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Gendered Transformations: Beauty, Love, and Sexuality in Qajar Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Afsaneh Najmabadi
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Qajar Iran (1785-1925) began with notions of beauty that were largely gender-undifferentiated; that is, beautiful men and women were depicted with very similar facial and bodily features. Sometimes the only way one can tell who is male or female is through style of headgear. Other times it remains very difficult to tell if we are looking at a man or a woman.

In written sources, the same adjectives, such as moon-faced (māh ṭalᶜat), rose-faced (gul rukhsar), cypress-statured sarv qāmat or sarv qad), ruby lips (laᶜl lab), bow-eyebrows (kamān abrū), or alternatively crescent eyebrows (hilāl abrū), black-scented hair (mushgīn mū), narrow-waist (miyān bārīk or kamar bārīk), narcissus-eyed (nargīs chashm), etc., are used to describe male and female beauty.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 1-4: Qajar Art and Society , 2001 , pp. 89 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2001

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References

1. Compare, for instance, features of any number of the young female figures in Diba, and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings (Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998)Google Scholar, with the following male figures from late Zand and early Qajar period in the same source: pl. 26, “Rustam Khan Zand,” signed by Muhammad Sadiq, Shiraz, c. 1779, p. 155; fig. XVI, “Joseph with a pair of Gazelles,” Sayyid Mirza, Iran, early 19th century, p. 194; pl. 47, “Prince Yahya,” attributed to Muhammad Hasan, Iran, c. 1830, p. 195; pls. 63 a & b, “Pair of Reverse-Glass Paintings from a Pictorial Cycle,” artist unknown, Iran, early 19th century, p. 213.

2. See, for instance, Plate 63, Amorous Couple, Early 19th century, in Adamova, A. T., et. al. Persidskaia zhivopis’ i risunok XV-XIX vekov v sobranii Ermitazha: katalog vystavki [Persian Painting and Drawing of the 15th-19th Centuries from the Hermitage Museum: Exhibition Catalog] (Saint Petersburg, 1996), 284.Google Scholar

3. Asif, Muhammad Hashim (Rustam al-Hukama), Rustam al-tavārīkh, ed. Mushiri, Muhammad (Tehran: Jibi, second edition, 1978), 147.Google Scholar

4. Ibid, 199.

5. Examples abound in Diba and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings. See, for instance, various full portraits of Fath ᶜAli Shah, of young Nasir al-Din Shah (243), of the young prince Yahya Mirza (195), the latter two looking very similar to portrayals of Joseph. Compare the facial features of Nur ᶜAli Shah (a male Sufi leader, p. 259), to female faces in “Ladies around a Samovar” (p. 261), both by Ismaᶜil Jalayir from third quarter of the nineteenth century.

6. Rustam al-Hukama, Rustam al-tavārīkh, p. 85.

7. Ibid., 180.

8. See, for instance, Soudavar, Abolala, Art of the Persian Courts (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), Plates 104 and 109.Google Scholar For similar observations about Islamo-Arab culture— “Descriptions of human beauty are idealistic and stereotyped, without much distinction between male and female”—see Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, Beauty in Arabic Culture (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1998)Google Scholar, quote from 59.

9. ᶜAbd al-Rahman Jami, Manavī-yi haft awrang [The Seven Thrones], ed. Gilani, Murtaza Mudarris (Tehran: Saᶜdi, 1958).Google Scholar See 601-604 for a description of Zulaykha followed by that for Joseph on 605. Descriptions of male and female servants are on 621-24. Ghilmān and ḥūr come from Qurᵓanic verses that describe paradisiac pleasures (for instance in Sura 44, verses 51-54; 52: 20-24; 56: 17-24; 55: 46-58, 70-74; and 76: 19-20). They are commonly understood to refer to male and female eternally young beauties. At The Qajar Epoch: Culture, Art, and Architecture (London, September 1-4, 1999)Google Scholar conference, the question of whether ghilman has the sexual meaning I am attributing to it was raised. I am not suggesting that the Qurᵓanic phrase has some inherently sexual meaning, whatever an inherent meaning may be. But sexual meanings were constituted for the ghilman as much as for the hur in many genres of Persian and Arabic literature. In Arabic, this constitution is now reflected in the root location for ghulam (pl. ghilman) itself, coming under gh/l/m, to be excited by lust, be seized by sexual desire. See, for instance, Wehr, Hans, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. Milton Cowan, J. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 1966).Google Scholar Similarly, in Persian, connections are well-established in the word ghulam and even more so in its plural ghilman. In Muhammad Muᶜin, Farhang-i Farsi (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1985)Google Scholar, some of the meanings under ghulam are: a boy (from birth to beginning of youth), a boy who has developed sexual passion, a boy who is made love to, amrad.) This was definitely the case in nineteenth-century writings which comprise the relevant discursive domain for my argument in this paper. As I have documented elsewhere, when Iranians wrote about European beauties more often than not the phrases of praise went in couples: hur and ghilman, beautiful young men and women. See Najmabadi, Afsaneh, Male Lions and Female Suns: The Gendered Tropes of Iranian Modernity (University of California Press forthcoming)Google Scholar, chapter two. The denial of sexual meaning for ghilman strikes me as a disavowal of homoeroticism, to put it mildly! It is intriguing that many current sources, such as the Encyclopaedia of Islam, that have an entry for hur do not have one for ghilman (Wensinck, A.J. -[Ch. Pellat], “Ḥūr,” EI- 3: 581–582, Brill, 1971Google Scholar). The EI does have an entry under “ghulam” and even though the author notes the meaning of the word in Arabic as “a young man or boy … ghulam amrad ‘beardless’,” he shows no awareness of the sexual connotations of the word. [D. Sourdel, EI2 2: 1079-91, the quote is from 1079.] Only C. E. Bosworth's subsection on ghulam in Persia includes a paragraph on “the sexual aspect” of the relationship between master and slave. (1082)

10. Robinson, B. W., “Qajar Paintings: A Personal Reminiscence,” in Diba and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings, 13.Google Scholar

11. See, for instance, the portrayal of Muzaffar al-Din Shah (Diba and Ekhtiar, 270) in contrast to the earlier portraits of Fath ᶜAli Shah.

12. See, for instance, the portrait of Taj al-Saltana, Muzaffar al-Din Shah's sister, known as a beautiful woman, with her distinct features, set apart from early nineteenth-century figures of female beauty. Diba and Ekhtiar, 272.

13. Ekhtiar, Maryam, “From Workshop and Bazaar to Academy: Art Training and Production in Qajar Iran,” in Diba and Ekhtiar, 60.Google Scholar

14. Adamova, Adel T., “Art and Diplomacy: Qajar Painting at the State Hermitage Museum,” in Diba and Ekhtiar, 74.Google Scholar

15. This is a point worth further research and analysis. The camera does not seem to have had a similar effect on European painting. What did photographic representation of the truthful real and the camera as a witnessing capturing eye (shāhid-i ᶜaynī) for the real truth mean in an Iranian nineteenth-century context?

16. Naẓar, gazing, refers to the Sufi practice of meditative prolonged looking at the face of a young beautiful male (disciple) as the embodiment of divine beauty. This practice was severely criticized by many religious authorities, as it was feared it would be impossible not to be aroused sexually by a beautiful male face and that, unlike passion for a woman, there was no licit way of satisfying this desire. See, for instance, ibn Muhammad Ghazali, Muhammad, Iḥyāᵓ ᶜulūm al-dīn (Persian translation), tr. Muᵓayyid al-Din Muhammad Khwarazmi, ed. Khadivjam, Husayn (Tehran: Shirkat-i intisharat-i ᶜilmi va farhangi, 1989), 213–15.Google Scholar See also Sprachman, Paul, Suppressed Persian: An Anthology of Forbidden Literature (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1995), 40.Google Scholar

17. Diba, Layla S., “Early Qajar Period: 1785-1834,” in Diba and Ekhtiar, 170.Google Scholar

18. For trends in larger Islamic culture, see Wright, J. W. Jr. and Rowson, Everett K., eds., Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).Google Scholar See also Naim, C. M., “The Theme of Homosexual (Pederastic) Love in Pre-Modern Urdu Poetry,” in Umar Memon, Muhammad, ed., Studies in the Urdu Gazal and Prose Fiction (Madison: University of Wisconsin South Asian Studies Publication Series No. 5, 1979), 120–42.Google Scholar

19. See Najmabadi, Male Lions and Female Suns, chapter 2.

20. This point was first brought to my attention by Dick Davis in the context of discussing Jami's Yusuf and Zulaykha. Correspondence with author, 9 November 1997.

21. I am grateful to Houman Sarshar whose insightful suggestions opened up this reading possibility.

22. Nawkhat, an adolescent young man with the first thin growth of a mustache, celebrated as the most beautiful and desirable of youths. Yet at the same time, that sign of beauty heralded the beginning of the end of his status as object of desire for adult men and his own movement into adult malehood. It signaled the beginning of his loss to the lover. Julie Meisami, in her essay, “The Body as Garden: Nature and Sexuality in Persian Poetry,” Edebiyat 6 (1995): 245–74Google Scholar, observes that “the ultimate focus [of the refined sensuality incited by this poetry] is not on the desired but on the desirer, who observes his beloved.” (237) She also suggests that Paradise/garden in this poetry “is an emblem of a state of lost, or hoped-for, bliss.” (271) It is perhaps the nawkhat as simultaneously the most desired and a sign of imminent loss that is implicated in the production of sensuality of the body as garden analyzed by Meisami. This first growth of mustache is also called mihrgiyāh. Literally meaning “love-plant”, “growth of affection,” it seems to provide a perfect metaphor for the intersection of garden and body. Mihrgiyāh is a plant with medicinal uses, too much of which can be fatal—much like the love of the cruel young adolescent which provided a central theme for poets’ verses of suffering. My thanks to Houman Sarshar for bringing the many levels of meaning for mihrgiyāh to my attention.

23. Marianna Shreve Simpson, with contributions by Farhad, Massumeh, Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's Haft Awrang: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth-Century Iran, (Washington D. C. and New Haven, Freer Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, Folio 59a and Folio 162a respectively. See Paul Sprachman, “Le beau garçon sans merci: The Homoerotic Tale in Arabic and Persian,” in Wright and Rowson, Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature.

24. See, for instance, Fig. I: Shirin Presents a Jug of Milk to Farhad, artist unknown, Iran, late 15th-early 16th century, Diba and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings, 105 or figure 34 (a) Zal Wooing Rudaba, by Lutf ‘Ali Khan, dated between 1854-64, in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, eds. Avery, Peter, Hambly, Gavin, and Melville, Charles (Cambridge, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. See Diba and Ekhtiar, 121-22, for descriptions.

26. Ibid., p. 122.

27. Ibid., casket described on 123-24. The quote is from 123.

28. See Warhol, Robyn R., Gendered Interventions (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), especially 17–41.Google Scholar The quote is from 36.

29. See Layla S. Diba, “Images of Power and the Power of Images: Intention and Response in Early Qajar Painting (1785-1834),” in Diba and Ekhtiar, 30-49.

30. The opposite possibility also exists: that it would work to reinforce, rather than disrupt, the homoerotic scene. Perhaps the fact that it worked one way and not the other is indicative of the workings of the next point I will make on the disappearance of the male object of desire.

31. Figure VIII, “A Girl Playing Mandolin,” Muhammad Sadiq, Shiraz, dated circa 1770-80, Diba and Ekhtiar, 157. The male-female couple on p. 156 (plate 1 in this essay) is attributed to the same artist.

32. See Ferrier, Ronald W., trans, and ed., A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin's Portrait of a Seventeenth-century Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 22Google Scholar, 118, and 176 on Chardin's observations and judgement on the prevalence of male homosexuality and the unfavorable conditions of women in Safavid Iran.

33. “I have occasionally named CHARDIN, the most accurate of all the French travellers who have written on this country, for an European visitor might even at this day go all over Persia with his book as guide, except as it regards the costume, which has undergone a total change,” wrote the editor to the English translation of M. Tancoigne who had travelled to Iran attached to the Embassy of General Gardane. See A Narrative of a Journal into Persia and Residence at Teheran (London: printed for William Wright by W. Shackell, 1820), vii.Google Scholar Tancoigne himself, throughout his narrative, refers to Chardin as an authority. Among more well-known English travelers both James Morier and Sir Robert Ker Porter repeatedly refer to Chardin's descriptions as a point of reference for their own report, though Ker Porter also refers to Morier and Sir Harford Jones. See Morier, James, A Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, in the Years 1808 and 1809 (London: Longman, et al., 1812)Google Scholar, and Ker Porter, Sir Robert, “At the Court of Fath Ali Shah,” in Qajar: Court Painting in Persia, eds. Robinson, B. W. and Guadalupi, Gianni (Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1990).Google Scholar

34. Tancoigne, A Narrative of a Journal, 174.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 182.

36. Ibid., 211.

37. Ibid., 67 and Keppel, George Personal Narrative of a Journey from India to England… in the Year 1824 (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), 2: 47.Google Scholar

38. Mirza Fattah Khan Garmrudi, Safarnāmah, ed. Fath al-Din Fattahi (n.p., 1969), 962.

39. Ibid, 962-64.

40. Safarnāmah-i Ibrāhīm Ṣaḥḥāfbāshī Tihrānī, ed. Mushiri, Muhammad (Tehran: Shirkat-i muᵓallifan va mutarjiman-i Iran, 1978), 50–52 and 57-58.Google Scholar

41. This masquerading move may have some similarities to one in eighteenthcentury Urdu literature: “Avoiding the ambiguous gazal-e muzakkar of Persian, i.e., the lyric in which a male lover seemingly addressed another male, the Urdu poets of South India … adopted the Indian tradition of having a female address a male.” Nairn, “The Theme of Homosexual (Pederastic) Love,” 121. Carla Petievich is currently working on a manuscript and translation of this genre of poetry from Urdu to English.

42. I am not suggesting that the male-female loving couple as homoerotic masquerade is somehow uniquely causal in modernist heterosexualization of love. Other socio-cultural happenings were part of the picture as well.

43. A similar phenomenon happened in Persian literature, as the sāqī and shāhid of classical poetry became transformed into female figures (something linguistically possible in Persian, unlike Arabic, since the language has no gender markings). Today's illustrated copies of Hafiz's poetry, for instance, depict these figures as women, and modernist interpreters of the poetry insist on the metaphorical nature of homoerotic love when the text doesn't allow them to insist on reading the beloved as female.