Homosexuality in Arabic Literature

Homosexuality in Arabic Middle Eastern Literature

The expression of male homoerotic sentiment is one of the dominant themes in classical Arabic literature from the ninth century to the nineteenth.
In poetry, traditionally considered the supreme art among the Arabs, love lyrics by male poets about males were almost as popular as those about females, and in certain times and places even more popular. But in prose literature as well, including such varied genres as anecdotal collections, vignettes in rhymed prose known as maqamat, shadowplays, and explicit erotica, homoerotic themes, mostly male but also female, are anything but rare.Even though homosexual behavior is condemned in the strongest terms by Islamic law, a position reiterated by numerous legal and pietistic works devoted to the subject, homoerotic love generally appears in poetry and belles lettres as a phenomenon every bit as natural as heteroerotic love and subject to the same range of treatments, from humorous to passionate.
This striking affirmation of homosexuality does not, however, go back to the earliest period of Arabic literature. In the extant poetry from the sixth, seventh, and early eighth centuries-from a generation or two before the advent of Islam through its first century-there are virtually no references to homosexuality at all.
It was during this period that love poetry developed into an independent genre, or rather two, one playful and teasing, the other, known as udhri verse, passionate and even despairing; but both were initially uniformly heteroerotic.