by Khaled El-Rouayheb
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Paper: 978-0-226-72989-3 | Cloth: 978-0-226-72988-6 | eISBN: 978-0-226-72990-9
Library of Congress Classification HQ76.3.A65E576 2005
Dewey Decimal Classification 306.76609174927

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ABOUT THIS BOOK


Attitudes toward homosexuality in the pre-modern Arab-Islamic world are commonly depicted as schizophrenic—visible and tolerated on one hand, prohibited by Islam on the other. Khaled El-Rouayheb argues that this apparent paradox is based on the anachronistic assumption that homosexuality is a timeless, self-evident fact to which a particular culture reacts with some degree of tolerance or intolerance. Drawing on poetry, biographical literature, medicine, dream interpretation, and Islamic texts, he shows that the culture of the period lacked the concept of homosexuality.