The Saracen as sexual predator

[transemacabre]

Over several centuries of contact during the Crusades, the Franks and the Saracens had ample opportunity to observe one another's cultures and poke swords into one another. In an earlier post on oltramar, I stated that in my opinion that both sides were somewhat sexually obsessed with each other.


A 10th century Latin play by Hrosthwitha of Gandersheim depicted the martyr Pelagius being captured and seduced by the Caliph Abderahemen (Abd al-Rahman III), who was "corrupted by sodomic vices" [This sounds suspiciously like an early slash fic]. The theme of tender young Christian boys at the mercy of lascivious Arabs seems to have been a common fear for centuries afterward.


Pictured: Every straight white Christian medieval male's worst nightmare.

A forged letter allegedly sent by the Emperor Alexios I to Robert of Flanders details Muslim atrocities against their Christian victims, building to a crescendo in which "Men of every age and rank -- that is, boys, youths, old men, young men, nobles, servants, and -- what is worse and more wicked -- clerics and monks and even, alas! and for shame, something from the beginning of time has never been spoken or heard of, bishops -- have been degraded by the sin of sodomy. They have already killed one bishop with this abominable sin."

Guibert of Nogent repeats the dead bishop story, and says: "And while [the Muslims] do not spare the feminine sex -- which nevertheless might be excused by virtue of its agreement with nature -- they go onto the masculine..."

Back in England, the Hereford Map in Hereford Cathedral depicts images of 'Monstrous Races', among them a nude hermaphroditic figure depicted in a Muslim-style turban.


Pictured: a typical Arab court filled with half-man, half-leopard dragon-tailed archers and gigantic-headed women in paisley surrounded by black eunuchs and scimitar-wielding Turks.

Fidentius of Padua, in his Liber de recuperatione terrae sanctae, written between 1266 and 1291, claimed that the Saracens were lecherous "from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads", and that their love of sodomy alone is reason enough for Christians to fight them, even putting aside the whole Crusades and Holy Land business. His contemporary, a Florentine Dominican named Riccoldo da Montecroce, who despite having lived and preached among Arabs in Akko, Jerusalem, the Mongol ilkhanate, and Baghdad, erroneously claimed that the Qu'ran permitted same-sex love.


Pictured: An Abassid caliph with his harem of jizz-hungry boy-sluts.

The French Dominican, William of Adam, writing about 1318, helpfully tells us that "in the Saracen religion any sexual act at all is not only not forbidden, but permitted and praised." He goes onto to describe effete young Saracens shaving their beards and cross-dressing in order to cohabitate with their male lovers [and how do you know about this, William?].

Marino Sanudo, a Venetian nobleman, and his contemporary Jacopo da Verona both describe the practice of the Egyptian sultan purchasing handsome slave boys for his "excrabile et publice" crimes.

SOURCES:

Babayan, Katherine and Najmabadi, Afsenah. Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire, 2008.
Strickland, Debra. Saracens, demons, & Jews: making monsters in medieval art, 2003.
Tolan, John. Saracens: Islam in the medieval European imagination, 2002.

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Although there was an element of truth in it. Despite it being forbidden in Koranic terms, the barriers that Islamic culture put in the way of men and women mixing socially created a strongly homosocial culture with a thriving gay subculture. That's why North Africa and the Middle East proved such eye-openers for gay Western travellers in the 19-early 20C: you couldn't touch the women, but you could have a boy without too much difficulty. (See André Gide, & c.)