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When he begins to speak, he hints at the magic of eloquence. The mouth of the beloved hints at the hidden mystery. The sultan composed several poems, varsağı, about his beloved Musa, including the following, which he subsequently regretted and banned from being performed in the sultan’s presence. For example, in his description of his life at the palace page school, Evliya Çelebi wrote of his experience of replacing Musa Çelebi, according to Evliya a favourite of Murad IV, who was murdered by the sultan’s former tutor. Some of the people who occupied the position of the younger male in a homosocial if not homosexual relationship have provided us with their perspectives on the experience. However, in the vast majority of cases, he would be in the socially inferior position to the uşşak ‘lover’ in some form – as a slave, servant or, in the case of sultan’s relationships with other men, subject.
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I argue that it is the historian’s duty to try to unveil the perspectives of the boys themselves, or at least to highlight this inherent power dynamic and make it a focus of research in itself.Īs scholar Joseph Allen Boone argues, the ‘boy’ in a male-to-male Ottoman relationship could in fact be anywhere between prepubescent age and his late 20s he could be bearded or unbearded, muscular of androgynous, free or enslaved. These sources end up silencing those with the least agency. On the other end of the critical spectrum, countless Ottoman poems talk about the beauty of a boy who ‘has deprived the gazelle of his attributes’.ĭespite the vast range of sources featuring sexual or romantic same sex relationships, the vast majority of these early modern Ottoman sources are either written by people assessing the value of these relationships or by those in the dominant position within them. Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha’rani emphatically stated that ‘no one should act in accordance with those scholars who have been led astray from the Holy Law and permitted carnal penetration of a male slave on the basis of ownership’. For example, Ahmad al-Aqhisari lamented that homosexual relationships spread in the Arabic speaking world to the extent that Arabs ‘are proud of it and blame someone who has no beardless friend ( amrad), speak evil of him, and say that he is not a human ( adami) and has no taste ( madhaq)’. Whilst no Quranic scholar explicitly endorsed penetration of men by other men, love poems were widespread that praised the beauty of boys and described kissing boys at social gatherings, as were cruder anecdotes and images of boys being penetrated by men. However, the purpose of these relationships and the physical extent to which they could be developed was a matter of debate. Admiration of younger male beauty was seen as acceptable by many Islamic jurists, with the exception of the most strict interpreters of the Quran. Relationships between older men and younger, most often unbearded, boys were widespread in early modern Ottoman society. This remarkable story is the plot of a 1627 poem by Nev’izade ‘Atayi Heft Kan. The Christians saw the superiority of a religion that accepted their desires, and they converted to Islam all four men lived happily thereafter in Istanbul. Unbeknown to the Ottomans, the Christians managed to escape and later reunited with Tayyid and Tahir. The Ottomans were pardoned and fled the lands of the infidel, but their beloveds lingered in prison. A barbaric Christian official thought that their love for each other was mere sodomy, however, and all four were imprisoned. Instead of pain, captivity brought them love and happiness, as both men fell in love with their captors, and those feelings were mutual. When their ship was captured by Christians they were enslaved by Christian noblemen. Tayyib and Tahir, two young Ottomans, were travelling to Egypt to become dervishes.
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Kütüphanesi, Ali Emiri Collection, TR 772, fol. Ottoman miniature painting fromĪn illustrated volume of a copy of Senses of Poets (مشاعر الشعراء