Download PDF | Gary Leiser - Prostitution in the Eastern Mediterranean World_ The Economics of Sex in the Late Antique and Medieval Middle East-I.B. Tauris (2017).
354 Pages
GARY LEISER is the author of many scholarly articles and several books on medieval Islamic topics. These include Questions and Answers for Physicians: A Medieval Arabic Study Manual (2004), the translation of M. F. K6priilii’s iconic Early Mystics in Turkish Literature (with Robert Dankoff, 2006), and Turkish Language, Literature, and History: Travelers’ Tales, Sultans, and Scholars since the Eighth Century (edited with Bill Hickman, 2015). He holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from the University of Pennsylvania.
“Gary Leiser's book is based on an exhaustive examination and interrogation of primary texts and secondary studies. His lively coverage of prostitution and sex in the Near East is both broad and probing. He ranges across a very long period that encompassed several profound political shifts and cultural transformations. His impressive command of the specialized vocabulary requisite to accurate translations is apparent throughout. There is nothing comparable in the field at present, and the sheer scope of this book means it is unlikely to be superseded any time soon. The research on which it is based is thoroughly comprehensive, while its zesty style of presentation persuasively supports the author's objectives: his use of illustrative anecdotes is a highly successful means of capturing and holding the reader's attention.”
Carl F. Petry, Professor of Middle East Studies and Professor of Teaching Excellence, Northwestern University, author of The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society and editor of The Cambridge History of Egypt Volume One: Islamic Egypt, 640-1517
Preface
No book has been written on the history of prostitution in Southwest
Asia, the modern Middle East, in the Middle Ages. The present
work, although confined to the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean world, therefore represents the first word on this subject. It will not be the last. It is meant, above all, to establish a rough framework for further research, answer some basic questions, and provoke others. Indeed, much of the material presented here has implications that warrant further investigation.
Until fairly recently, scholars in the West and the Middle East have not deemed sexuality to be an appropriate field of research in our place and time. On the whole, they have approached this subject tepidly, and chiefly with regard to the early modern and modern eras, for which the sources are easier to identify. In fact, in the West the subject of sexuality in the Middle East had long been, at most, marginalized for the titillation of a select group—scholars and clergy trained in the classical languages. While reading Edward Gibbons’ History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it is amusing to see how he switches from English to Latin when the topic of sex arises. W. K. Lowther Clarke toned down the language on sexual temptations in his English translation from Greek of the Lausiac History of Palladius, which he published in 1918. This Greek account of the lives of the saints in the Eastern Mediterranean was fine for the monks (saints!) in the desert who read the original, but it was not fitting for the modern gentle Christian reader. Even in the mid-twentieth century, the renowned Arabist and Islamist Giorgio Levi Della Vida changed from English to Latin when he came to earthy passages while translating Arabic papyri dating from between the eighth and fourteenth centuries. Again, this language would not have bothered contemporary readers. It may seem strange to us today, given our greater openness to sexual matters, that sex, which is, of course, one of the most powerful forces of human behavior, has been largely absent from the study of Southwest Asia in the Middle Ages. The present work should help to introduce this part of life more broadly into scholarly discussions.
It has two underlying themes: first, the remarkable continuity, in general, in the practice of prostitution in the transition from Christian to Muslim rule; and second, the necessity of prostitution as an institutionalized service industry which took various forms at different times and places in our region. In this latter respect, its role in social and economic history was both widespread and multifaceted. Its place in society could be subtle or omnipresent. And its significance to women and men could be inconsequential or a matter of life and death. Thus prostitution cannot be described, much less explained, simplistically by the hoary assertion that “it is the world’s oldest profession,” which is an admission of ignorance, or such claims as “it was the worst form of exploitation of women in the Middle Ages,” which is an ideological assertion in some quarters and based on preconceived ideas. Both statements, which seem to constitute the “conventional wisdom” on this topic, reflect a static and one-dimensional view of prostitution.
As for the major conclusions of this study, I would especially like to emphasize here the following: 1) within both the Christian and Muslim communities, prostitution was never illegal; 2) prostitution was a state enterprise in medieval Egypt; 3) prostitution had a symbiotic relationship with many trades and was well integrated into commercial life; 4) there was a significant influx of European prostitutes into Syria and Egypt during the Crusades; 5) there is strong evidence, more so for Muslims, that pious religious endowments profited from the sex trade; and 6) the practice of prostitution at caravan staging points and in the major ports of the Indies, China, and Europe was an incentive to international trade. Altogether, prostitution had a far more complex and positive role in social and economic history than has heretofore been appreciated.
The word “prostitution” would seem to need no definition. We all know what it is. Yet, because it has so many nuances and permutations, not to mention different legal and traditional meanings in different cultures, modern scholars have sometimes struggled, in voluminous fashion, to define the term comprehensively. We need not be so demanding here, mainly because our sources rarely give us the kind of refinements of the subject that we would like. Consequently, for the purpose of this study, it suffices to define prostitution as “the frequent and indiscriminate sale by women of their sexual favors to men.”
Even with this simple definition, there are a number of difficulties in attempting to write an objective account of this business. One is that most of the terminology associated with prostitution is morally charged. This is true of our medieval sources as well as modern discussions, and can easily result in a skewed analysis. We have no term in English for prostitute which has the neutral resonance of, say, “rug merchant.” Instead, this word and its many synonyms are loaded with negative baggage, which can be a distraction and obscure what is going on apart from the sale of sex. The need for a term or expression which elicits the least visceral reaction in this respect led me to the use of “public woman” for one who sells her sexual favors. This somewhat muted expression is not a solution to the search for linguistic neutrality, but it is a start.
Another, more serious, problem is that the women who are the subject of this book do not speak for themselves; and presumably the great majority of them were illiterate and could not speak for themselves. All our sources were written by men, who, for the most part, took little interest in their profession or condition. We know nothing of the personal experiences of these women or what they thought of their trade or about men. It would be foolish, however, to assume that all prostitutes saw their business in the same light, or that of modern moralists and ideologues, or that their views of it never changed over the course of their lives. We simply do not know. The sources, then, are what they are. We cannot change them; but we should keep in mind that the women concerned have no voice. It might be helpful to remember that men who engaged in various trades that were despised, such as butchers and tanners, also do not speak for themselves in the sources.
Even while acknowledging that our sources were composed by men, we are faced with the difficulty of actually finding them. One reason that modern historians have not investigated this subject is that no treatises on it have come down to us from the medieval period. We are not even sure that any were written, although we know the titles of a few lost works that are suggestive in this respect. This is evidence, of course, that contemporary writers did not believe our subject worthy of special attention. In any case, few references to prostitution have survived, and they are usually very short. Moreover, they are scattered over a wide array of works. We may come across the mention of prostitution, often unexpectedly, in texts on almost any subject: religious, legal, medical, geographical, historical, commercial, or literary. Then, from this hodgepodge of material, we must try to create a coherent narrative.
Given the vast literary output of medieval writers, even for our narrow region and period, I certainly make no claim to have examined all the existing works that might include a reference to our subject. This would be a challenge even for a Methuselah, although the creation of databases derived from scanned medieval texts should, in theory, make systematic keyword searches of potential sources less daunting. Nevertheless, the material that I have gleaned over many years and from a fairly broad spectrum of the literary heritage suffices, I believe, to provide a general outline (albeit an uneven one) of the trade for our place and time. The gaps in the outline, resulting from the nature of the sources, are sometimes frequent. In these cases, I have on occasion resorted to speculation, but I hope this speculation is at least reasonable, if unverifiable.
In order to ensure consistency, I have mostly used the system of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies for the transliteration of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. I have, however, made an attempt to remove the diacritical marks in names such as Istanbul, Ibn Battuta, and so on, as these are so widely known in the English-speaking world.
It is with pleasure that I express my gratitude to a group of senior scholars for reading and commenting on individual chapters of this study. They saved me from a number of errors and oversights while raising stimulating questions, all to the benefit of the final text. Speros Vryonis, Jr., Fred Donner, Carole Hillenbrand, and Scott Redford read Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 respectively. Thomas Naff read the entire work. Robert Hillenbrand answered a number of questions on Islamic art. Furthermore, I received helpful feedback from the twenty-six women and two men at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California who took my course on this subject and allowed me to present my findings to an interested audience for the first time. I also owe a debt of thanks to Cornel Metternich and Patricia Leiser for providing assistance on the finer points of German and French, and to Walter Denny for several of the photographs. The interlibrary loan staff of the Vacaville Public Library, Town Square, in Vacaville, California performed yeomen’s service in locating many obscure books and thus greatly facilitated the progress of my research. Finally, the polished text owes much to my sharp-eyed and meticulous copy editor, Sarah Terry. No institution or foundation provided financial or other support for the preparation of this work. It was done in complete freedom.
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