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To be Feared and Desired: Turks in the Collected Works of ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Abstract

This article discusses the representation of Turks in the kulliyāt (collected works) of the fourteenth-century poet ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī (d. 1371). ‘Ubayd is well known for his satirical works (e.g. Mūsh u gurba, Akhlāq al-ashrāf), but his courtly poetry (in particular his ghazals and qasīdas) have yet to receive substantial scholarly attention. This study examines the various ways in which ‘Ubayd presents Turks in his kulliyāt, whether as an object of erotic desire, a figure to be feared on account of his violent nature, or else as a metaphor for the royal patron or other member of the ruling elite of fourteenth-century Shiraz. This article explores the tension that exists in ‘Ubayd's works between these various depictions of the Turk, shows how references to Turks in bawdy prose works and other poetic genres (such as rubā‘ī) can be used to interpret those found in more chaste ghazals, and discusses the possible implications the depiction of the Turk found in ‘Ubayd's kulliyāt may have for our understanding of references to Turks in the poetry of his contemporaries, in particular Hāfiz (d. 1389).

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 5: Special Issue: Love And Desire in Pre-Modern Persian Poetry And Prose , December 2009 , pp. 725 - 744
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 The International Society for Iranian Studies

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Footnotes

I am most grateful to Franklin D. Lewis for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

1 For more details on ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī and his works, see ‘Alī-Asghar Halabī, ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī (Tehran, 1998)Google Scholar; Zipoli, Riccardo, “Oscenità Poetiche Neopersiane: Due Tarjî‘-band Sulla Masturbazione,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, XXXIII, no. 3 (1994): 249–291Google Scholar; Haidari, A. A., “A Medieval Persian Satirist,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 49, no. 1 (1986): 117–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar Javadi, Hasan, trans., ‘Obeyd-e Zākānī: The Ethics of the Aristocrats and Other Satirical Works (Piedmont, CA, 1985)Google Scholar; Sprachman, Paul, trans., Suppressed Persian: an anthology of forbidden literature (Costa Mesa, 1995), 44–75.Google Scholar On the literary and political context of ‘Ubayd's work, see Limbert, John, Shiraz in the Age of Hafez: The Glory of a Medieval Persian City (Seattle, 2004)Google Scholar; and Parviz Brookshaw, Dominic, “Odes of a Poet-Princess: the ghazals of Jahān-Malik Khātūn,” Iran, XLIII (2005): 173–195, esp. 173–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a largely fictitious, but nonetheless engaging representation of the literary scene in mid-fourteenth-century Shiraz and possible interactions between ‘Ubayd, Hāfiz, and Jahān, see Pezeshkzad, Iraj, Hāfiz-i nā-shanīda pand (Tehran, 2004).Google Scholar

2 Anvarī, Hasan, ed., Farhang-i buzurg-i sukhan, 8 vols. (Tehran, 2002).Google Scholar

3 Anvarī, , Farhang-i buzurg-i sukhan, 3: 1707.Google Scholar

4 Anvarī, , Farhang-i buzurg-i sukhan, 3: 1707–1708.Google Scholar

5 Anvarī, , Farhang-i buzurg-i sukhan, 3: 1708.Google Scholar

6 Anvarī, , Farhang-i buzurg-i sukhan, 3: 1708.Google Scholar

7 Hāfiz, , Dīvān, ed. by Ghanī, Qāsim and Qazvīnī, Muhammad (Tehran, 1999), 90.Google Scholar

8 See Yarshater, Ehsan, “The Theme of Wine-Drinking and the Concept of the Beloved in Early Persian Poetry,” Studia Islamica, 13 (1960): 43–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For studies of the homoerotic in other pre-modern Islamic literatures, see (among others), El-Rouayheb, Khaled, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (Chicago, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrews, Walter G. and Kalpaklı, Mehmet, The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham and London, 2005), esp. 32–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Naim, C. M., “The Theme of Homosexual (Pederastic) Love in Pre-modern Urdu Poetry,” in Studies in the Urdu Gazal and Prose Fiction, ed. by Memon, M. U. (Wisconsin, 1979), 120–141.Google Scholar

9 Shamīsā, Sīrūs, Shāhid-bāzī dar adabiyāt-i fārsī (Tehran, 2002), 37.Google Scholar

10 For the full text of Rūdakī's poem, see Tārīkh-i Sīstān, ed. by Mudarris Sādiqī, Ja‘far (Tehran, 1994), 178Google Scholar–179. References to Zoroastrian and Christian wine-servers, also conventionally male—mugh-bachcha (“Magian boy”) and tarsā-bachcha (“Christian boy”)—are also found in Persian ghazal poetry. These are the remnants of residual elements carried over from earlier Arabic -and possibly pre-Islamic Persian verse—but references to them are not as common as those to Turkish wine-servers. On poems in praise of Christian boys, see Franklin Lewis’ article in this issue.

11 Rūdakī's reference to the Turkish ethnicity of the wine-server could, however, be interpreted slightly differently: perhaps even at this very early stage in the development of Persian poetry in the Islamic period, the associations between the unyielding beauty and the Turk were sufficiently strong to allow for all beauties or objects of sexual desire to be tropically Turkified. The function of wine-serving was given to slaves, and the primary source for slaves at this time was Turkistan. Since Turks epitomized beauty in medieval Iran, and were often also slaves, it follows that the ideal wine-server in the Samanid and later Ghaznavid periods was a Turk. On this, see Yarshater, “The Theme of Wine-Drinking,” 48.

12 Rūdakī ironically suggests a noble lineage for the sāqī, who would most likely have been drawn from the ranks of the slave-soldiers or ghulāms. All translations from Persian in this article are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

13 Shamīsā, Shāhid-bāzī, 38. In the earlier, ‘Abbasid period in Baghdad there was a vogue for ghulāmiyyāt, young girls dressed as prepubescent male wine-servers. See Kennedy, Philip F., Abu Nuwas, A Genius of Poetry (Oxford, 2005), 17–18Google Scholar, and Rowson, Everett K., “Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, ed. by Farmer, Sharonand Braun Pasternack, Carol (Minneapolis, 2003), 45–72.Google Scholar

14 For a discussion of the persistence of this convention into the Ottoman period, see El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 26. In the Ottoman Arab East (as in the pre-modern Persianate world), the most usual form for homoerotic desire was pederastic, which, as El-Rouayheb says, is by definition “transgenerational.” See El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality: 33.

15 On the Turk as default male beloved in Ghaznavid poetry, see Clinton, Jerome W., The Dīvān of Manūchihrī Dāmghānī: A Critical Study (Minneapolis, 1972), 122–123.Google Scholar Andrews and Kalpaklı (The Age of Beloveds, 18) argue that the culture of the court and the court-dependent elites in both the Ottoman and pre-modern European context often expressed itself in part through homoeroticism.

16 Indeed in the first Persian anecdote in ‘Ubayd's Risāla-yi dilgushā (Ubayd-i Zākānī, Kulliyāt ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī, ed. by Mahjūb, Muhammad-Ja‘far (New York, 1999): 257–296)Google Scholar, there is the suggestion that Sultan Mahmud was a pederast (ghulām-bāra) in his adult life, and, in his youth, one who was sodomized. See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 275. On the shifting of the penetrator/penetrated roles with life stages (from boyhood to manhood) in the Ottoman context, see Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, 138. As Allen J. Frantzen notes in a not dissimilar European context—“Where the Boys are: Children and Sex in the Anglo-Saxon Penitentials,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jerome Cohen, Jeffrey and Wheeler, Bonnie (New York and London, 2000), 42–66Google Scholar, at 47—“subordination and sexual submissiveness were characteristics he [the boy] would outgrow as he matured and took male lovers of his own alongside his wife.”

17 See Bayhaqi, , Tarikh-i Bayhaqi, ed. by Danishpazhuh, Manuchihr (Tehran, 1997), 1: 403–405.Google Scholar For an interesting discussion of how new sexual anxieties in colonial India affected how writers viewed the love of Sultan Mahmūd for his slave-boy Ayāz, see Kugle, Scott, “Sultan Mahmud's Makeover: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian-Urdu Literary Tradition,” in Queering India: Same-sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, ed. by Vanita, Ruth (New York and London, 2002), 30–46.Google Scholar

18 See Schimmel, Annemarie, “Turk and Hindu: A Poetical Image and its Application to Historical Fact,” in Islam and Cultural Change in the Middle Ages, ed. by Vryonis, Speros (Wiesbaden, 1975), 107–126Google Scholar, 110–111: “At exactly the same time (11th century CE) the Turks, formerly described in not too flattering terms in the books of Arab geographers, and feared as fierce warriors, turned into the ideal of manliness: admiration for Mahmūd's beloved, the Turkish slave Ayāz, may have played a role in this development. ‘Turk’ becomes the equivalent of white, beautiful though cruel, courageous—all qualities that the ideal beloved of Persian poetry would possess.”

19 See Yarshater, “The Theme of Wine-Drinking,” 49.

20 On the military beloved in early Persian poetry, see Yarshater, “The Theme of Wine-Drinking,” 51–52.

21 For a discussion of the intricacies of the description of the beloved in the fourteenth-century Shīrāzī ghazal, see Brookshaw, “Odes of a Poet-Princess,” 179–193.

22 For similar weaponry and military imagery in ‘Abbasid Arabic poetry in praise of males, see Nuwas, Abu, Dīwān Abī Nuwās, ed. by Schoeler, Gregor (Damascus, 2003), 4: 202Google Scholar, 227, 235–237, 267, 278, 299, 313, 367, 398, 403 and 454.

23 See Kennedy, Abu Nuwas, A Genius of Poetry, 29–56.

24 On desire for slave-boys as described in ‘Abbasid belles letters, see Rowson, Everett K., “The Traffic in Boys: Slavery and Homoerotic Liaisons in Elite ‘Abbasid Society,” Middle Eastern Literatures, 11, no. 2 (August 2008): 193–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is some coincidental correspondence between the presence of Turkish slave troops at the Caliph's palace in Baghdad and the increase in the popularity of mudhakkarāt.

25 See Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds: 17-18: “…because of the private nature of relations with free, Muslim women, because it is offensive, both socially and legally, to express publicly one's attraction to a woman who is not one's wife…the love that could most properly be expressed as a public (poetic) love was that between males.”

26 See e.g. Sīstānī, Farrukhī, Dīvān, ed. by Dabīr Sīyāqī, Muhammad (Tehran, 1999), 380.Google Scholar See also Farrukhī, Dīvān, 204:
O’ Turk, take off and throw to one side your battle attire
Take up the harp, and let the shield and sword fall from your grasp.

27 Farrukhī, , Dīvān, 308.Google Scholar

28 The sexually explicit in pre-modern Persian literature is somewhat understudied. One scholar who has made considerable contributions to this field is Riccardo Zipoli. See for example, “Le Khabīthāt Obscene Di Sa‘dī,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, XXXVI, no. 3 (1997): 179–214Google Scholar and “The Obscene Sanâ'î,” Persica, XVII (2001): 173–194.Google Scholar

29 Farrukhī, , Dīvān, 5.Google Scholar

30 On the origins and development of the Persian ghazal, see Scott Meisami, Julie, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton, 1987), 237–240CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lewis, Franklin, “The Transformation of the Persian Ghazal: From Amatory Mood to Fixed Form,” in Ghazal as World Literature II, ed. by Neuwirth, A., Hess, M., Sagaster, B., and Pfeiffer, J. (Istanbul, 2006), 121–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 On poetry production and minstrelsy in pre-Islamic Persia, see Boyce, Mary, “The Parthian Gosān and the Iranian Minstrel Tradition,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 18 (1957): 10–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 On the homosocial environment in which homoerotic ghazal poetry was produced and enjoyed in the medieval period, see Murray, Stephen O., “Corporealizing Medieval Persian and Turkish Tropes,” in Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature, ed. by Murray, Stephen O. and Roscoe, Will (New York, 1997), 132–141Google Scholar, esp. 132. It is important to remember that such poetry was almost exclusively written about male beloveds, by male poets, and for male patrons, although there are some notable exceptions to this rule, such as the women poets Mahsatī and Jahān-Malik Khātūn. Moreover, Persian romance epics are for the most part heteroerotic, and so there was room for the celebration of love for idealized women at court. Some scholars, however, have argued that in romances such as the story of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā, which appear to promote heteronormative desire, there is a subtle subtext that is homoerotic in nature. On this, see Najmabadi, Afsaneh, “Reading ‘Wiles of Women’ Stories as Fictions of Masculinity,” in Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East, ed. by Ghoussoub, Mai and Sinclair-Webb, Emma (London, 2000), 147–168Google Scholar, esp. 160–162.

33 Shamīsā, Shāhid-bāzī, 165.

34 Hāfiz, Dīvān, 142–143.

35 See Hāfiz, Dīvān, 110, 194, 219, 236, 241, 268, 270, 319, 336, 340, and 343. See Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, 140–141 for evidence that in the Ottoman lands, some males could serve as sexual partners well into their twenties, if not thirties, providing they were unable to grow a full beard.

36 E.g., ‘Abdu'l-Husayn Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-yi rindān: dar-bāra-yi zindagī u andīsha-yi Hāfiz (Tehran, 1975), 44.Google Scholar For an amusing tale about pederasty in a Sufi lodge from Rūmī's Masnavī, see Lewis, Franklin D., Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oxford, 2000), 322–323.Google Scholar

37 On ‘Ubayd's standing among medieval Persian satirists, see Halabī, ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī, 121–136; and Haidari, “A Medieval Persian Satirist,” esp. 119–121.

38 E.g. Shamīsā, Shāhid-bāzī, 170.

39 On this, see Rowson, “The Traffic in Boys,” 193: “while social historians have learned to be more cautious, and more sensitive to the complexity of relations between art (or convention) and life, in utilizing anecdotal material, they continue to see it as a valuable window onto the latter as well as the former.”

40 Andrews and Kalpaklı (The Age of Beloveds, 131) argue along much the same lines for the relationship between their literary sources and contemporary reality: “It is, however, quite clear that many of these activities were amusing because some could be imagined as common practices more often enjoyed than shunned … [W]e are making the assumption that much of what seems humorous at any particular time must also seem, in some cases, to be possible or believable, even if exaggerated or bizarre.”

41 See Haidari, “A Medieval Persian Satirist,” 119.

42 In Mahjūb's edition, ‘Ubayd's famous satirical-comical poem, Mūsh u gurba (often rendered into English as Rats against Cats) is placed in a section entitled mulhaqāt (“appendices”).

43 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 257–258.

44 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 321.

45 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 322. On the submission to the sexual advances of older men for gain in social standing, see Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, 143: “Most men were enmeshed in webs of personal relations in which the weaker, poorer, and younger served the more powerful, wealthier, and older in return for valuable gifts, jobs, and introductions to people at higher levels of power.”

46 Sex with ones male slaves appears to have been deemed prohibited by many pre-modern Muslim jurists (see e.g. El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 39), but it is worth remembering that legal theory and social practice can often be poles apart. I would argue that literature is perhaps a better reflection of common social practice in this regard than legal texts. A similar argument about the “legality” of sex with one's social inferiors is made by Frédéric Lagrange in a modern Middle Eastern context. See Lagrange, Frédéric, “Male Homosexuality in Modern Arabic Literature,” in Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East, ed. by Ghoussoub, Mai and Sinclair-Webb, Emma (London, 2000), 169–198Google Scholar, at 172: “Society as reflected in adab, whether poetry or collections of anecdotes, is more tolerant than the sacred law concerning this expected passage from desire to fulfillment; and homosexual intercourse, when occurring between a grown man and one who is submitted to his authority because of his age or his social status, finds its place in the social hierarchy and never jeopardizes the order.”

47 For the explanation given by al-Jāhiz (d. 868) for the sudden increase in the popularity of sodomy in the early ‘Abbasid period (and its link to the military), see Rowson, “The Traffic in Boys,” 196. On the link between male homosocial environments and pederasty in the Ottoman Arab lands, see El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 34, “liwāt [‘sodomy’] was usually thought to involve a man and a boy, and it thus tended to be associated, at least in the popular imagination, with social contexts in which the mixing of generations was especially marked. This is not to say that liwāt was, or was believed to be, confined to such contexts. The generations were not segregated in the way the genders were, and the opportunities for pederastic courtship were correspondingly diffuse.” On the possibilities for homosexual encounters within the military context, Andrews and Kalpaklı (The Age of Beloveds, 138) write: “it is obvious that boys old enough or independent enough to go on military campaigns would be available for romantic attachments. The military connection is also significant. The army is another place dominated by young men, a place where young men bond and where…young men developed romantic and sexual relations with each other.”

48 Afsaneh Najmabadi provides ample evidence to show that the celebration of pubescent male beauty survived in Iran well into the nineteenth century. See Najmabadi, Afsaneh, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley, 2005), esp. 11–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Some of ‘Ubayd's anecdotes suggest it was not unusual for adult males to have sexual relations with both women and (younger) men. See e.g., ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 207: a certain gentleman seeks a noble woman's hand in marriage. She initially refuses saying that she has heard that he is both a fornicator (fāsiq) and a pederast (ghulām-bāra).

50 Several of ‘Ubayd's more explicit rubā‘īs celebrate anal and vaginal intercourse with women, see, e.g., ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 208, 209, and 210. One such quatrain (‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 208) reads:
This cock, which is the cypress to the stream of your cunt
Has continually been the boon companion and confidant to your cunt
Get up, come over here, for it's been a long time now
That he's been standing erect, in anticipation of your cunt.

51 See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 314 for an anecdote which refers to a master using his ghulām for sex, and is also suggestive of bestiality (with donkeys, cows, and goats).

52 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 320:

“Consider the possessions of orphans and the anuses of beautiful male slaves licit for yourselves.”

53 See e.g. ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 282. In one anecdote (‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 284), the poet refers to such an amrad as a kung: “a beardless and impudent youth.” As El-Rouayheb (Before Homosexuality: 27), the two markers of maleness, which differentiated the adult male from the female (and, by extension from the adolescent boy) in the pre-modern Islamic context were the penis and the beard.

54 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 322:
“Take full advantage of sex with young boys whose moustaches have just sprouted, for this bounty will not exist in Paradise.”

55 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 321.

56 ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī hailed from Qazvin, and began his career in that city before moving to Shiraz some time during the reign of the last Injuid, Shāh Shaykh Abū Ishāq (r. 1343–57).

57 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 288. On other anecdotes about homosexual encounters in bathhouses, see El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 42–43; and Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, 285.

58 See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 299–300, for a conversion anecdote in which a Christian boy converts to Islam, is circumcized, and then raped at night by the muhtasib (market inspector and keeper of public morals). The boy's father asks him in the morning how he finds Muslims. He says they are strange because during the day they cut your penis, and at night they tear your anus. See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 210, for a quatrain about having to resort to fucking an Indian (hindū) for the same “price” (nirkh) as a Turk.

59 For a study of the heady atmosphere of the medieval Islamic majlis, see Brookshaw, Dominic P., “Palaces, Pavilions, and Pleasure-gardens: The Context and Setting of the Medieval Majlis,” Middle Eastern Literatures, 6, no. 2 (2003): 199–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 See, e.g. ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 307. For an indecent liaison between a woman and her male lover at such a party, see ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 304. The wine tavern was a popular venue for such gatherings. See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 322 for the poet's advice on the pitfalls of becoming known for one's generosity and bonhomie at parties attended by impudent, beardless boys (kungān), minstrels (mutribān), and “beggars” (gidāyān), all of whom—it is suggested—would be on the make.

61 In this line from a bawdy quatrain (‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 210), reference is made to the exchange of money for sex:
I've got a few dirhams; give me your ass and take them [as payment]
If you don't want to give [your ass], whoever does can take them!

62 See e.g. ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 300, for an anecdote in which a cleric is found having sex with a boy in an alcove of a theological college. In a similar anecdote (‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 307) a poet sees a man having sex with a boy in a mosque. He chastises the man and then later the man catches the poet doing the same, upon which the poet quotes an Arabic phrase in defense of his own, hypocritical actions.

63 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 207: the speaker encourages his penis to rouse from its slumber:
O’ penis, it's time for marauding; don't sleep!
It's time for excellence, time to hold your head high; don't sleep!

64 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 211: the penis is likened to a well-mannered Turkish slave:
Wherever he sees a cunt, out of politeness, just like a Turk
He rises up, comes forward, and kneels respectfully.

65 See e.g. ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 299, for a short anecdote about a father who will not allow men to sleep with his handsome son; a situation which elicits comment from a jurisprudent. See also ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 302, for an anecdote in which a Turkish boy is rented from his father to work as an “attendant” (mulāzim) for a wealthy man.

66 It is perhaps worth noting that there are no explicit references to Turks in any of the poet's eighty-four Arabic anecdotes. See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 258–265.

67 Indeed, ‘Ubayd cautions his audience saying that one cannot expect chastity (mastūrī) from a lady who reads Gurgānī's eleventh-century romance, Vis u Ramin, nor anal virginity (kūn-durustī) from beardless boys who smoke hashish and drink wine. See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 321. For a discussion of similar male rape anecdotes in Ottoman literature, see Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, 257–258 and 285.

68 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 276. See also ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 277 for an anecdote in which a pederast is preparing to rape a sleeping Turkish boy, and is rubbing his penis against the boy's anus, but is not becoming erect, at which point the boy breaks wind and the pederast recites a line of poetry encouraging his penis to continue, saying:
Now a breeze is blowing, bringing news from the beloved.

69 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 296. Here the Turkish boy awakes from his slumber, and although he notices certain signs which suggest he has been molested (loosened trousers, a moist, and painful anus), the more articulate pederast convinces him of some alternative explanation for his condition.

70 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 281.

71 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 310.

72 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 320.

73 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 295.

74 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt: 290.

75 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 308. On “cash-hungry” boys in the Ottoman context who exchanged sexual favors for money or other valuables, see Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, 140 and 142.

76 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 323.

77 See e.g. ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 292: a Turkish boy dances provocatively swinging his buttocks. He grabs the attention of a pederast whom he teases with a bayt of poetry warning the man not to fall for his behind, which he likens to a great waterwheel.

78 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 321.

79 It should be remembered that it in the Persian ghazal, the beloved is often depicted as a knave, or vagabond (‘ayyār), a ruffian who belongs to the city's underclass. The beloved is a lout who seeks out brawls (sing. ‘arbada), one whose almost perpetual drunken state makes him at once both vulnerable to sexual attack by the pederast, but also quick to anger. For a fuller description of this side of the beloved's nature, see Brookshaw, “Odes of a Poet-Princess,” 184–185. On the dangers of engaging in sexual activity with the hooligans and roughs of the Ottoman underworld, see Andrews and Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, 144 and 253–254.

80 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 278.

81 Two notable examples of the panegyric use of the Turk in ‘Ubayd's poetry are: ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 26: a taghazzul in praise of Mu‘izz al-Din Uvays-i Jalāyirī which opens with the praise of “My Turk,” possibly a reference to the patron as beloved; and ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 33, where ‘Ubayd inserts a ghazal which includes praise for a Turkish beloved inside a qasida in praise of Shāh Shaykh Abū Ishāq. The opening bayt of this ghazal contains the phrase, Ay Turk-i nāzanīn-i man (“O’ my beloved Turk!”). A slightly different version of the same ghazal also appears in the ghazal section. See ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 104.

82 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 82.

83 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 85. See also ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 72:
Your Turkish eyes are strong heart-ravishers
Your Indian locks are sweet knaves.

84 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 113.

85 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 81.

86 ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 116. Poems with a similarly homoerotic tone are also found in Hāfiz's Dīvān. See e.g. Hāfiz, Dīvān, 103:
Tress awry, sweating, laughing-lipped, drunk,
Shirt in shreds, lyric-lisping, wine-cup in hand,
His eyes spoiling for a fight, lips complaining,
In the middle of last night he came and sat by my pillow.

From The Collected Lyrics of Háfiz of Shíráz, trans. by Peter Avery (Bartlow, 2007), 51.

87 The following bayt by Hāfiz (a variant found in some early manuscripts) which contains references to both Khvarazm and Samarqand has been interpreted by some as referring to Timur's conquest and pillaging of Khvarazm in 1379. See Hāfiz, Dīvān, 330:
Don't fall for beauties, Hāfiz, see what infidelities
Those Turks of Samarqand wreaked upon the people of Khvarazm!

For a discussion of this bayt, see the notes by Ghanī and Qazvīnī in Hāfiz, Dīvān, 330–331.

An earlier composition date for the poem (some time in the mid-14th century in the aftermath of the collapse of Ilkhanid rule in Iran) could mean ‘Ubayd's rejection of Central Asians here is a reference to the Mongols.

88 For a detailed discussion of the vocabulary employed by Hāfiz in this poem, see Wickens, G. M., “An Analysis of Primary and Secondary Significations in the Third Ghazal of Hāfiz,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 14, no. 3 (1952): 627–638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89 Translation by Scott Meisami, Julie, “Persona and Generic Conventions in Medieval Persian Lyric,” Comparative Criticism, 12 (1990): 136.Google Scholar

90 See e.g. Hāfiz, Dīvān, 111, 144, 236, 270; and ‘Ubayd, Kulliyāt, 84.

91 A. J. Arberry as quoted in Loloi, Parvin, Hāfiz, Master of Persian Poetry: A Critical Bibliography (London, 2004), 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

92 Michael C. Hillmann as quoted in Loloi, Hāfiz, Master of Persian Poetry, 23.

93 Julie Scott Meisami as quoted in Loloi, Hāfiz, Master of Persian Poetry, 25.

94 Sir William Jones as quoted in Loloi, Hāfiz, Master of Persian Poetry, 28.

95 On the omissions made by Jones in his translation of this poem and their implications for how the poem would have been understood by the eighteenth-century English reader, see Loloi, Hāfiz, Master of Persian Poetry, 30–31.