Medieval Sexuality: A Casebook - Julian Emperor

Homosexuality at the Abbasid Court 18711112342225672228910111232224567892022212345678930111123435678940111123222Notes1. I would like to thank Caroline Proctor and April Harper for organizing the conferencein St Andrews at which this paper was first given. I would also like to thank Dr CarolineGoodson and Prof. John Arnold for their valuable advice and help in the preparationof this paper.2. The official capital of the Abbasid caliphate was at Samarra from the 830s to 892,but Baghdad remained in many ways the cultural and commercial capital.3. For background on Al-Jå˙iΩ, see Charles Pellat, “Al-Jå˙iΩ,” in Abbasid Belles-Lettres,ed. Julia Ashtiany, T. M. Johnstone, J. D. Latham and R. B. Serjeant (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1990) 78–89.4. I have used the edition in Raså’il al-Jå˙iΩ, ed. Abd al-Salåm Muhammad Harun, 2vols (Beirut, 1991), 1: 91–137. There is an adequate, if sometimes stilted, Englishtranslation in Nine Essays of Al-Jå˙iΩ, trans. William M. Hutchins, AmericanUniversity Studies: series VII Theology and Religion Vol. 53 (New York, 1989). Partof the translation first appeared as “Short Stories, translation of part of an essay byAl-Jå˙iΩ,” Playboy, 22, 7 (1975).5. See James T. Monroe, “The Striptease That Was Blamed on Abu Bakr’s NaughtySon: Was Father Being Shamed, or Was the Poet Having Fun? (Ibn Quzman’s Zajalno. 133),” in Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, eds J. W. Wright Jr andEverett Rowson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 116–18.6. For this see Arno Schmitt, “Liwat im Fiqh: Mannliche Homosexualität,” Journal ofArabic and Islamic Studies, 4 (2001–2002), 49–110.7. On Abbasid court culture, see Hugh Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs (US title:When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004).8. See Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London, 1998), 75–104.9. What would they have made, for example, of the works of the Persian aristocrat Ibnal-Shåh M•kål? According to the Fihrist, he composed books on “The Boasting of theComb over the Mirror,” “The War of Bread and Olives,” “The Wonders of the Sea,”“Adultery and its Enjoyment,” “Stories about Slave-boys,” “Stories about Women,”and a work simply called “Masturbation.” Ibn al-Nad•m in his Kitab al-Fihrist, ed. R.Tajaddod (Tehran: Marvi Printing, 1393/1973), 170; English translation in: BayardDodge, ed. and trans., The Fihrist of al-Nad•m A Tenth-Century Survey of MuslimCulture, 2 vols (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970), 335).10. The issue under discussion was whether the Qur’an had existed since all eternity andwas only revealed to Muhammad for the first time or whether God actually createdit at the time of Muhammad’s mission. Conservative intellectuals in Baghdad, usuallyopposed to the regime for other reasons, argued for the first point of view; the newSamarra elite believed in the createdness of the Qur’an and demanded that anyoneenjoying public office should subscribe to it. Opponents were persecuted and onoccasion martyred.11. Harun, Raså’il al-Jå˙iΩ, 92; Hutchins, Nine Essays, 139.12. Harun, Raså’il al-Jå˙iΩ, 92; Hutchins, Nine Essays, 139.13. On female circumcision in early Islamic society, see Jonathan Berkey, “CircumcisionCircumscribed: Female Excision and Cultural Accommodation in the Medieval NearEast,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28 (1996), 19–38.14. Harun, Raså’il al-Jå˙iΩ, 96; Hutchins, Nine Essays, 141.15. Harun, Raså’il al-Jå˙iΩ, 105–10; Hutchins, Nine Essays, 146–8.16 Harun, Raså’il al-Jå˙iΩ, 106–7; Hutchins, Nine Essays, 146–7.