This article uses evidence of non-hetero sexual relations in medieval India to examine the art of writing History and the making of Persianate textual archives. It focuses on political and sufi texts, and demonstrates the possibility of recovering a more textured knowledge of history-writing in pre-modern Islamicate India where texts remain the primary source for understanding and recovering histories.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Afzal ud-DinAfsar. 1955. ‘The Fatāwā-i Jahāndārī of Zia ud-din Barni, Translation with Introduction and Notes’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of London.
2.
al-Fazl ibn MubarakAbu. 1869. ‘Ain-i Akbari’, (ed.) BlochmannH. F., Lucknow.
3.
al-Jahiz‘Abu ‘Uthman. 1989. Nine Essays of al-Jahiz, (trans.) HutchinsW. M., New York.
4.
al-NafzawiMuhammad ibn Muhammad. 1990. al-Rawd al-’atir fi nuzhat al-khatir, (ed.)
Jum’ahJ., London; (trans.), ColvilleJ.1999. The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight, London.
5.
al-TifashiAhmad ibn Yusuf. 1992. Nuzhat al-albab fima la yujad fi kitab, (ed.) Jum’ahJ.London; (trans.),
LaceyE. A.1988. The Delight of Hearts: Or What You Will Not Find in Any Book, San Francisco.
6.
AliAhmad (ed.). 1987. Al-Qur’ān: A Contemporary Translation, Delhi.
7.
AliKecia. 2006. Sexual Ethics in Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith and Jurisprudence, Oxford.
8.
AndrewsWalter G.KalpaklıMehmet. 2005. The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society, Durham.
9.
AnooshahrAli. 2008. ‘The King Who Would be Man: The Gender Roles of the Warrior King in Early Mughal History’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, series 3, vol.18(3): 327–40.
10.
AnooshahrAli. 2009. The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods, Abingdon.
11.
BaburZahir al-Din Muhammad. 1993. Baburnama, (ed. and trans.) ThackstonW. M., Cambridge, MA.
12.
BalabanlilarLisa. 2012. Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia, London.
BeachMilo. 2011. ‘Jamali-Kamali: The Beauty of a Dervish Cell’, in Karen Chase, Jamali-Kamali: A Tale of Passion in Mughal India, Ahmedabad: 8–19.
16.
BonebakkerS. A.1976. ‘Religious Prejudice Against Poetry in Early Islam’, Medievalia et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, n.s., vol.7: 77–99.
17.
BoswellJohn. 1995. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, New York.
18.
BouhdibaAbdelwahab. 2008. La sexualité en Islam, Paris, 1975, (trans.) SheridanAlan, Sexuality in Islam, London.
19.
BoycePaul. 2008. ‘Truths and (Mis)representations: Adrienne Rich, Michel Foucault and Sexual Subjectivities in India’, Sexualities, vol.11(1–2): 110–19.
20.
BrootenBernadette J.1996. Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, Chicago.
21.
BurtonRichard. 1964. Love, War and Fancy: The Social and Sexual Customs of the East from the Writings on the Arabian Nights, (ed.) WalkerKenneth, London.
22.
ButlerJudith. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York.
23.
CameronDeborahKulickDon (eds). 2006. The Language and Sexuality Reader, London.
24.
CarterM. G.1983. ‘Language Control as People Control in Medieval Islam: The Aims of the Grammarians in their Cultural Context’, al-Abhath, vol. 31: 65–84.
25.
ChaseKaren. 2011. Jamali-Kamali: A Tale of Passion in Mughal India, Ahmedabad.
26.
ChatterjeeIndrani. 2002. ‘Alienation, Intimacy and Gender: Problems for a History of Love in South Asia’, in
VanitaRuth (ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, New York: 61–76.
27.
Chauncey JrGeorge. 1982–83. ‘From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance’, Salmagundi, vols 58–59: 114–46.
28.
CookMichael. 2000. Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, Cambridge.
29.
DanielMarc. 1994. ‘Arab Civilization and Male Love’, (trans.) LeylandWinston, in
GoldbergJonathon (ed.), Reclaiming Sodom, New York: 59–65.
30.
DigbySimon. 1984. ‘The Tuḥfa i naṣā’ih of Yūsuf Gadā: An Ethical Treatise in Verse from the Late-Fourteenth-Century Dehlī Sultanate’, in
MetcalfBarbara Daly (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, Berkeley: 91–123.
31.
DihlaviAmir Hasan Sijzi. 1966. Fava’id al Fu’ad, (ed.) MalikM. LatifLahore; (trans. & annotated) LawrenceBruce B.1992. Morals for the Heart: Conversations of Shaykh Nizam al-Din Awliya, Recorded by Amir Hasan Sijzi, New York.
32.
DregerAlice Domurat. 1998. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, Cambridge, MA.
33.
DughlatMirza Haidar. 1996. Tarikh-i Rashidi, (ed.) ThackstonW. M., Cambridge, MA.
34.
EatonRichard M.2009. ‘Shrines, Cultivators and Muslim “Conversion” in Punjab and Bengal, 1300–1700’, The Medieval History Journal, vol. 12(2): 191–220.
35.
El-RouayhebKhaled. 2005. Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800, Chicago.
36.
ElliotH. M.DowsonJohn. 1996. The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, 1867–77, rpt Delhi.
37.
ErnstCarl W.1992. Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center, Albany.
FosterWilliam (ed.). 1990. The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India 1615–19, As Narrated in His Journal and Correspondence,new and rev. edn, rptNew Delhi.
40.
FoucaultMichel(Introduced). 1980. Herculin Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite, (trans.) McDougallRichard, New York.
41.
GiffenLois Anita. 1972. Theory of Profane Love Among the Arabs and the Development of a Genre, New York.
42.
Gilmour-BrysonAnne. 1996. ‘Sodomy and the Knights Templar’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 7(2): 151–83.
43.
GoiteinS. D.1971. ‘Formal Friendship in the Medieval Near East’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol.115(6): 484–89.
44.
GürganBurcu. 2005. ‘
Images of Sexuality in the 16th century Ottoman Society: Mehmed Gazâlî’s Dafi’ü’l Gumûm’, unpublished MA dissertation, Sabancı University, Istanbul.
45.
HallKira. 1997. ‘Go Suck Your Husband’s Sugarcane: Hijras and the Use of Sexual Insult’, inLiviaHall (eds), Queerly Phrased: 430–60.
46.
HamblyGavin. 1974. ‘A Note on the Trade of Eunuchs in Mughul Bengal’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 94(1): 125–30.
47.
HardmanPaul D.1993. Homoaffectionalism: Male Bonding from Gilgamesh to the Present, San Francisco.
48.
HodivalaS. H.1939. Studies in Indo-Muslim History: A Critical Commentary on Elliot and Dowson’sHistory of India as Told by Its Own Historians, Bombay.
49.
HusainMaulvi Muhammad Ashraf. 1936. A Record of All the Quranic and Non-Historical Epigraphs on the Protected Monuments in the Delhi Province, No. 47, Calcutta.
50.
IrvineWilliam(trans.). 1908. Storia do Mogor or Mogul India 1653– 1708 by Niccolao Manucci, London.
51.
JahangirNur al-Din Muhammad.1359A.S.Jahangirnama: Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, (ed.) HashimMuhammad, Tehran, (trans.) RogersAlexander. 2006.The Tuzuk-i Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir, (ed.) Henry Beveridge, 1909, rpt Delhi.
JamalAmreen. 2001. ‘The Story of Lot and the Qur’ān’s Perception of the Morality of Same-Sex Sexuality’, Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 41(1): 1–88.
54.
JamiNur al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahman. 1997–99.Masnavi-i Haft Awrang, (ed.) AfsahzodA., Tehran.
55.
JuzjaniMaulana Minhaj al-Din ‘Abu ‘Umar-i ‘Usman.1963–64. Tabaqat-i Nasiri, (ed.) HabibiA. H.
, (ed.) LeesW. Nassau, rpt Kabul, (trans.) RavertyH. G.1995. Tabakat-I-Nasiri: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, including Hindustan, 1881, rpt Calcutta.
56.
KatzMarion Holmes. 2002. Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity, Albany.
57.
KesavanMukul. 2008. ‘Nowhere to Call Home’, in
AkhaviNegar (ed.), Aids Sutra: Untold Stories from India, New Delhi: 179–95.
58.
KeunyKathryn. 2001. The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam, Albany.
59.
KhanSurina. 2000. ‘Sexual Exiles,’ in
IlkkaracanPinar (ed.), Women and Sexuality in Muslim Societies, Istanbul: 289–98.
KumarSunil. 2007. The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 1192–1286, New Delhi.
62.
KumarSunil. 2009. ‘The Ignored Elites: Turks, Mongols and a Persian Secretarial Class in the Early Delhi Sultanate’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43(1): 45–77.
63.
LagrangeFrédéric. 2008. ‘The Obscenity of the Vizier’, in
BabayanKatharynNajmabadiAfsaneh (eds), Islamicate Sexualities: Translations through Temporal Geographies of Desire, Cambridge, MA: 161–203.
64.
LalKishori Saran.1944. ‘Sultan Nasiruddin Khusrau Shah (1320 AD)’, Journal of Indian History, vol. 23(3): 169–80.
65.
LalRuby. 2005. Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, Cambridge.
66.
LamoreauxJohn C.2002. The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation, Albany.
67.
LawrenceBruce B.1978. Notes from a Distant Flute: Sufi Literature in Pre-Mughal India, Tehran.
68.
LiviaAnnaHallKira (eds). 1997. Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, New York.
69.
LosenskyPaulSharmaSunil(trans.). 2011. In the Bazaar of Love: The Selected Poetry of Amir Khusrau, New Delhi.
70.
LuxenbergChristoph. 2007. The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran, Berlin.
71.
MarmonShaun. 1995. Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society, New York.
72.
McAuliffeJane D.1984.‘The Wines of Earth and Paradise: Qur’ānic Proscriptions and Promises’, in
SavoryR. M.AgiusD. A. (eds), Logos Islamikos: Studia in Honorem Georgii Michaelis Wickens, Toronto: 159–74.
73.
MeisamiJulie Scott. 1987. ‘Kings and Lovers: Ethical Dimensions of Medieval Persian Romance’, Edebiyât, n.s., vol. 1(1): 1–27.
74.
MeisamiJulie Scott. 1987. Medieval Persian Court Poetry, Princeton, NJ.
75.
MenonNivedita (ed.). 2007. Sexualities, New Delhi.
76.
MinnisaleGregory. 2006. ‘The Dynamics of the Gaze in Mughal Painting’, Marg, vol. 58(2): 50–60.
77.
MooreLisa. 1992. ‘“Something More Tender Still than Friendship”: Romantic Friendship in Early-Nineteenth-Century England’, Feminist Studies, vol. 18(3): 513–17.
78.
NaimC. M.2004. ‘Transvestic Words?: The Rekhti in Urdu’, in idem (ed.), Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C. M. Naim, New Delhi: 42–66.
79.
NandaSerena. 1994. ‘Hijras: An Alternative Sex and Gender Role in India’, in
HerdtGilbert (ed.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Diamorphism in Culture and History, New York: 373–417.
80.
NathanBassem. 1994. ‘Medieval Arabic Medical Views on Male Homosexuality’, Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 26(4): 37–39.
81.
NothAlbrechtLawrence I.Conrad. 1994. The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study, (trans.) BonnerMichael, Princeton, NJ.
82.
O’HanlonRosalind. 1999. ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 42(1): 47–93.
83.
O’HanlonRosalind. 2007. ‘Kingdom, Household and Body: History, Gender and Imperial Service under Akbar’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 41(5): 889–923.
84.
OlyanSaul M.1994. ‘“And With a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman”: On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 5(2): 179–206.
85.
ParkerHolt N.2001. ‘The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and Sexuality for Classicists’, Arethusa, vol. 34: 313–62.
86.
ParodiLaura E.2006. ‘Humayun’s Sojourn at the Safavid Court (A.D. 1543–44)’, in
PanainoA.ZipoliR. (eds), Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europæa: Held in Ravenna, 6–11 October 2003, Milan, vol. 2: 135–57.
87.
PeirceLeslie P.1993. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York.
88.
PenzerN. M. (ed.). 1968. The Ocean of Story, Being C. H. Tawney’s Translation of Somadeva’s Kathā Sarit Sāgara, 1925, rpt Delhi.
89.
PetievichCarla. 2002. ‘Doganas and Zanakhis: The Invention and Subsequent Erasure of Urdu Poetry’s “Lesbian Voice”’, in
Vanita (ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, New York: 47–60.
90.
PlattsJohn T.1884. A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English, London.
PuffHelmut. 2003. Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400–1600, Chicago.
93.
Ranke-HeinemannUta. 1990. Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church, (trans.) HeineggPeter, New York.
94.
RazaS. Jabir. 2011. ‘
Mahmud’s Ayaz in History’, in
HabibIrfan
(ed.), ‘Papers from the Aligarh Historians Society’, Indian History Congress, 72nd session, Patiala, 10–12December, Aligarh, mimeograph: 150–56.
95.
ReddyGayatri. 2008. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India, New Delhi.
96.
RoscoeWill. 1996. ‘Priests of the Goddess: Gender Transgression in Ancient Religion’, History of Religions, vol. 35(3): 195–230.
97.
RoscoeWill. 1997. ‘Precursors of Islamic Male Homosexualities’, in
MurrayStephen O.RoscoeWill (eds), Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature, New York: 55–86.
98.
RosenthalFranz. 1978. ‘Ar-Râzî on the Hidden Illness’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 52: 45–60.
99.
RothNorman. 1982. ‘“Deal Gently With the Young Man”: Love of Boys in Medieval Hebrew Poetry of Spain’, Speculum, vol. 57: 20–51.
100.
RothNorman. 1989. ‘The Care and Feeding of Gazelles: Medieval Hebrew Love Poetry’, in
LazarMosheLaceyNorris J. (eds), Poetics of Love in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts, Fairfax, VA: 95–118.
101.
RowsonEverett K.1991. ‘The Categorization of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval Arabic Vice Lists’, in
EpsteinJuliaStraubKristina (eds), Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, New York: 50–79.
102.
RowsonEverett K.1991. ‘The Effeminates of Early Medina’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 111: 671–93.
103.
RowsonEverett K.2008. ‘Homoerotic Liaisons Among the Mamluk Elite in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria’, in
BabayanKatharynNajmabadiAfsaneh (eds), Islamicate Sexualities: Translations through Temporal Geographies of Desire, Cambridge, MA: 204–38.
104.
SaletoreR. N.1974. Sex Life Under Indian Rulers, Delhi.
105.
SandersPaula. 1991. ‘Gendering the Ungendered Body: Hermaphrodites in Medieval Islamic Law’, in
KeddieNikki R.BaronBeth (eds), Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, New Haven: 74–95.
106.
SarkarNilanjan. 2006. ‘The Voice of Mahmūd: The Hero in Zīyā Baranī’s Fatāwā-i Jahāndarī’, The Medieval History Journal, vol. 9 (2): 327–56.
SchultzJames. 2006. ‘Heterosexuality as a Threat to Medieval Studies’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 15(1): 14–29.
109.
SharmaS. R.1950. ‘Nasar-ud-din Khusru [sic] Shah’, in SenSurendra Nath (ed.), Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. D. V. Potdar Sixty-First Birthday Commemoration Volume, Poona: 70–81.
110.
SharmaSatish Kumar. 1984. ‘Eunuchs: Past and Present’, The Eastern Anthropologist, vol. 37(4): 381–89.
111.
SharmaSunil. 2005. Amir Khusrau: Poet of Sultans and Sufis, Oxford.
112.
SharmaY. D.1964. Delhi and Its Neighbourhood,New Delhi.
113.
SoofiMayank Austen. 2010. The Delhi Walla: Monuments, Noida.
114.
SouthgateMinoo S.1984. ‘Men, Women, and Boys: Love and Sex in the Works of Sa’di’, Iranian Studies, vol. 17(4): 413–52.
115.
SpezialeFabrizio. 2003. ‘The Relation Between Galenic Medicine and Sufism in India during the Delhi and Deccan Sultanates’, East and West, vol. 53(1–4): 149–78.
116.
SprachmannPaul(trans.with Notes Introduction). 1995. Suppressed Persian: An Anthology of Forbidden Literature, Costa Mesa, CA.
117.
SrivastavaA. L.1954. ‘Origin of Nasir-ud-din Khusrau Shah of Delhi’, Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. 30(1): 19–24.
118.
SteingassF.1996. Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary Including the Arabic Words and Phrases to be met with in Persian Literature, 1892, rpt New Delhi.
119.
StephenCarr.1967. Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi, 1900, rpt Allahabad.
SweetMichael J.2002. ‘Eunuchs, Lesbians and Other Mythical Beasts: Queering and Dequeering the Kama Sutra ’, in Vanita (ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, New York: 77–84.
122.
ThadaniGiti. 1999. ‘The Politics of Identities and Languages: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India’, in
BlackwoodEvelynWieringaSaskia E. (eds), Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Cultures, New York: 67–90.
123.
TrumbachRandolph. 1996. ‘The Third Gender in Twentieth Century America’, Journal of Social History, vol. 30(2): 497–501.
124.
VanitaRuth (ed.). 2002. Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, New York.
125.
VanitaRuthKidwaiSaleem (eds). 2001. Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, Delhi.
126.
VatsyayanaMallanaga. 1929. Kamasutram, (ed.) ShastriG. D., Banaras; (trans.) DonigerWendyKakarSudhir. 2002. The Kamasutra, New York.
127.
von GrunebaumG. E. 1952. ‘The Aesthetic Foundation of Arabic Literature’, Comparative Literature, vol. 4(4): 323–40.
128.
WinkAndré. 1990–2004. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, 3 vols, Leiden.
129.
Wright JrJ. W.Everett K.Rowson. 1997. Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, New York.
130.
YarshaterEhsan. 1960. ‘The Theme of Wine-Drinking and the Concept of the Beloved in Early Persian Poetry’, Studia Islamica, no. 13: 43–53.
131.
ZahuriMuhammad ‘Abd al-Wahab. 1979. ‘A Medical Treatise of the Time of King Muhammad Tughlaq’, Studies in History of Medicine, vol. 3(3): 173–77.
132.
ZakaniObeyd-i.2008. Ethics of the Aristocrats and Other Satirical Works, (ed. and trans.) with an Introduction by JavadiHasan, Washington DC.
