Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800

Paper $30.00 ISBN: 9780226729893 Published April 2009

Cloth $52.00 ISBN: 9780226729886 Published November 2005

E-book $10.00 to $29.99 About E-books ISBN: 9780226729909 Published March 2009

Attitudes toward homosexuality in the pre-modern Arab-Islamic world are commonly depicted as schizophrenic—visible and tolerated on one hand, prohibited by Islam on the other. Khaled El-Rouayheb argues that this apparent paradox is based on the anachronistic assumption that homosexuality is a timeless, self-evident fact to which a particular culture reacts with some degree of tolerance or intolerance. Drawing on poetry, biographical literature, medicine, dream interpretation, and Islamic texts, he shows that the culture of the period lacked the concept of homosexuality.

Table of Contents

Contents
Review Quotes

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: Pederasts and Pathics
Chapter Two: Aesthetes
Chapter Three: Sodomites
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Review Quotes

David M. Halperin | David M. Halperin

“This is the best contribution to the history of homosexuality I have read in some time. For centuries, Arabic-Islamic cultures have been notorious for their occasional celebration and practice of male homosexuality. Western travelers have talked about it and, in some cases, Western novels and scholarship have portrayed or alluded to it. Yet, there has never been a reliable or systematic treatment of the topic—that is, until now. Working from an impressive range of primary sources that include poetic, theological, Koranic, historical, legal, and literary texts, Khaled El-Rouayheb, with this book, fills an important gap in our knowledge about the nature of attitudes toward male eroticism in the early modern Arab-Islamic world.”

Geert Jan van Gelder | Geert Jan van Gelder

“Khaled El-Rouayheb’s book is a very useful corrective to those views that have misinterpreted and misrepresented premodern Islamic attitudes toward homoeroticism, or that have ignored them altogether. In addition, it is a welcome contribution to the study of a period in the history of Arabic literature that is still very much under researched. Not for the prudish, it is a provocative, serious, and eminently readable study.”

Sabine Schmidtke | Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

"[The book] rectifies many . . . prejudices and misinterpretations in a masterly fashion. . . . [The author’s] careful distinction between the different categories of feelings, expressions, behaviour, terms and actors of same-sex love shows . . . that many of the evaluations of modern scholarship on Islamic societies and Arabic literature, and on the comparative history of homosexuality need to be revised."

Walter Andrews | Journal of Religion

"Meticulously researched, lucidly written, nuanced, and brilliantly conceived, [the book] forthrightly takes on complex issues surrounding the culture of same-sex eroticism that existed in the Arabic-speaking lands of the early modern Ottoman Empire. . . . Although the book will be obligatory reading for students of Ottoman and Arab literature, culture, sociology, intellectual history, the history of sex, and related fields, it most certainly belongs on the bookshelves of those with any interest in the history and theology of Islam or, more generally, in religious approaches to sexuality. . . . An important book by an excellent scholar."

Donald L. Boisvert | Gay & Lesbian Review

"A remarkably learned volume that provides an excellent introduction to a long-neglected area of study in the English-speaking world. . . . A trenchant, insightful, and even brilliant book."

Journal of the American Oriental Society

"El-Rouayheb discusses a rich and complex range of behaviors around the theme of male love, and how these are perceived and represented. He relies on a vast array of Arabic literary sources, such as chronicles, biographical dictionaries, adab, poetry, mystical treatises, and legal works. ... [He] addresses important questions about identity and social and cultural roles of Muslim men, refined members of the elite, in the pre-modern Middle East."

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Gay and Lesbian Studies

History: Middle Eastern History

Law and Legal Studies: Legal History

Middle Eastern Studies

Religion: Islam

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