Literature from Islamic societies embraced homoerotic love until the 19th century. What happened? |
For centuries, literature from Islamic regions, especially Iran, celebrated male homoerotic love as a symbol of beauty, mysticism and spiritual longing. These attitudes were particularly pronounced during the Islamic Golden Age, from the mid-8th to mid-13th centuries.
But this literary tradition gradually disappeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, under the influence of Western values and colonisation.
Attitudes towards homosexuality in early Islamic societies were complex. From a theological perspective, homosexuality started to become frowned upon from the 7th century, when the Quran was said to have been revealed to the Islamic Prophet Mohammad.
However, varying religious attitudes and interpretations allowed for discretion. Upper-class medieval Islamic societies often accepted or tolerated homosexual relationships. Classical literature from Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Syria suggests any prohibition of homosexuality was often treated with leniency.
Even in cases where Islamic law condemned homosexuality, jurists permitted poetic expressions of male–male love, emphasising the fictional nature of verse. Composing homoerotic poetry allowed the literary imagination to flourish within moral boundaries.
The classic Arabic, Turkish and Persian literature of the time........