3 - Perverted Spaces: Boundary Negotiations in Early-Modern Turcica

Summary

Nach dem Mittag-Essen einen Tanz durch 2. Buben (deren [die Türcken] zu ihrer Schande missbrauchen / welche verfluchte Unweiß in der Türckey sehr gemein

THUS READS A REVEALING EXCERPT from Stefan Gerlach's Tagebuch that spans the years 1573 to 1578. In 1674 this chronicle was finally published by a grandson of the author who had traveled to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In his capacity as court preacher in a German diplomatic mission, Gerlach describes the post-luncheon entertainment provided by two young male dancers. These dancers would also be expected to fulfill sexual requests—a vice that is commonly practiced in Turkey, according to Gerlach.

According to German language turcica published between 1453 and approximately 1700, Ottoman sexual perversion and vice was commonplace. Furthermore, we repeatedly find images that link the Muslim as sexual pervert to images of him as religious fraudster, images that are in turn inseparable from the early-modern construction of the antagonistic Other. As this chapter will argue, both of these representations are directly related to the erection and defense of boundaries and space.

After the seventeenth century, a number of factors, including the West's growing military and political superiority, the Western reception of the Arabian Nights (with their “exotic-erotic” implications), and Enlightenment concepts of religious tolerance, together engendered momentous shifts in the portrayal of Islamic cultures. This chapter, however, will explore the relationship between religion, sex, and space in turcica published in the time between the so-called Fall of Constantinople and the 1680s, and how the topoi produced herein interact to construct a particular picture of the Muslim as deviant / Muslim as religious fraudster.