Pearls in Paradise?

In the bath-house, the mysteries hidden by trousers
Are revealed to you.
All becomes radiantly manifest.
Feast your eyes without restraint!
You see handsome buttocks, shapely trim torsos,
You hear the guys whispering pious formulas
to one another
(‘God is Great! ‘ ‘Praise be to God! ‘)
Ah, what a palace of pleasure is the bath-house!
Even when the towel-bearers come in
And spoil the fun a bit.

Abū Nuwās (756–814) was one of the greatest classical gay Arabic poets.

Although in the modern world, the Islamic countries are known as those most hostile to male love, it was not always so. In earlier times in the Moslem lands, famous Iranian and Arab poets such as Hafiz i-Shirazi and Abu Nuwas praised and rued the charms of handsome young men (whom they plied with wine and seduced). Sufi holy men from India to Turkey sought to find Allah by gazing upon the beauty of beardless youths. Storytellers included gay love tales in the Thousand and One Nights. Artists like Riza i-Abbasi amused kings and princes with exquisitely wrought erotic Persian miniatures and calligraphies. Mullahs and censors railed against male love, but men of all walks of life, from Caliphs to porters, delighted in it and all looked forward to being attended by fresh-faced tellaks (masseurs) in the hamam, and “unaging ghilman (youths) as beautiful as pearls” in paradise. – Islamic Poet of Male Love

It’s still shows a level of taboo, though. Just like in ancient Greece and Rome, it was only accepted to gaze at beardless youths. I.e if love between two men were to happen, it had to have a contrast between the masculine and the feminine. For two bearded men to engage with each other was unthinkable. That’s the great fallacy. Because I refuse to believe there wasn’t any attraction between two full grown, masculine men. It’s just that it was hush-hush. I know I’m taking some of the poetry out if it, but the idea that there has to be the masc-fem duality has fueled homophobia and hetero-norms for centuries, and up until the late 1980s. Even the gay culture had this idea that in order to be gay you had to be a queen. And the butch daddies were almost required to be attracted to fem gaybois in order to be accepted. End the lies. Ben

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3 Replies to “Pearls in Paradise?”

Dear Ben,
I’m absolutely no expert and your comments make me want to investigate Greek homosexuality further, but I suspect that your comment is a bit off mark. The relationships between mature warriors and beardless youths in ancient Greece was pedagogical as well as sexual, and occurred in the context of sport and the battlefield.These “beardless youths” were fully muscled young men learning about athletics, battle, and loyalty. I don’t think there was anything effeminate about the younger men in these “daddy” couples. I hate that term, but I use it to make the point about the educational function that older men fulfilled with respect to young men in ancient Greece. The most famous warrior to warrior relationship that was, despite all the polite tut-tutting among gay classicists in Europe, undoubtedly homosexual was that between Achilles and Pratoclus in Homer’s Iliad. If you look at the image below, which I’ve taken from Wikipedia, of a pottery painting dating from 500 BCE, the man wrapping the arm of his lover, who looks younger, is the mighty warrior Achilles, not Pratoclus. And I recently saw an article, was it in the Guardian? or Washington Post?, or the NYT?, during LGBTQ month, about the “Sacred Band of Thebes,” 150 pairs of warrior lovers who were the elite of the army of Thebes and who defeated the Spartan army, saving Thebes from Spartan domination, in 371 BCE, only to be annihilated by the Macedonians to a couple, to a man, in 338 BCE. As I remember, in this article it says that archaeologists have just uncovered a Theban grave site in which some of the skeletons are intwined in each other’s arms.

Thank you for this post, Seb. There is a lot to say about homosexuality in the Middle East and Asia!
Here’s another anecdote from al-Isfahani’s 10th century The Book of Songs. It’s Anecdote 13, by a poet from Basra, described as “a hardy man … renowned for his nasty satire, as well as being a drunkard.” He got angry with a rival and satirized him thus:
“He is equitable
He lets his male lover be the husband of his wife
The male lover divides his penis equally
Between her pussy and his asshole.”
In most societies that I know something about, until very recently, men have pretty much controlled the definitions both of what “masculinity” AND what “femininity” is. I’m thinking especially of Japan, but it is also true of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where, as in the case of Western societies, a lot of men toy with categories of “male” and “female,” wander between asshole and pussy, and are sexually aroused by the intersections and divergences and frequent hybridities of the two genders. I’ve experienced the pleasures of such cross-gender dalliances in my own sexual experiences with cross-dressers.

I like that Ben.
End the lies.

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