beloved of every lover, and all are names of my guise.Names of which I am in truth the named, and it was I who appeared to myself in a soul that has hidden.
191
Phenomenal beauty is simultaneously a delusory veil and a divine revelation. The uninitiated mistakenly take it for an attribute of a particular, independently existing entity; the trained mystic sees it as a manifestation of the infinite beauty of God. The monist mystics could in certain contexts adopt the language of asceticism, and urge people to turn away from the idolization of phenomenal images. However, such passages should not be taken out of context. The proffered alternative was not to keep one’s senses shut to the beauty around, but to see it as the divine epiphany it really is. For example, the Damascene mystic ‘Abd al-Gharī al-Nābulusī,in the preface to his commentary on the
Dīwān
of Ibn al-Fārid, complained that an earlier commentator, Hasan al-Būrīnī (d. 1614), had explained Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry as straightforward love poetry. In this way, Būrīnī “made everyone understand that the words of the poet were
ghazal
of gazelles, and avoided the divine meanings and sublime intimations even though it is these that are intended.”
192
Against this, Nābulusī protested that the mystical understanding of the poetry was the only legitimate understanding:
Dīwān
of Ibn al-Fārid, complained that an earlier commentator, Hasan al-Būrīnī (d. 1614), had explained Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry as straightforward love poetry. In this way, Būrīnī “made everyone understand that the words of the poet were
ghazal
of gazelles, and avoided the divine meanings and sublime intimations even though it is these that are intended.”
192
Against this, Nābulusī protested that the mystical understanding of the poetry was the only legitimate understanding:
It is clear that it is not permissible to attribute to the people of God [i.e., the Sufis] the amatory meanings that occur to the uninitiated ... The proper explanation of the words of the people of God is an explanation in terms of God, as applying to God and nothing else.
193
Such a passage might lead one to suppose that the love poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ is simply allegorical, that the portrayed beloved is simply a fictional character doing duty for the divine beloved. However, further reading reveals that this is not what Nābulusī had in mind. The claim is that Ibn al-Fāriḍ did not compose poetry expressing a love for a woman or youth, but that he instead composed poetry expressing a love for the beauty of God
as manifested in women
or boys:
as manifested in women
or boys:
All the love poetry which he [Ibn al-Fāriḍ] composes, whether it is for a male or a female ... he intends therewith the true reality that is apparent, manifesting itself with its eternal face in that ephemeral thing
(al-mutajalliyah biwajhihā al-haqq al-bāqī fī dhālika al-shay” al-fānī).
He does not intend that thing which in his considered view is merely an illusory appearance and a suppositious image.
194
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