Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (18 page)
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Authors: Khaled El-Rouayheb
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It would indeed be difficult to understand the apparent popularity of love poetry if its portrayals of passionate love were completely unrelated to what its audience thought it was like to fall in love, or if its descriptions of the beloved were completely unrelated to its audience’s beauty-ideal or sense of what was a likely object of passionate love. Some of the authors of the period under study took it for granted that there was some overall connection between the themes and imagery of love poetry and the tastes, values, and assumptions of the people who composed or listened to it. For example, the Syrian belletrist Ahmad al-Barbi
r (d. 1817) claimed that the Arabs in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times were not inclined to pederasty, and gave as “evidence”
(dali
l)
for his claim the fact that they did not compose love poetry of boys.
98
The same point was made by the Egyptian scholar Marʿi
ibn Yu
suf al-Karmi
(d. 1624): “The eloquent among people in the first age did not appreciate boys, and their characters did not incline to loving them, but in our time, they have become infatuated with them to an inordinate degree, and love boys more than women, and they [i.e., boys] are now an existing source of temptation.”
99
He went on to cite some of the love poetry said of beardless and downy-cheeked youths, apparently in support of his warning that they are “among the greatest of temptations.” He concluded: “In sum, beardless boys are the snares of the devil, and the words of people concerning them, and what they have said in verse and prose is too much to mention.”
100
Both Barbir and Karmi
were well aware that individual poems could be literary exercises, and that one cannot infer from the fact that a poet composed a love poem that he actually had a love affair.
101
However, they apparently still felt it was legitimate to use the love poetry of a period as a source of information about aesthetic tastes and amorous inclinations within the milieu to which poets and their intended audiences belonged.
r (d. 1817) claimed that the Arabs in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times were not inclined to pederasty, and gave as “evidence”(dali
l)for his claim the fact that they did not compose love poetry of boys.
98
The same point was made by the Egyptian scholar Marʿi
ibn Yusuf al-Karmi(d. 1624): “The eloquent among people in the first age did not appreciate boys, and their characters did not incline to loving them, but in our time, they have become infatuated with them to an inordinate degree, and love boys more than women, and they [i.e., boys] are now an existing source of temptation.”99
He went on to cite some of the love poetry said of beardless and downy-cheeked youths, apparently in support of his warning that they are “among the greatest of temptations.” He concluded: “In sum, beardless boys are the snares of the devil, and the words of people concerning them, and what they have said in verse and prose is too much to mention.”
100
Both Barbir and Karmi
were well aware that individual poems could be literary exercises, and that one cannot infer from the fact that a poet composed a love poem that he actually had a love affair.101
However, they apparently still felt it was legitimate to use the love poetry of a period as a source of information about aesthetic tastes and amorous inclinations within the milieu to which poets and their intended audiences belonged.
In fact, the extreme skeptical assumption that poets never expressed their own experiences and emotions seems as unsubstantiated as the naive assumption that they always did. Several love poems are cited in the sources with explanatory comments or anecdotes that clearly indicate that they were believed to have been said at a concrete occasion and of a specific boy. The Egyptian scholar Ahmad al-Khafa
ji
was said to have composed a couplet after being criticized by two companions for stopping to admire a handsome youth in the streets of Damascus.
102
The Aleppine poet Mus
t
afa
ibn Bi
ri
was inspired to compose a poem by an incident that occurred when he was buying some tobacco from a handsome young shop assistant.
103
A couplet by the southern Iraqi poet Ibn Maʿtu
q al-H
uwayzi
(d. 1676) was said to have been composed at the behest of a friend when the friend’s beloved boy appeared to them in a white turban and a black robe.
104
Often, genuine amorous feeling was said to underlie the stylized poetic imagery. Ibra
hi
m al-Batru
ni
jiwas said to have composed a couplet after being criticized by two companions for stopping to admire a handsome youth in the streets of Damascus.102
The Aleppine poet Mus
tafaibn Biriwas inspired to compose a poem by an incident that occurred when he was buying some tobacco from a handsome young shop assistant.103
A couplet by the southern Iraqi poet Ibn Maʿtu
q al-Huwayzi(d. 1676) was said to have been composed at the behest of a friend when the friend’s beloved boy appeared to them in a white turban and a black robe.104
Often, genuine amorous feeling was said to underlie the stylized poetic imagery. Ibra
him al-BatruniOther books
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