Download PDF | (The Early and Medieval Islamic World) Pernilla Myrne - Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World_ Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature-I.B. Tauris (2020).
241 Pages
Introduction
Female sexuality in the early medieval Islamic world is a subject that involves several growing fi elds of research, namely the history of women, gender and sexuality in Islam. Th e history of women and marriage is an established fi eld, eventually merged with gender studies, with more or less well- researched publications since the fi rst half of the twentieth century. 1 Th e last decades have seen several important studies on women’s history limited to specifi c time periods, for example Fatimid, Mamluk and Ottoman, or genres and disciplines, such as early Islamic law. 2 Research on sexuality started later and is based on a more limited number of sources. Georges-Henri Bousquet and S. al ā h. al-D ī n alMunajjid published books on the topic in the 1950s, but they were not followed up with substantial research until the 1970s. 3
Th e early research on sexuality in Islamic literature and societies tended to make broad assumptions about sexuality in ‘Islam’ over considerable time periods (sometimes over a millennium). In this book, I examine attitudes towards and ideas about female sexuality in sources from diff erent disciplines written within a relatively limited time period (if some two hundred years can be said to be limited). Th e sources, many of which are astonishingly unexplored, shed new light on the understanding of female sexuality during this period, not the least on attitudes to women’s pleasure and right to sexual fulfi lment. It is oft en claimed that jurists gave women the right to sexual fulfi lment, but that is not entirely true for the early medieval period, as Kecia Ali has pointed out and this book confi rms. 4 Yet, non- legal discourses hold largely positive attitudes towards female sexuality and women’s own words and expertise were oft en considered.
The generalizing claim that women were entitled to satisfaction in marriage is almost as persistent as the idea that premodern Islamic societies were characterized by a ‘fear’ of women’s sexuality, embodied in the concept fi tna . 5 Both these claims can be true, but are not meaningful as long as they are not contextualized. Newer research has been more nuanced, and have taken regard to genre and historical contexts, but this research is primarily centred on male sexuality, especially homosexual. Th e reason is, naturally, that there are many more sources for male sexuality, not the least homosexuality, but it is also an eff ect of scholars’ interest in this fi eld. Th ere is still very little research on female sexuality in early Islamic societies, perhaps because there is a supposed lack of sources.
The physiological aspects of female sexuality is an issue for medical historians, and there are, in fact, rich sources, as Leslie Peirce has pointed out. 6 Yet, these sources have generated comparatively little research so far. Moreover, as I hope to demonstrate with this book, there are other genres and disciplines that have substantial material on women’s sexuality. Most of the sources examined in the six chapters were written in the third and fourth Islamic centuries, which is approximately the ninth and tenth centuries AD, and occasionally later, even though some of them rely on and cite much earlier material. 7 Th e designation ‘early medieval Islamic world’ is not perfect. First, ‘early medieval’ is somewhat misleading, as it is a term based on the chronology of European history.
Traditionally, a classifi cation based on dynasties has been used for the chronology of Islamic history, but other classifi cations have been proposed. Th e early medieval period, as defi ned in this book, is approximately the same as the early Abbasid period, which corresponds to the late Early Islamic period and the fi rst part of the early middle period according to another classifi cation. 8 Second, the Islamic world encompassed a large area in the early medieval period, but I have chosen to focus on the Abbasid heartland, Iraq, where the major intellectual centres were located, at least in the beginning of this period. Many of the texts considered here were written in the capital, Baghdad, and for a time in Samarra.
The time period covered by this book begins with the ‘golden days’ of the Abbasid dynasty, and spans the Buyid takeover of political power in Iraq in the middle of the fourth/tenth century. Th is period witnessed the expansion of Islam to the majority religion in many of the regions under Islamic governance. Th is was the end of the formative period of Islamic law, the end of the formative and beginning of the classical period of tafs ī r and the beginning of the canonization of Sunni and Shi ʿ i hadith. 9 Legal principles, which regulated sexuality and restricted especially female sexual behaviour, took their fi nal shape between 740 and 800 AD, that is just before and for some decades aft er the Abbasid takeover. 10 Sunni Islam was established as the mainstream in the ninth century, and the Sunni and Shi ʿ i Schools of law took form in the beginning of the tenth century.
At the same time as the Islamic disciplines took form, there was a remarkable interest in natural sciences and philosophy. Th e Islamic Empire took over several important Late Antiquity centres of learning but the scholarly activities taking place there continued in some form and their production was transmitted to Arabic. Works in Greek, Syriac and Middle Persian started to be translated to Arabic in the Umayyad period, but it was the fi rst two centuries of the Abbasid dynasty that held the most remarkable achievements. 11 Th e translations generated an interest in and production of books on philosophy, medicine and other disciplines in Arabic. Th e ninth and tenth centuries saw the birth of a systematic Islamic medicine based on Greek medical science, which is of particular interest for this book, as it transmitted and modifi ed ideas about sexuality. 12
The main sources used by translators into Arabic of Greek medical theory were the works of late Antique scholars in Alexandria, who wrote commentaries on the writings of Galen (second century AD) and other Greek medical scholars and collected abridged versions and paraphrases in medical encyclopaedias. 13 Galen became the main medical authority and the model Greek scholar in the Islamic world, not only for physicians but also for natural philosophers and others. 14 Hippocrates (the assumed author of a corpus of medical texts written from the second half of the fi ft h century to fi rst half of the fourth century) is oft en referred to but the Hippocratic texts were primarily known to the Islamic physicians through Galen’s commentaries. In the fi rst centuries of Islamic medicine most medical authors in the Islamic world wrote in Arabic, therefore some scholars have preferred the term Arabic medicine. Th e majority of the medical authors were not Arabs, however, and therefore others prefer the term Islamic medicine, despite the fact that many, perhaps most, of them were not Muslims. 15
Neither were their medical theories particularly ‘Islamic’ for, as we have seen they built on medical ideas from late antiquity. 16 Nevertheless, as the medical authors lived in areas governed by Muslim rulers and many of their patrons were Muslims (oft en the same rulers), it is reasonable to use the term Islamic medicine. Th e translations and scientifi c activities were patronized by the Abbasid elite and by the imperial court. Th e elite also supported poets and litterateurs, and the urban centres accommodated lively literary and cultural activities. Book production fl ourished and literacy increased, facilitated by the introduction of paper. Abbasid belles- lettres, the so- called adab literature, was born in this creative milieu; a vast number of anecdotes, sayings and poems were collected by late Umayyad and early Abbasid philologists, exploring the Arabic language and the rich corpus of early Arab poetry. In the third/ninth century, authors started to arrange entertaining and edifying historical anecdotes, sayings and poems in multi- thematic compendia or monothematic works and this corpus of anecdotes from the Abbasid period survived in classical Arabic literature for centuries. Although adab is a cultural product of high society, the anecdotes are accessible.
They make historical events and settings come alive, mostly with the focus on the verbal utterances in the form of poetry or dialogues. Although the anecdotes are more historical fi ction than history writing, historians have found adab useful sources for studying unoffi cial history, the history of women and the non- elite. 17 Th is is primarily due to lack of material about these groups in mainstream history books, whereas they frequently occur in adab compilations where there are numerous anecdotes about witty and eloquent women whose clever remarks make confronting men everything from pleasing to being dumbfounded.
In the anecdotes, the socially subordinate character oft en plays a major role and women are oft en represented as particularly eloquent; they get the last word when the plot takes an unexpected turn or they turn out to be the most clever and eloquent in a verbal duel. All fi elds of learning that I have mentioned here conveyed ideas about female sexuality and my aim is to show how these ideas intersected. Ideas come with people and travel with people. Th e Abbasid caliphate was vast and diverse; yet, the mode of fi nancing scholarly activities through patronage fostered tight networks with clusters of scholars from diff erent disciplines in the imperial court and other major power centres, especially in Baghdad. We can assume that the scholars who were active in the same locations exchanged ideas and read each other’s works. It is the scholars from the central clusters in particular whose work lives on and is extant today. Furthermore, the ideal scholar was a polymath, who could comment on various phenomena, ethics and social etiquette alike. For these reasons, the comparison of genres is not a merely theoretical pursuit; it refl ects the realities of the authors and readers.
The majlis18 (social gathering) was probably infl uential in spreading philosophical and scientifi c ideas to wider circles of litteratures and poets. In the words of Shawkat Toorawa: ‘Th ere seems little doubt that most of the Baghdad litt é rateurs ( udab ā ʾ ) knew one another. Th ey were not overly numerous, they learned from the same relatively small number of teachers, they attended many of the same literary and social gatherings and salons ( maj ā lis ), and study circles ( h. alaq ā t ), and they met in the bookshops and the Bookmen’s Market ( S ū q al- warr ā q ī n ).’ 19 Th e courts of al-Man s. ū r (r. 136–158/754–775) and al-Ma ʾ m ū n (r. 198–218/ 813–833) are oft en mentioned as hubs of scholarly activity. 20
Some of the scholars whose writings on women are examined in this book were connected to the court of al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–247/847–861): the infl uential translator and physician H. unayn ibn Is h. ā q (d. 260/873), the physician and fi rst author of a medical compendium in Arabic ʿ Al ī ibn Sahl al- T. abar ī , and the buff oons and drinking companions Ab ū H. ass ā n al-Naml ī and Ab ū al- ʿ Anbas al- S. aymarī (213–275/828–888). Ab ū al- ʿ Anbas is an interesting example of a polymath from this period; he started his career as a judge and then worked as a court astrologer, dream interpreter and poet. 21 He wrote some forty books on serious as well as amusing topics: astrology, fi qh (Islamic jurisprudence), homosexuality and erotic stories. Th e scholarly breadth is indicative of the intellectual climate in the early medieval Islamic world. Th e great intellectual al-J ā h. i z. was still alive (he died in 255/December 868–January 869) and so were many others mentioned in this book. Another scholar who probably participated in the gatherings of al-Mutawakkil was Ibn Ab ī T. ā hir T. ayf ū r, whose Book on Women’s Instances of Eloquence ( Balagh ā t al-Nis ā ʾ ) is a major source for Chapter 4 in this book. 22
Islamic legal scholars in the ninth century were relatively independent from the Abbasid caliphs and did not normally participate in these learned circles, but instead opposed the debauchery and pagan knowledge taught there, although they shared some fundamental ideas about male and female nature with the natural sciences. Abbasid power declined successively from the fi rst half of the ninth century, and, except for a revival aft er the accession of al-Mu ʿ tamid in 256/870, power was more or less in the hands of military commanders. In 334/945, the Buyid Dynasty took control over Baghdad, and became the political and military leaders of the dwindling Empire. Th e Buyids were Twelver Shi ʿ i and favoured Twelver Shi ʿ ism but kept the Abbasid Sunni caliph. Th ey also supported Persian and Hellenistic learning and the vast scholarly production continued. During this period, the tradition of composing large multi- thematic and sometimes multi- disciplinary encyclopaedias, which began in the ninth century, continued with legal treatises, history writing, adab and medical compendia, among other disciplines and genres. Ab ū al-Faraj al-I s. bah ā n ī (d. aft er 360/971), who belonged for a period to the circle of the Buyid waz ī r al-Muhallab ī (339–352/950–963) fi nished his important work Book of Songs ( Kit ā b al-Agh ā n ī ), which he had been working on for several decades. 23 Th e earliest extant erotic compendium in Arabic, Encyclopaedia of Pleasure ( Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha ), which is an important source for this book, was probably written in this period; its author is unknown but its content seems to owe much to the relatively tolerant and cosmopolitan intellectual environment during the Buyid rule of Baghdad, with its sometime libertine outlook and eclectic attitude to religion. 24 Perhaps infl uenced by the Buyids, who were Shi ʿ ites but supported a Sunni caliph, the author of Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha mixes Sunni and Shi ʿ i references. Although the translation movement came to an end during the Buyid era in Baghdad, the interest in translated sciences did not decrease. 25
Th is interest is evident in Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha ; its author apparently had an abundance of sources at his disposal, translated from Greek and Middle Persian, perhaps also Sanskrit. He collected and combined texts from the various disciplines and genres that explored human sexuality, which were written in Arabic or had been translated to Arabic in the early Abbasid era. Th e name of the writer, according to most extant manuscripts and references in later erotic literature, is Ab ū al- H. asan ʿ Al ī ibn Na s. r al-K ā tib. He might be the writer with the same name mentioned in Kit ā b al-Fihrist , a writer who died in Baghdad in 377/987 according to Ibn al-Nad ī m, who completed Fihrist just a few years later. 26 Ibn al-Nad ī m does not mention Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha , but the other books attributed to ʿ Al ī ibn Na s. r in Fihrist confi rm the interests displayed there. Th ey are, like Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha , directed to people who wish to refi ne their manners and socialize with the elite: I s. l ā h. al-Akhl ā q ( Improving the Character ), Adab al-Sul t. ā n ( Th e Etiquette of the Sovereign ), Kit ā b al-Bar ā ʿ a ( Th e Book of Excellence or Th e Book on Eloquence ), and Su h. bat al-Sul t. ā n ( Th e Book of Keeping Company with the Ruler ). Ibn al-Nad ī m adds that this ʿ Al ī ibn Na s. r wrote more books that he probably did not fi nish. Th e title k ā tib indicates that he was a secretary of the chancery and the books ascribed to him in Fihrist could be directed to ambitious offi cials who wanted to improve their career possibilities. His father Na s. r was a physician, according to Ibn al-Nad ī m, which may explain his interest in medicine, and a Christian, which means that either he or his son ʿ Al ī ibn Na s. r converted to Islam. However, no bibliography mentions the title Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha before K â tip Ç elebi (d. 1067/1657), who identifi es the writer as ‘the well- known’ Ab ū Na s. r Man s. ū r ibn ʿ Al ī al-K ā tib al-Sam ā n ī . 27 Th is name is not consistent with the name of the author written on the manuscripts used in this study, which were all produced long before K â tip Ç elebi’s time. 28 Nevertheless, Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha infl uenced later Arabic erotica and is quoted by several authors, from the twelft h- century scholar al-Shayzar ī to the fi ft eenth- century religious scholar al-Suy ū t. i. 29 Th e fi rst part of the book examines attitudes to and ideas about female sexuality in the androcentric intellectual and scientifi c communities of the early medieval Islamic world. Scholars and authors in the Islamic world addressed topics that refl ect on the distinction between women and men. Th ey were naturally infl uenced by the patriarchal traditions of earlier societies and regard women in this framework, but both their outlooks and their conclusions diff er. In medical discourse, women’s sexuality and bodies play a central and basically positive role, being essential for reproduction. Yet, men are described as more perfect than women, who are biologically and therefore morally inferior. In erotological discourse, women’s pleasure is desirable and women’s wishes regarded, yet the ideal woman is ultimately the one who pleases men. Religious discourse is strongly male- oriented and, in line with its normative project, it sets out to implement the notion of female inferiority with the help of rules that give priority to men. Th e fact that these intellectual pursuits are androcentric does not mean that women did not have a voice. Women’s voices is the main subject of the second part of the book, where I also discuss women’s possibly agency. It is perhaps risky to use the word ‘agency’ in an early medieval context, but I maintain that it can be used for describing female personas’ attempts to exercise infl uence over their own life, although this infl uence is sometimes extremely limited. Narrators and authors have largely ignored female views, and women were generally excluded from scholarly communities in the early medieval period, yet women play a signifi cant role in anecdotal literature; although not as authors, they appear as speakers, oral poets and characters. Eloquence was seen as a female attribute as much as a male, in fact eloquent women were especially beloved characters in literature. Philologists and historians were fascinated by the eloquent Arab women in early Islam and used them as sources for linguistic enquiries. Correspondingly, royal women and courtesans oft en appear as strong and well- expressed characters with independent views in anecdotes from the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. Th e fi rst chapter discusses ideas about female sexuality and nature in medical discourse. Islamic medical authors embraced Greek medical ideas on sex diff erences and reproduction, in which women have a pivotal role, but one of their main achievements in the fi eld of sexuality was the emphasis on sexual health and pleasure. Physicians believed that abstinence could cause considerable physical health problems, but they also admitted that pleasure was desirable in itself. Pharmacology, in the form of aphrodisiacs and pleasure- enhancing methods, was therefore a major topic, but mainly addressed to men. Nevertheless, physicians acknowledged women’s sexual needs, not only for improving fertility, for there is an underlying conviction that women’s excitement and pleasure are desirable, although not oft en discussed explicitly. Th e second chapter addresses female sexuality as represented in the oldest extant erotic compendium, Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha , which not only covers many learned discourses on sexuality, it also educates the cultured man on how to satisfy women. Indeed, pleasing women and satisfying them belonged to the realm of refi ned behaviour, and knowledge about female sexuality should be part of a refi ned man’s education. Th erefore, the encyclopaedia includes sections on medical topics such as anatomy, sexual health and pharmacology, as well as chapters on sexual technique and, remarkably, a chapter on female orgasm, with classifi cations of women in regard to their attitudes to sex and how they reach climax. Th e erudite discourses in Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha are interspersed with stories about hypersexual women, who are also alleged narrators. Th e presence of prominent female protagonists and narrators contributes with an upgrading of female expertise and experience. At the same time, however, the stories about hypersexual women belong to a common notion that women, seen as closer to nature, have a much greater libido than men have; a notion that was confi rmed by various authorities in the late Antique and early medieval world. Th e third chapter addresses attitudes to female sexuality in Islamic literature from the late second/eighth to the late fourth/tenth century, a central period for the Islamic sciences. Islamic writings on female sexuality were guided by the same principle as the medical and erotological discourses, namely that women by nature are subordinate to men. Th e crucial issue for jurists and other Islamic scholars was that all sexual activities have to be carried out within legal bounds. Th is chapter discusses what normative conjugal sexual relations meant for women, as well as examining particular strategies in hadith and tafs ī r for regulating female sexual behaviour. Although early jurists and traditionists did not necessarily endorse a single model, the outcome of legal discussions in the third/ninth century in particular was that legal bonds became much more restricting for women, as Islamic jurisprudence gave men the right to marry four women and have sexual relations with their female slaves. Chapter 4 discusses women’s own words about sexuality in poetry and anecdotes and verbal profi ciency as a strategy to exercise agency in a maledominated world. In adab literature, two types of female characters stand out; the early Islamic woman, who, intelligently and eloquently, argues against her husband and gets her way with him; and the ‘anecdotal woman’, oft en a slave, who defeats a man in a verbal duel or uses her verbal skills to get what she wants. Women’s strategies in the corpus of poetry and anecdotes examined here are connected to sexuality; they rebuff unwanted attention, utilize their sex appeal in order to reach their goal and appraise men. Th ey are experts on male sexuality and use their husbands’ failures to live up to masculine ideals to their own advantages if they have to. Altogether, female sexuality is pictured as a positive force and women, albeit fi ctional, have their own distinct voice. If women are portrayed favourably in many adab anecdotes and their active participation is appreciated, women have a more precarious role in the so called muj ū n genre, the burlesque, oft en bawdy poetry that is the subject of Chapter 5. Th is genre was popular and women were both creators and targets of muj ū n . In this chapter, I discuss the hazards of being outspoken for women; it was appreciated in some circles, but could be used against them or to defame their male relatives.
As an example, we will look at poems describing genitals, a typical muj ū n motif. Th e chapter examines the vagina as a poetic motif; this motif is oft en part of misogynist descriptions of grotesque female bodies, but there are also several poems in Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha attributed to female poets who describe their own genitals in boasting terms, like male poets such as Ab ū Nuw ā s occasionally did. Th e last chapter deals with a neglected topic, namely the representation of female homoerotic desire or sa h. q (‘rubbing’). A whole chapter is devoted to this topic in Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha and female homosexuality was also discussed by physicians and jurists. Th e chapter discusses the diff erent explanations of sa h. q conveyed by these physicians as well as representations of lesbian women in literature from this period. In particular, it examines women’s own words about their preferences, as represented in a corpus of poems and letters attributed to women, in which they explain why they have chosen lesbianism or, alternatively, why they have rejected it.
On translation of sexually explicit words
Classical Arabic has an exceptionally rich vocabulary for words connected to sexuality, whose nuances are diffi cult to fi nd equivalents of in English. For example, perhaps the most common word for sexual intercourse in Jaw ā mi ʿ alLadhdha is nayk , which has a vulgar connotation today, and is oft en translated as ‘fucking’. It was used in bawdy poetry, the so-called muj ū n , and could accurately be translated ‘fucking’. Yet, it is also used for penetrative sex as a contrast to other sexual practices, and can simply be translated ‘sexual intercourse’. I have sometimes chosen to translate it ‘fucking’, sometimes ‘sexual intercourse’, depending on the context. In Jaw ā mi ʿ al-Ladhdha , the choice of word is connected to discourse, nayk is oft en used in erotology and poetry, and always used in erotic stories; the more clinical term jim ā ʿ (or muj ā ma ʿ a ) is used in medical discourses, and nik ā h. (marriage or marital sex) is used in juristic discourses. Th e use of these terms is not always consistent, however, and there are diff erences between the manuscripts. Likewise, some scholars have chosen to translate the words ayr and h. ir as ‘cock’ and ‘pussy’, or ‘prick’ and ‘cunt’, as they are considered more vulgar than the neutral dhakar and farj . Nonetheless, when al-J ā h. i z. discussed the word h. ir in the ninth century, he concluded that h. ir is the ism (name), and farj the kin ā ya (metonym). Following al-J ā h. i z. , it is reasonable to translate h. ir as ‘vagina’. 30
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