Lesbianism in Medieval Arabia: ‘The Encyclopedia of Pleasure’

/ historicallywoman

Lesbianism was discussed in medieval Arabic writings as far back as the 9th century. Many of the earlier examples were medical texts, but erotic literature was also relatively common – within Islam, sex is not considered taboo.

Medical texts occasionally speculated about why some women were lesbians, with one physician named Yuhanna ibn Masawayh concluding that ‘lesbianism results when a nursing woman eats celery, rocket, melilot leaves and the flowers of a bitter orange tree.’ Another theory from the Muslim philosopher al-Kindi claimed that lesbianism happened because of vapours causing heat and itching in the labia which can only be cured by the cold ejaculation from lesbian intercourse, as opposed to male ejaculate, which is hot.

These writings find pretty much no match in European texts from the same period; indeed, there was no specific word for lesbian or lesbianism in any medieval European languages, where as Arabic had several: ‘sahq, sihaq, and sihaqa to refer to lesbianism, and sahiqa, sahhaqa, and musahiqa for lesbians’. Some of these words come from the verb ‘to rub’ or ‘to pound’, thus referring to lesbian sexual practice.

Again in contrast to the West, lesbianism wasn’t treated as a ‘silent sin’. Rather, according to Sahar Amer, whose work this article is heavily based on, in literature, lesbianism was deemed to be a ‘lifestyle worthy of emulation’ and there were mentions of lesbian groups and schools where women taught each other how to best achieve pleasure. 

Before going further, I want to quickly highlight that, of course, we shouldn’t read too deeply into comparisons and contrasts between Arab and European literature. Notions of sexuality differ greatly between the two cultures, and what we (particularly in the West) understand as being lesbian today does not fit quite so neatly with what lesbianism meant for Arabic scholars, doctors, and writers in the medieval period. 

That being said, let’s take a look at some examples.

Perhaps the most famous medieval text featuring lesbians is the Jawāmiʿ al-Ladhdhah, or the Encyclopedia of Pleasure by Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib. Copies of the Encyclopedia have survived and an English translation was published in 1977, but it is incredibly difficult to track down both in English and Arabic. Amer writes of her own struggle to get her hands on a reprinted Arabic edition from 2002 – upon trying to buy it herself from a liberal bookstore in Egypt, the owner told her he could not sell it to ‘a proper Muslim woman such as yourself’. Some time later, she was able to get the book through a male friend secretly buying it in Cairo, but it was hard to read due to the superimposition of a large red tree over the text on each page, an attempt to avoid government censors.

Those sections of the Encyclopedia which deal with homosexuality largely focus on men, but it does contain a legend about the first lesbian couple: Hind bint al-Khuss al-Iyādiyya, also known as al-Zarqāʾ, and Hind bint al-Nuʿmān, also known as al-Ḥurqah. The latter was a poet-princess, the Christian daughter of the last Lakhmid king, and the former, also a poet, was reportedly the first Arab lesbian (though her existence is debated).

Al-Zarqāʾ and al-Ḥurqah were said to love each other deeply. So much so, that when al-Zarqāʾ died, al-Ḥurqah ‘cropped her hair, wore black clothes, rejected worldly pleasures, vowed to God that she would lead an ascetic life until she passed away’, and built a monastery to commemorate al-Zarqāʾ and the love she had held for her.

O Hind, you are truer to your word than men. / Oh, the difference between your loyalty and theirs!

Verse by an unnamed poet cited in the ‘Encyclopedia of Pleasure’

It is of course impossible to verify what is written in the Encyclopedia, and as I have already mentioned, recent research suggests al-Zarqāʾ was an entirely legendary figure. Either way, their story was a popular one at the time as it was mentioned in numerous literary texts, including al-Fihrist (The Catalog) by Ibn al-Nadim, which listed twelve books devoted to twelve different named lesbian couples. 

Another example of lesbianism in medieval Arab literature is the Nuz’ha al-ʾalbāb, or A Promenade of Hearts, written by Ahmad al-Tifashi. The text references the aforementioned lesbian communities and the teachings of the ‘head lesbian’, named Rose, paying particular attention to the sounds that should be made during sex. Al-Tifashi gives the name ‘the saffron massage’ to lesbian sex, referencing the action of grinding saffron on a cloth during dyeing.

With the advent of Islam, sahq became considered a sin, though it was less serious than male homosexuality (liwat) and both paled in comparison to adultery (zina). Amer posits that the emphasis on zina encouraged a certain acceptance of liwat in Islamicate societies; one fourteenth century text suggested that ‘lesbianism insures against social disgrace’ as it didn’t involve penetration.

Nowadays, queerness is generally considered deviant by the Arab world, part of the West’s imperial legacy. Discussions of lesbianism are ‘silenced or censored’, but in the medieval era they were ‘rich and diverse’, and portrayed Arab and Muslim women as having extraordinary agency over their lives, both socially and sexually.

A sculpture made up of numerous boxes, each covered in writing in Arabic.
The Encyclopedia of Pleasure by Ghada Amer (sister to Sahar Amer). The sculpture is the first and only work dedicated to this text.

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