Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books on Women from the Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries
In: Journal of Abbasid StudiesSearch for other papers by Pernilla Myrne in
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Abstract
Information about women in Abbasid society — and especially the subgroups of mutaẓarrifāt, ladies, and saḥḥaqāt, lesbians — is gathered from two extant sources that explicitly deal with the subject: al-Muwashshā, “The Painted Cloth,” by al-Washshāʾ (d. 325/936-7) and Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, composed some fifty years later by ʿAlī b. Naṣr al-Kātib. The Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha is an erotic compendium that relies heavily on earlier sources, al-Muwashshā included; however, most of the works cited are lost. A survey of book-titles from the same period indicates that a good many books about women were written at the time. Representations of ladies and lesbians as they appear from the two sources and surveyed lists of book-titles suggest a complex picture of the lady-lesbian that changed over time. That some of the books dealing with the subject were still available some six-hundred years later shows that the erotic lore of the Abbasids continued to arouse interest for centuries.
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Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books on Women from the Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries
In: Journal of Abbasid StudiesSearch for other papers by Pernilla Myrne in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Information about women in Abbasid society — and especially the subgroups of mutaẓarrifāt, ladies, and saḥḥaqāt, lesbians — is gathered from two extant sources that explicitly deal with the subject: al-Muwashshā, “The Painted Cloth,” by al-Washshāʾ (d. 325/936-7) and Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, composed some fifty years later by ʿAlī b. Naṣr al-Kātib. The Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha is an erotic compendium that relies heavily on earlier sources, al-Muwashshā included; however, most of the works cited are lost. A survey of book-titles from the same period indicates that a good many books about women were written at the time. Representations of ladies and lesbians as they appear from the two sources and surveyed lists of book-titles suggest a complex picture of the lady-lesbian that changed over time. That some of the books dealing with the subject were still available some six-hundred years later shows that the erotic lore of the Abbasids continued to arouse interest for centuries.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 261 | 0 | 0 |
| Full Text Views | 1153 | 134 | 7 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 1632 | 261 | 8 |
