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Introduction: Eros and sexuality in Islamic art:
Old issues and new perspectives
Francesca Leoni and Mika Natif
Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art presents seven case studies addressing the
topics of eroticism and sexuality in the visual arts of the medieval and early
modern Muslim world. As the irst systematic study on these subjects, this
volume ills a notable lacuna in the ield of Islamic art history and contributes
to the lively debates on the nature and function of erotic and sexual images
that have featured prominently in broader art-historical discussions in recent
decades.1 Conceived as a reaction to the dominant interpretative paradigms in
the ield of Islamic art history, which have been limited to readings of sensual
themes mostly as metaphors of mystical longing and spiritual pursuits, this
collection ofers new insights and methodological models that extend our
understanding of erotic and sexual subjects. Through rigorous historical and
cultural contextualization, the articles in this book establish a constructive
scholarly discussion on these long neglected themes. Furthermore, by bringing
to light unknown or litle known visual material, in addition to reconsidering
and reinterpreting well-known themes, the chapters demonstrate how arthistorical sources can complement the approaches taken in other disciplines.
The image that appears on the jacket of this book ofers an apt point of
departure to outline some of the issues that inspired the present collection of
chapters (Figure 1.1 and Plate 1). Located on the cover of a papier-mâché pen
box (qalamdan) produced in early eighteenth-century Iran, the composition
features a sequence of three amorous couples in an idyllic, verdant landscape.2
Although scenes of romance had already appeared in a variety of media by
the time this object was made, the physical intimacy of the protagonists of
this image and their body language communicate something more about
the nature of their relationship. Marked by a series of sensual gestures and
suggestive gazes, moving from lirtatious exchange to overt bodily interaction,
the couples present the more sensuous and physical facets of lovemaking by
rehearsing its key aspects: courtship, seduction, and, ultimately, sexual union.
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1.1 Pen box
(qalamdan), by
Ḥajjī Muḥammad,
Isfahan, 1124
AH/1712–13
CE, opaque
colors and gold
under varnish
on papiermâché, 36.5 ×
8.8 × 8.2 cm,
The Nasser D.
Khalili Collection
of Islamic Art,
London, LAQ361.
Photo courtesy
of the Nasser D.
Khalili Collection
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This image, a blend of Persianate and Europeanizing elements that
characterize part of the visual production of later Safavid Iran,3 exhibits an
unmistakable erotic charge. Yet, in the earliest study featuring the pen box,
Chahryar Adle suggested to look beyond the composition’s literal meaning
and to concentrate instead on its metaphorical value.4 Furthermore, he
contended that the image discloses its symbolic complexity only if looked at in
the proper way, that is, from right to left, “as a Persian would do,” grounding
his analysis with the claim that in a context where writing follows a right-toleft orientation, images are constructed and read in a similar way.5 The act
of sexual union, explicitly shown by the couple on the far right of the pen
box’s cover (Figure 1.2 and Plate 2a), would therefore only be the irst stage
of a process leading to the ultimate mystical union, which is atained by the
couple on the far left (Figure 1.3 and Plate 2b). The later’s more modest and
controlled behavior marks the pinnacle of an authentic amorous experience—
a spiritual one—whose triumph over carnal desire, according to Adle, is the
intended message of the sequence.6 Although the author acknowledges that
erotic images designed for sexual satisfaction have been recorded in historical
sources,7 he chooses to ignore the relevance of such documentation.8 That this
pen box was made at the peak of the policy of sexual regulation and control
promoted by the last Safavid ruler, Shāh Ḥusayn (r. 1694–1722), which may
have had an impact on the production of sexually explicit images, remains
equally overlooked.9
Adle’s intriguing but problematic interpretation was highly inluential
in several subsequent studies of this and similar images.10 Thus, the lavish
volume showcasing the splendid lacquers in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection
of Islamic Art, to which the pen box belongs, dedicates an entire section to the
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mystical reading of more or less overt sensual images by using this object as
its most illustrative example. Paraphrasing Adle’s conclusions, the authors
of the Khalili volume state that “these scenes are not to be taken simply as
depictions of sexual dalliance … for … they depict the defeat of carnality by
the love that leads to mystic union.”11 They also elaborate on Adle’s reference
to Persian poetry and the sexual allusions contained in many mystical tales
and poems to further demonstrate a recurrent correlation between erotic
motifs and spiritual experiences in the Islamic cultural tradition.12 Likewise,
Eleanor Sims’s Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources includes the same
qalamdan in a section dedicated to images of the “Lover and the Beloved,”
entitling the composition on the box “the triumph of spiritual love.”13 Sims
deines the subject as “one of the most pervasive themes of Iranian cultures
in the Islamic period: that human lovers may symbolize the atainment of
mystical union with God,” a statement that once again disregards the image’s
earthy implications.14
The example of the lacquer pen box is indicative of the preferred approach
toward sensual themes found in the meager body of studies devoted to
eroticism and sexuality in the ield of Islamic art history until recent years.15
A certain uneasiness to accept the presence of erotic motifs in a tradition with
an ambivalent atitude toward igurative art combined with a general hesitancy,
or even prudishness, to speak about sexual maters resulted in the persistent
adoption of the rhetoric of carnal experiences as mere metaphors for spiritual
ones.16 This approach in art historical writing parallels the interpretative
paradigms employed in several studies of literature and mystical poetry, which
also often cast the highly sensual language of spiritual longing in metaphorical
terms.17 Yet, as plausible as it may be to see the human experience of love as
the relection of a higher amorous quest leading to God in the Islamic cultural
context,18 this interpretative line disappoints those scholars interested in
exploring the earthly implications of desire. A few art historians, especially in
the last decade or so,19 have laid out the bases for an exploration of “Islamic
erotica” beyond the spiritual matrix.20 By building on the method of historical
contextual analysis employed in these pioneering studies, our volume ofers
further alternative understandings of images with erotic and sexual content
by shedding light on their diverse socio-cultural milieus, the motivations
that determined their production, and the wide range of responses generated
by their circulation. Finally, by covering diferent geographic areas and a
broad chronological span, this book contributes with the most wide-ranging
perspective on eroticism and sexuality in Islamic art to this day.
The diverse chapters in this collection address various forms of desire in
the Muslim world based on real or presumed sexual practices, considering
them as political, social, or spiritual expressions of their respective cultural
environments. The subjects include: male and female igures as sexualized
objects; the spiritual dimensions of eroticism; licit versus illicit sexual
practices; and the exotic and erotic “others” as a source of sensual delight.
Signiicantly, atraction to members of the opposite sex among igures from
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diverse backgrounds—young and old lovers; princes and commoners; and
locals and foreigners—is counterbalanced, if not exceeded, by instances of
same-sex desire generally expressed by the love of mature men for young
boys. Rather than deining a speciic, binary sexual orientation, some of these
practices beter correspond to a variety of sexual and gendered roles that can be
linked to particular kinds of homosociality, a phenomenon especially evident in
traditional Islamic societies where strict gender segregation was often the rule.
Several chapters in this book emphasize various forms of social interaction
among members of the same sex that occurred in largely public contexts—
such as tea houses and gatherings around sports and games—or in more
restricted setings—including religious gatherings—which encouraged
physical intimacy and emotional atachment. One of such circumstances
sets the stage for Fahmida Suleman’s interpretation of the cockight theme
depicted on a luster bowl (Figure 2.1 and Plate 3). According to Suleman,
cockights were an all-male form of entertainment in the Fatimid period,
while the image of the cockerel was traditionally associated with male virility
and sexuality, including pederasty. In addition to reiterating the homosocial
dimension of the game, the composition on the bowl stresses the subject’s
sexual undertone by choosing to place the roosters between the protagonists’
legs and suspending the moment before the release of the animals. The
protagonists of this scene also show a clear age diference—one is a beardless
youth and the other is a mature man—a detail that underscores their diferent
social statuses and roles.21
Such age distinctions may also allude to the custom of men choosing
younger lovers, a practice more frequently referenced in eighteenth-century
Otoman and nineteenth-century Qajar paintings. The chapters in this volume
by Tülay Artan and İrvin Schick and by Christiane Gruber focus on images
displaying explicit sexual intercourse between men (sometimes with more
than one partner) in a variety of locations and setings (Figures 7.3, 7.9, 8.2–8.3
and Plate 8). As in Suleman’s case, most of these later examples also conform
to age-dependent homosexual practices, in which the penetrated is generally
an adolescent boy. Upon becoming a man—a change qualiied by the
presence of facial hair—a male individual was expected to take the active role
in any sexual act, and thus be the penetrator, in order to conform to the social
behavior expected from a young adult. Hence, age diference and the related
social roles are clearly signaled in visual representations by adding mustaches
and/or beards to the igures of men acting in the “dominant” positions.
Finally, diferent forms of homosociality also played a role in various
relations between masters (pīr) and students (murīd) in the context of spiritual
guidance, mentorship, and allegiance. In her article on an illustration to the
Gulistān (Rose Garden) of Saʿdī from Mughal India, Mika Natif explains the
erotic subtleties of a painting showing two men in a garden, arguing that
the image is a homoerotic scene of male devotion and desire for one another
(Figure 3.1 and Plate 4). Natif maintains that the amorous relationship between
the two men is in fact based on the master–student model, as the older man
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is shown as a learned, authoritative igure while the younger man is depicted
in a submissive atitude.22 Like Suleman, she further links these concepts to
expressions of homosociality that are evident in Greek classical texts, well
known in the Muslim world.
Related to the later theme and also explored in this volume is the link
between sexuality and spiritual training, in which sexual passions and acts
assist the practitioner in experiencing the divine. Connected to this was the
idea voiced by several Muslim thinkers who argued that seeing the beauty of
a youth is almost tantamount to seeing the beauty of the divine.23 This concept
led to the development of the practice of gazing at (usually) young boys as a
spiritual exercise focused on glorifying God’s beauty, a topic touched upon
by the already-mentioned chapters of Suleman, Natif, and Gruber.24 In several
examples of mystical prose and poetry, as well as in certain religious practices
of contemplation and meditative exercises, carnal passion is regarded as a
manifestation of divine love.25 This kind of passionate spiritual relationship
can be seen in the works of several Sui writers, who argue that in order to
be able to atain the high form of spiritual love, one ought to exercise worldly
love (majāzī) as a rehearsal for the ʿishq or ḥaqīqī, real divine love or truth.26
Moreover, the process of falling in love is further linked to the state of openness
of the heart and the soul, which leads to the full acceptance of divine love.27
Women were also used as symbols of divine passion and spiritual
atainment. In her chapter, Cynthia Robinson argues that the painting of “the
Lady” in the Alhambra’s so-called “Hall of Justice” represents the igure of
the ultimate mystical Beloved (Figures 4.1–4.2). Viewed as a conlation of
several virtuous women (Isolde, Flores, Laylā, and Fāṭima) that appear in
contemporary literary and mystical texts, Robinson maintains that “the Lady”
denotes divine knowledge through a commitment to an eternal, unatainable
love. In this case, the depiction of the female body is used to express religious
feeling and to trigger physical desire that appears instrumental to the
fulillment of spiritual goals. By ofering alternative interpretations to strictly
metaphorical readings for sensual imagery, some of the authors in this volume
thus demonstrate that the strong erotic or sexualized elements in the pictures
do not negate mystical and religious sentiments. The sacred and the profane
are not always mutually exclusive, and they can in fact be often reconciled
with one another to provide a more complex understanding of the images and
cultural experiences under consideration.
The control over what was considered to be sexually licit as opposed to
illicit or illegal practices, such as prostitution (female and male), pederasty,
and transvestitism, is also tackled by several of our contributors.28 The range
of visual representations of sexual practices considered in this volume reveal
varying atitudes toward sexual behaviors, with shifts in tolerance at diferent
times. Among various subjects, Tülay Artan and İrvin Schick also explore the
enticing paintings of prostitutes in the city of Bursa produced by one of the
leading court artists (Levnî) in eighteenth-century Istanbul, noting how the
subject igured in Otoman albums that were ultimately destined for the royal
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library and probably for the amusement of those who oicially rebuked these
outcasts. On the other hand, Christiane Gruber considers cross-dressing and
gender ambiguity in relation to late Qajar paintings (Figure 8.7), relecting
on the implications of transgendered practices and homosexual desire at
a time of transformation and progressive heteronormalization of Iranian
sexual behaviors. Such inquiries unfold multiple and often contradictory
beliefs about sexual activity and eroticism that challenge any assumption of a
monolithic Islamic atitude towards eroticism and sex.
Several chapters in this volume also consider a third object of desire
besides (Muslim) men and women: the foreign other. After the Turk (both
male and female), who had captured the amorous longings of Muslims
throughout the medieval period, a new exotic type, the farangī—a term
applied indiscriminately to any European—inspired the imagination of both
poets and artists in the early modern period. Westerners made a forceful
entrance in Islamic discourses of sexuality in the centuries following the
global expansion of trade, either as passive objects of frustrated desires, as
suggested by Amy Landau in her chapter, or as embodiments of indecent
sexual behaviors that facilitated statements about proper moral conduct,
as proposed by Sussan Babaie. The presence of Europeans in Iran peaked
in the course of the seventeenth century, and, in addition to their visual
production, their habits—especially their sexual mores—became the object
of scrutiny, atraction, and commentary, stirring in turn debates on internal
issues such as women’s decorum, same-sex practices including pederasty,
and prostitution. The images produced in Iran in this phase—depicting a
range of subjects including European female nudes (Figure 5.4), scenes of
amorous dalliances (Figure 5.9), and representations that would have been
seen locally as expressions of Western sexual libertinism (Figures 6.2–6.4 and
Plate 7)—relect local transformations of sexual atitudes that not only sought
alternative or escapist sites of desire, but ultimately interrogated internal
notions of appropriate and inappropriate sexual conduct.
One could question the extent to which the orthodox shift observed in late
seventeenth-century Iran described by Landau and the anti-Christian polemic
that emerged around the same time examined by Babaie were not only
intended to regulate a range of problematic sexual behaviors and practices, but
also to prevent European sexual mores—atractive enough to be substantially
incorporated in seventeenth-century Isfahani art—from altering local
customs. What is certain is that the reception, reproduction, and consumption
of eroticized images of Westerners were catalysts for changes that afected
Iranian sexual customs at a time of new and intense cultural confrontations.
This appears to have continued in later times too, when Europeans turned
from objects of desire into active consumers of clichéd Oriental images, as
demonstrated by Gruber in her examination of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Qajar erotica. However “constructed” these materials may be, they
underscore questions that were at the core of the complicated debates on
sexual orientation that took place in Iran at the threshold of modernity,
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and which involved the farangīs in a double manner, as curious observers
of local sexual phenomena and as providers of alternative manners that
proclaimed heterosexual exchanges as the “modern” way.
Literature and art often follow parallel courses relecting similar cultural
concerns and adopting comparable symbolic idioms and approaches. Several
of the authors in this volume consider the two in tandem in order to deepen
the general understanding of the issues that inform the images. The stories
from the Khamsa of Niẓāmī are perceptively discussed by Amy Landau and
Cynthia Robinson; Mika Natif explores the multiple narrative dimensions of
the Gulistān of Saʿdī; Fahmida Suleman links the images she analyzes with
the text of Ibn Dāniyāl’s shadow plays and theatrical performance; and Tülay
Artan and İrvin Schick anchor their understanding of a vast array of erotic
images to an equally large textual tradition gravitating around Otoman
authors such as Nev’i-zâde Atâyî and Hasan b. Abdürrahîm. The challenging
interpretations and intriguing relations between visual and textual analysis
of afection, lust, and carnal passion that are discussed in this book yield an
in-depth understanding of the sophisticated artistic language as well as of
Arabic and Persian literary writing and its audience.29
One key issue that emerges from the chapters in this volume is the
limitation posed by the use of contemporary Western terminology to denote
past and non-Western gender notions and sexual practices.30 Today’s readers
probably think about and approach concepts of same-sex relations, pederasty,
or transvestism diferently from pre-modern societies, where these ideas
were much more luidly understood and did not necessarily carry all of
the negative connotations acquired through time and in relation to speciic
cultural milieus. A case in point is the recurrence of gender ambiguity in
medieval Persian poetry, where the beloved is rarely identiied as a male or
a female, a fact that does not seem to have limited the understanding and
appreciation of literature over time.31 The use of the term “homosexuality”32
within the context of the pre-modern Muslim sphere has also generated a
somewhat heated discussion among scholars, who claim that same-sex
relationships took forms and possessed implications that diverge from current
practice.33 Likewise, the word “heterosexual” evokes a binary atitude that
does not adequately relect the sexual inclinations observed in past traditions.
Oftentimes, men who enjoyed physical relations with women did not exclude
adolescent boys from their sexual life. As they acknowledge these admitedly
limited terms, the authors in this volume have decided to adopt them, not
only to articulate the discussion of Islamic sexualities, but also to relate these
practices to similar experiences in other traditions.34 Modern terminology is
thus used for the sake of convenience and with the purpose of facilitating
communication with a twenty-irst-century reader.
Finally, the case studies presented in this book highlight two rather
divergent approaches to dealing with erotic and sexual themes. On the one
hand, there is the more subtle and elusive atitude that utilizes an indirect,
often metaphoric, visual language. This approach is manifested, for example,
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in the topos of the cockight as a symbol of homoerotic practices (Suleman);
in the theme of the blooming garden as a metaphor for the thriving desire of
a man for an older one (Natif); and in the allegorized igure of a Lady as a
relection of a virtuous woman in control of sensual temptations (Robinson).
On the other hand, we are faced with more explicit visual examples, going
from scantily-clothed bodies and lirtatious expressions of individuals and
amorous couples (Landau), to images with orgiastic undertones (Babaie) that
culminate in the pornographic mode of both sex manuals (Artan-Schick) and
stand-alone pictures (Gruber).
At the same time, gradations in the expression of physical desire can be
discerned in each of these cases. Hence we see the incorporation of more
revealing or evocative details and puns—the “cock” placed between the legs
of the cock-ighter (Suleman) and the “release” of lower buds from a man’s
groin (Natif)—as the only suggestive elements in otherwise subdued images,
as well as more elusive elements—fruits and botles serving as emblems of
fecundity (Landau)35—in otherwise overt compositions. From subtle to more
graphic, the chapters relect shifting approaches to the depiction of erotic and
sexual themes atested in the Islamic visual tradition. Using these shifts as
an organizing principle rather than following conventional categorizations
appeared to us as the ideal way to frame the rather diverse contributions
in this volume. Arranging the chapters according to the visual approaches
to the erotic and the sexual rather than the geographical or chronological
distributions of erotic themes also serves to maintain a irm focus on pictorial
concerns and to emphasize the extent to which the approach was instrumental
in the communication of the diferent facets of the erotic experience.
The ultimate goal of this book is to encourage the consideration and
exploration of sexual themes in the context of the Islamic visual tradition
and ofer new avenues of art-historical inquiry. Inspired by the numerous
academic studies on eroticism and sexuality produced in other ields of the
humanities, this anthology demonstrates the need for historians of Islamic
art to pick up the gauntlet and expand the existing discourses on eroticism
and sexuality in relation to the visual arts. Scholarship on Islamic erotic
visual material remains profoundly underdeveloped, and this lack stands in
stark contrast to the rich array of images representing subjects such as love
relationships, carnal desire, and sexual intercourse that are available in this
tradition and that still await proper examination.
Notes
1. Among the most thought-provoking studies that have appeared in the last 20
years are: John R. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman
Art: 100 B.C.–250 A.D. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); Bete
Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999); Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating World:
Erotic Images in Japan, 1700–1820 (London: Reaktion Books, 1999); Ferdinand
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M. Bertholet and Jacques Pimpaneau, Gardens of Pleasure: Eroticism and Art in China
(Munich and London: Prestel, 2003); Charles Harrison, PaintingtheDiference:
Sex and Spectator in Modern Art (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2005); Fae
Brauer and Anthea Callen, eds, Art, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2008); Uta Grünberg, Potestas Amoris: Erotisch-mythologische
Dekorationen um 1600 im Rom (Petersburg: Imhof, 2009); Diane Wolfthal, In and Out
of the Marital Bed: Seeing Sex in Renaissance Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2010); and Allison Levy, ed., Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice,
Performance, Perversion, Punishment (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010).
2. The sides of the pen box are decorated with busts of Iranian and European
women located in landscapes similar to the one on the cover. In contrast with
the modest atire of the Iranian ladies, the foreign women wear dresses with
low décolletage that show their breasts and nipples. Diferently, the botom and
interior of the box are decorated with loral motifs and birds. For a complete
reproduction of the pen box, see Nasser D. Khalili, Basil W. Robinson, and Tim
Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic Lands, 2 vols (London and New York, NY: Nour
Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press,
1996), 1:54–5.
3. The circulation of printed material facilitated the difusion of iconographic
motifs drawn from the Western tradition. Speciic examples and relevant
bibliographic references are provided in Sussan Babaie and Amy Landau’s
chapters in this volume.
4. “Il est extrêmement diicile de voir dans cete peinture l’illustration de scènes
purement sexuelles … ” (Chahryar Adle, Écrituredel’union:reletsdutemps
destroubles.Oeuvrepicturale[1083–1124/1673–1712]deḤâjiMoḥammad [Paris:
Librairie de Nobele, 1980], 14).
5. The right-to-left reading of images on objects has proved valid especially when
inscriptions are also part of the decorative program or when, more rarely, a
whole narrative is told in a succession of vignetes. The most notable instances
of these practices are found in the elaborate ivory caskets produced in medieval
Spain between the tenth and eleventh centuries (Francisco Prado-Vilar, “Circular
Visions of Fertility and Punishment: Caliphal Ivory Caskets from al-Andalus,”
Muqarnas 14 [1997]: 19–41), and in a thirteenth-century ceramic beaker decorated
with scenes telling the story of Bīzhan and Manīza, drawn from the Persian epic
of the Shahnama (Marianna S. Simpson, “The Narrative Structure of a Medieval
Iranian Beaker,” Ars Orientalis 12 [1981]: 15–24). In objects such as the present
pen box, in which a text that could direct the viewer’s appreciation of the
decoration is absent, the claim that the program should be read from right to left
remains unfounded.
6. Adle, Écriture de l’union, 14. The author also claims that the disinterested and
melancholic expressions of the protagonists engaged in the more sensual
activities were chosen to express the secondary importance of carnality in the
context of the amorous experience.
7. This includes the work of the nineteenth-century historian Rustam al-Ḥukamāʾ,
Rustamal-tavārīkh, ed. Muḥammad Mushīrī (Tehran: Chap-i Taban, 1352/1973).
8. Adle, Écriture de l’union, 14.
9. A fresh look at the role of erotic imageries at this historical moment is ofered by
Amy Landau’s chapter in this collection.
10. Sussan Babaie’s article “Visual Vestiges of Travel: Persian Windows on
European Weaknesses” (ThePenandtheBrush:RelectionsonForeignVisitorsand
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Their Hosts in Safavid Iran, special issue, Journal of Early Modern History 13 [2009]:
105–36, esp. 113) is to our knowledge the only exception that takes issue with
Adle’s argument.
11. Khalili, Robinson, and Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic Lands, 1:54–5.
12. For a discussion of the metaphoric quality of Persian mystical poetry and the
use of the language of profane love to describe the love of God, see Annemarie
Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1982), esp. chaps 2 and 3.
13. Eleanor Sims, Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 247, cat. no. 163. The problems raised by this
classiication have also been addressed by Babaie, “Visual Vestiges of Travel,”
110.
14. Sims, Peerless Images, 247, cat. no. 163. The notion that amorous couples and
sexual themes were only understood as “Sui metaphors” is further reiterated
in relation to other paintings examined in Sims’ book (see especially cat. nos.
160 and 162), closing of to the possibility that the theme could be read (and
intended) in more earthly terms.
15. The only book-length studies devoted to these subjects were published by
Robert Surieu (Sarv-é Naz: An Essay on Love and Representation of Erotic Themes in
Ancient Iran [Geneva: Nagel Publishers, 1967]) and Gabriele Mandel (Oriental
Erotica, trans. Evelyn Rossiter [Ware, Hertfordshire: Omega Books, 1983]) almost
three decades ago. However, in both cases the authors devote most of their
atention to the examination of literary and philosophical discussions of love
and love-making, failing to consider any of the images they present in relation to
the relevant textual traditions or to the speciic social and cultural circumstances
in which they were produced.
16. Leslie Peirce has also remarked upon the self-censorship that appears to have
shaped scholarly discussions on Islamic sexuality until recently (“Writing
Histories of Sexualities in the Middle East,” The American Historical Review 114,
5 [December 2009]: 1325–39, esp. 1326–7).
17. See note 11. A prudish or dismissive atitude toward the sexual contents of the
poetic production of major mystical authors such as Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Saʿdī,
and Ḥāiẓ was often difused by their earliest commentators and translators,
which frequently echoed the concern expressed by medieval commentators.
Emblematic of this trend is Reynold Nicholson’s translation of Rūmī’s sexual
references in the Latin version of the Masnavī while they were omited in the
English one (Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, TheMathnawīofJalālu’ddīnRūmī, ed. and trans.
Reynold A. Nicholson, 8 vols [London: Luzac, 1925–1940]). Interpretations of
sexual imagery in mystical terms are also provided by, among others, William
Chitick, TheSuiPathofLove:TheSpiritualTeachingsofRumi(Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1983), esp. 163–70, and 286–310; and Paul
Sprachman, Suppressed Persian: An Anthology of Forbidden Literature (Costa Mesa,
CA: Mazda Publishers, 1995), 26–7. For alternative views on the role of eroticism
in Sui poetry, see Michael Glünz and J. Christoph Bürgel, Intoxication, Earthly
andHeavenly:SevenStudiesonthePoetHaizofShiraz (Bern and New York, NY:
P. Lang, 1991); Tourage Mahdi, Rumi and the Hermeneutics of Eroticism (Leiden:
Brill, 2007); and Shahzad Bashir, SuiBodies:ReligionandSocietyinMedievalIslam
(New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2011).
18. See, in this regard, the important study by Anthony Welch, “Worldly and
Otherworldly Love in Safavi Painting,” in Persian Painting from the Mongols to the
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Qajars, ed. Robert Hillenbrand (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 301–18, in which the
author elaborates on the traditional notion of love imbued with Sui associations.
By discussing intriguing parallels between amorous practices of both mystics
and mundane lovers, Welch sheds light on the implications and signiicance of
behaviors and atitudes that characterize depictions of youths in seventeenthcentury Safavid painting.
19. Anticipating this trend, Massumeh Farhad’s dissertation closely analyzed a
series of depictions of female nudes (“Safavid Single-Page Painting, 1629–1666”
[Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1987], 90–101, cat. nos. 4–5, 8; and 133–7, cat.
nos. 35–7). The author connected them to an enhanced interest in feminine
beauty and sensuality and to a growing taste and demand for erotically elusive
subjects in seventeenth-century Iran. The topic had received some atention
several years earlier in an article by Nimet Allam Hamdy (“The Development
of Nude Female Drawings in Persian Islamic Painting,” in Akten des VII.
Internationalen Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und Archäologie, Munchen, 7.–10.
September 1976 [Berlin: D. Reimer, 1979], 430–38), without being explored in any
systematic way.
20. See, in particular, Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Reading Gender through Qajar
Painting,” in RoyalPersianPaintings:TheQajarEpoch,1785–1925, eds Layla Diba
with Maryam Ekhtiar (London: I.B. Tauris in association with Brooklyn Museum
of Art, 1998), 76–89; and Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men
without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2005). Especially signiicant in Najmabadi’s work
is the extensive use of visual sources along with other historical material to add
meaning to the complex process of heteronormalization of Iranian sexual mores
at the eve of modernity. For a recent contribution, see also Babaie’s “Visual
Vestiges of Travel,” in which the author situates erotically-charged depictions
of Europeans in the context of an anti-Christian polemic in Iran that also
considered the dangers of celibacy, providing a cultural and social rationale for
a proper explanation of the sexual allusions included in them. By focusing on
works on paper, “Visual Vestiges of Travel” complements the chapter on public
murals with erotic themes writen by the same author for the present volume.
21. Amorous relations between a mature man and an adolescent were common at
the time and were not considered to be diferent from men being atracted to
women, as Everet Rowson observed (Everet K. Rowson, “Two Homoerotic
Narratives from Mamlūk Literature: al-Ṣafadī’s Lawʿatal-shākī and Ibn Dāniyāl’s
al-Mutayyam,” in Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, eds Jerry W. Wright
and Everet K. Rowson [New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997], 159).
22. These ideas are widely discussed in the numerous publications dealing with
homoeroticism in classical, medieval, and early modern Muslim texts. See, among
others, Hellmut Riter, John O’Kane, and Bernd Radtke, The Ocean of the Soul: Man,
theWorldandGodintheStoriesofFarīdal-DīnʿAṭṭār (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill,
2003), 361–81; Wright and Rowson, Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature;
Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, eds, Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History,
and Literature (New York, NY and London: New York University Press, 1997); and
Khaled el-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab Islamic World, 1500–1800
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
23. See, for example, Aḥmad Ghazālī and Fakhr al-Dīnal-ʿIrāqī, as discussed
by Jim Wafer, “Vision and Passion: The Symbolism of Male Love in Islamic
Mystical Literature,” in Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities, 107–31.
For a discussion on the link between Platonism and divine beauty in Islamic
mysticism, see Annemarie Schimmel, “‘I Take of the Dress of the Body’: Eros in
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Sui Literature and Life,” in Religion and the Body, ed. Sara Coakley (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 262–88.
24. Gazing at or contemplating beautiful boys (in Persian naẓ ār-bāzī or shāhid-bāzī)
was paralleled with experiencing divine beauty. These handsome boys were
often referred to as “idols” because of their striking beauty. See Riter, Ocean of
the Soul, 303, 457–8, 500; Wafer, “Vision and Passion,” 107–8.
25. Several authors demonstrated how mystical poetry and narratives use strong
erotic elements, and more so, how sexuality and desire was an intentional device
of expressing religious feelings and spiritual yearning. See Schimmel, “I Take of
the Dress”; Riter, Ocean of the Soul, 382–592; Mahdi, Rumi and the Hermeneutics of
Eroticism; Kaoru Aoyagi, “Transition of Views on Sexuality in Suism: Al-Makkī,
al-Ghazālī, and Ibn al-ʿArabī,” Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies
22, 1 (2006): 1–20.
26. These ideas were expressed by Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Zanjī al-Bukhārī
circa 1300 in the Nuzhatal-῾Ashiqīn (Delight of Lovers). See Richard Etinghausen,
Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1972), 70; and Riter, Ocean of the Soul, 451. Also, for a more
recent discussion of the physical and spiritual dimensions of Sui love, see
Süleyman Derin, “Earthly and Spiritual Love in Suism: Ibn ʿArabi and the
Poetry of Rumi,” in Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, ed. Susan Scollay
(South Varra, Vic.: Macmillan Education; Oxford: Oxbow, 2012), 55–67.
27. The anonymous author of the entry on homosexuality in Persian literature in
the Encyclopaedia Iranica further explains: “And it is said that when God … wants
to honor a worshiper with the robe of true love and put the real crown of love
on his head, He will make him fall in earthly love so that he would learn the
ways of being a lover … and passes from the raw stage of desiring atention
to the ripeness of (spiritual) supplication” (quoted from Encyclopaedia Iranica,
s.v. “Homosexuality. iii. In Persian Literature” [anonymous author]. Accessed
January 6, 2011, htp://iranica.com/articles/homosexuality-iii).
28. This issue has also been the subject of several studies in the ield of Islamic
literature. See, in particular, Rowson, “Two Homoerotic Narratives”; Everet K.
Rowson, “Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism
at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad,” in GenderandDiferenceinthe
Middle Ages, eds Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 45–72; Willem Floor, A Social History of
Sexual Relations in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2008), esp. 171–363;
Rudi Mathee, “Prostitutes, Courtesans, and Dancing Girls: Women Entertainers
in Safavid Iran,” in Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor
of Nikki R. Keddie, eds Rudi Mathee and Beth Baron (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda
Publishers, 2000), 121–50; Paula Sanders, “Gendering the Ungendered Body:
Hermaphrodites in Medieval Islamic Law,” in Women in Middle Eastern History:
Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, eds Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 74–95; and Walter Andrews and
Mehmet Kalpakli, The Age of the Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern
OtomanandEuropeanCultureandSociety (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2005), 270–303.
29. The sophisticated expressions of love and desire as manifested in some of the
best known works of medieval Arabic and Persian high literature were brought
to light by scholars such as Johann Christoph Bürgel, “Love, Lust, and Longing:
Eroticism in Early Islam as Relected in Literary Sources,” in Society and the
Sexes in Medieval Islam, ed. Afaf Luti Sayyid-Marsot (Malibu, CA: Undena
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Publications, 1979), 81–117; Johann Christoph Bürgel, “Theories about Love:
How Love Manifests in Islamic Culture,” Art and Thought. Fikrun wa Fann 86
(2007): 14–23; Ehsan Yarshater, “Love-related Conventions in Sa’di’s Ghazals,” in
StudiesinHonorofClifordEdmundBosworth, Vol. 2: The Sultan’s Turret: Studies in
Persian and Turkish Culture, ed. Carole Hillenbrand (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 420–38;
Julie Meisami, “The Body as a Garden: Nature and Sexuality in Persian Poetry,”
Edebiyat 6 (1995): 245–74; Minoo Southgate, “Men, Women, and Boys: Love and
Sex in the Works of Sa‘di,” Iranian Studies 17, 4 (1984): 413–52; and Encyclopedia
Iranica, s.v. “Homosexuality. iii. In Persian Literature” (anonymous author).
Accessed January 6, 2011, htp://iranica.com/articles/homosexuality.
30. For a recent discussion on the use of the term “Islamic” and its cognate
“Islamicate,” see Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi, eds, Islamicate
Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire (Cambridge, MA:
Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, distributed by
Harvard University Press, 2008), esp. xii–xiii. Leslie Peirce equally questions the
accuracy of the label “Middle East” in the context of history of sexuality in her
article “Writing Histories,” esp. 1325–6.
31. A blurred distinction between men and women is still visible in the early Qajar
pictorial production. See Diba with Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings, 156, 195.
32. On the invention of homosexuality in the nineteenth century and the modern
discourse, the primary reference remains Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité,
3 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1976).
33. On the diiculties regarding the application of these various terms to Muslim
practices, see Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities, 3–7; el-Rouayheb,
Before Homosexuality in the Arab Islamic World, 5–6; Scot A. Kugle, Suisand
Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 184 and 305n4; Joseph A. Massad,
Desiring Arabs (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. chap. 3; and
Babayan and Najmabadi, Islamicate Sexualities, ix–xiv.
34. A similar point is also made by Babayan and Najmabadi, Islamicate Sexualities,
xi–xiii.
35. A similar suggestion was made by Gabriele Berrer Wallbrecht in her article
“Antimontopf, Nadel, und Langhalslasche als erotische Symbole im Islam”
(Pantheon 37 [1979]: 275–82), in which she interpreted the ubiquitous presence of
certain vessels in Persian and Indian paintings as references to male and female
sexual organs.
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