Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (39 page)
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Authors: Khaled El-Rouayheb
BOOK: Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800
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a
n subtly resorted to a similar assumption in the following lines:
n subtly resorted to a similar assumption in the following lines:He reproves ardent infatuation who does not see in ardent infatuation and chastity anything but foolishness.There is nothing reproachable in love, except the delicacy of character and the resulting sensibility.And he who has no share in that is not to be blamed for neglecting it.
142
Falling in love was thus simultaneously a pathological affliction and a testimony to the possession of a refined and sensitive character. The resulting ambivalence is brought out in the treatise of Ant
a
ki
, who initially cited reasons for praising and encouraging passionate love and then gave an exposition of the tragic, sometimes lethal, consequences of being smitten.
143
aki, who initially cited reasons for praising and encouraging passionate love and then gave an exposition of the tragic, sometimes lethal, consequences of being smitten.143
The obscurity concerning passionate love extends to the nature of its relationship to sexual desire. On the one hand, it seems clear that the two are related; on the other, it seems equally commonsensical to insist that they are not identical. Each of these assertions served as a departure point for two opposing evaluations of love. The first could be described as cynical and deflationary, the other as idealizing and sentimental. The coexistence of these two evaluations is clearly not peculiar to the Arab East in the early Ottoman period. It is a recurrent theme in Irving Singer’s historical and interpretive study of ideas of love in Western history from classical to modern times, where the positions are termed “realist” and “idealist,” respectively.
144
Essentially the same duality has been identified by Lois A. Giffen in her survey of the premodern Arabic literature on profane love.
145
144
Essentially the same duality has been identified by Lois A. Giffen in her survey of the premodern Arabic literature on profane love.
145
The cynical or “realist” view of passionate love tended to emphasize its supposedly hidden sexual component. Underneath the effuse and sentimental cloak, the lover’s feelings were portrayed as basically identical with lust. The terms
ʿishq
(love),
ʿa
shiq
(lover), and
maʿshu
q
(beloved) could, in appropriate contexts, have such sexual connotations. For example, the author of
Hazz al-quh
u
f
used the word
ʿishq
to denote the far-from-Platonic attraction of the heretical dervishes toward the boys whom they succeeded in seducing by promising to grant them supernatural powers.
146
The “realist” perspective could be utilized by poets who on other occasions contributed to the idealization of refined, unconsummated love. The resulting poetry tends to have a marked deflationary character, and clearly parodies the established discourse of chaste and tragic love. Ant
a
ki
cited a poet as saying:
ʿishq
(love),
ʿa
shiq(lover), and
maʿshu
q(beloved) could, in appropriate contexts, have such sexual connotations. For example, the author of
Hazz al-quh
ufused the word
ʿishq
to denote the far-from-Platonic attraction of the heretical dervishes toward the boys whom they succeeded in seducing by promising to grant them supernatural powers.
146
The “realist” perspective could be utilized by poets who on other occasions contributed to the idealization of refined, unconsummated love. The resulting poetry tends to have a marked deflationary character, and clearly parodies the established discourse of chaste and tragic love. Ant
akicited a poet as saying:They say to me, “By God, what would you do if your beloved visited you?” I said, “Fuck him.”
147
In a similar vein, Ahmad al-Khafa
ji
composed the following couplet:
jicomposed the following couplet:Since he whom I fancy visited me, he offered me drink from a mouth [as intoxicating as] wine.And his buttocks said to me from behind him: “Today wine and tomorrow action.”
148
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