Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by El-Rouayheb Khaled

Author:El-Rouayheb, Khaled [El-Rouayheb, Khaled]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2005-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

There are no analogous reasons to believe that ‘Aydarūsī ever drank wine.

The practice and underlying theory of what I have called “mystical aestheticism” was highly controversial. To many Islamic religious scholars, the idea that only God truly exists, and that the created world is but a manifestation of His attributes, was plain pantheism ‘ayniyyah) or “incarnationism” (ḥulūl or ittiḥād). Throughout the Mamluk era (1250—15I7), controversies had erupted concerning the orthodoxy of Ibn ‘Arabī and Ibn al-Fārid. Among their more prominent opponents were scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), Ismā‘īl ibn al-Muqri’ (d. 1434), and Ibrāhīm al-Biqā‘ī (d. 1480).241 By the early sixteenth century, the controversy seems to have abated somewhat. Authoritative scholars such as the Egyptians Jalal al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) and Zakariyya al-Anṣārī (d. 1520), and the Ottoman Grand Mufti Kamāl Pashazade (d. 1534) expressed themselves, with varying degrees of caution, in favor of the two mystics.242 As one of his first acts after conquering Syria and Egypt, the Ottoman Sultan Salīm I (r. 1512-20) paid homage to the tomb of Ibn ‘Arabī in Damascus, and ordered a mosque built at the site.243 Hostility to Ibn ‘Arabī continued to be espoused by a few figures, such as Muhammad ibn Ismā‘īl al-Amīr in Yemen (d. 1768) and Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792) in central Arabia, and as the Wahhābī and Salafī movements inspired by these figures gained strength in the nineteenth century, such negative evaluations came to the fore again.244 However, the dominant tendency amongst Sunnī Muslim scholars within the Ottoman Empire from 1500 to 1800 seems to have been to follow the more positive evaluations of Suyūṭī, Anṣārī, or Kamāl Pāshāzāde.245 Yet, as has been remarked by Michael Winter, the evaluation was more in favor of the persons than their ideas. The attitude expressed by Suyūṭī and Anṣāīr was that the mystics in question were saints whose inspired words should not be judged by those who were strangers to their experiences and terminology. Indeed, Suyūṭī declared that reading the books of Ibn ‘Arabī was not permissible, even while he vigorously defended the mystic against the charge of heresy. The idea of the “unity of existence” continued to be the source of widespread anxiety. Nābulusī’s writings were often very polemical, which by itself suggests that the views he expressed were controversial. He seems to have been aware that mystical aestheticism was a particularly sensitive issue. In his commentary on the Dīwān of Ibn al-Farid, he referred to theignorant and heedless censurers who despise the people of God [i.e., the Sufis] and rebuke them, and accuse them of indecencies and ignominies of which they are innocent, especially if they are acquainted with whom they love from among the forms of divine manifestations and appearances.246

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