Yusuf’s “Queer” Beauty in Persian Cultural Productions

Yaghoobi, Claudia

doi:10.1353/com.2016.0014

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In images that entail both men and women, women are portrayed in diverse but specific roles such as lovers, subjects and objects of lust, spectators of events, dancers, and musicians (albeit less predominantly than men) (Babaie, 2009; Ghazanfari and Tabatabaii, 2017). Both men and women are eroticized in Safavid paintings (Yaghoobi, 2016), but the depiction of female nudity is not common (Rezaei et al, 2020). Despite their relatively less frequent appearance in paintings, paintings depicting Safavid women are still both abundant and digitally accessible.…”

Section: Safavid Women and Their Place In (Digitized) Paintingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Down the (digital) rabbit hole: Mapping and decolonizing Safavid women's imagery in digital museums

Rahbari

2023

Journal of Material Culture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, I trace Safavid paintings depicting women's imagery online and explore the possibility of digitally mapping Safavid (1501–1736) paintings featuring women on publicly accessible platforms. Along with the practice of online mapping that led me to digital museums, I investigated the descriptions presented on three digitized paintings on different platforms to address the questions, “Where and how can Safavid paintings be digitally encountered” and “In light of the theoretical developments in the scholarship on pre-modern discourses of Safavid gender and sexuality, how do the descriptions of Safavid paintings reflect gender discourses online?” By following Safavid paintings of women online and probing the textual descriptions attached to them, and using netnographic research methods to document my experience and encounter with the digitized Safavid paintings, I explore whether the online descriptions accompanying the images could contribute to the making of decolonial knowledge about non-Western gender discourses.

show abstract

Section: Safavid Women and Their Place In (Digitized) Paintingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Down the (digital) rabbit hole: Mapping and decolonizing Safavid women's imagery in digital museums

Rahbari

2023

Journal of Material Culture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This belief, among other cultural grounds, meant that the practice of non-heterosexual relationships was accepted and prevalent during the Safavid period. The eroticization of the male body and homoerotic love were trends in the medieval Islamic period and peaked in popularity in the Safavid era (Yaghoobi 2016). Yaghoobi (2016) analyzed Persian cultural productions, in which homoeroticism is depicted, and argues that these productions could illustrate either master-slave relationships, where slaves were sexually subjected to their masters, or the Sufi practice of Shahidbazi, where younger, beardless, adolescent boys were the object of an adult man's desire.…”

Section: Marriage Concubinage and Motherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The eroticization of the male body and homoerotic love were trends in the medieval Islamic period and peaked in popularity in the Safavid era (Yaghoobi 2016). Yaghoobi (2016) analyzed Persian cultural productions, in which homoeroticism is depicted, and argues that these productions could illustrate either master-slave relationships, where slaves were sexually subjected to their masters, or the Sufi practice of Shahidbazi, where younger, beardless, adolescent boys were the object of an adult man's desire. Shahidbazi practice entailed spiritual, emotional, and sometimes lustful elements (for more on this, see Najmabadi 2005;Zargar 2013).…”

Section: Marriage Concubinage and Motherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered and Ethnic Captivity and Slavery in Safavid Persia: A Literature Review

Rahbari

2021

Social Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Safavid society’s approach to sexuality and gender has made it a reference for the “pre-modern” discourse, in which gender and sexuality manifest—in contemporary terminology—queerness and fluidity. While it is important not to romanticize the image of the Orient as a queer heaven, it is possible to consider Safavid society as an important site of inquiry that offers valuable insights on pre-colonial gender and sexuality. A less discussed topic in Safavid literature on gender and sexuality is gendered and sexual slavery. This study conducts a review of primary and secondary literature on the Safavid period, including Western travelogues. The paper aims to outline the relations between existing forms of captivity and factors such as gender and ethnic background. The research explores the prevalence of slavery reported in Safavid literature and how slaves’ positions were defined within social hierarchies.

show abstract

“…19-29). In the Malay manuscripts, their union is often referred to as the paragon of passion and pleasure, which may also have been inspired by the 15th century Persian poem by 'Abd al-Rahman Jami on the allegorical romance between Yusuf and Zulaikha (Yaghoobi 2016).…”

Section: The Valorisation Of Pleasurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Manuals in Malay Manuscripts as Another Transcript of Gender Relations

Mohamad¹

2021

Religions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article interprets the narratives of sex manuals produced within the Malay-Indonesian archipelago before the coming of Western colonialism and the dawn of postcolonial Islamic resurgence. In the collection of Malaysian libraries and museums, these manuscripts are largely classified as Kitab Jimak and Kitab Tib. They are all written in the Malay language with indigenous references, though the contents are likely derived from a common genre of texts transmitted from an early Arab-Islamic world and circulated within the region before the coming of European colonialism. The corpora of sexual knowledge in these texts emphasises the valorisation of sexual pleasure in conjugal relationships. Through an extensive list of prescriptions—from sexual techniques to diet, food taboos, medicine, pharmacopoeia, mantras, charms, and astrological knowledge—a near-sacral sexual experience is aspired. Couples are guided in their attainment of pleasure (nikmat) through the adherence of Islamic ethics (akhlak), rules (hukum), and etiquette (tertib). The fulfilment of women’s desire in the process is central in these observances. Nevertheless, despite placing much emphasis on mutual pleasure, these texts also contain ambiguous and paradoxical pronouncements on the position of women, wavering from veneration to misogyny. The article also highlights how intertextual studies of similar texts throughout the Islamic world can be a new focus of studies on the early history of gender and sexuality in Islam.

show abstract

Yusuf’s “Queer” Beauty in Persian Cultural Productions

Cited by 3 publications

References 10 publications

Down the (digital) rabbit hole: Mapping and decolonizing Safavid women's imagery in digital museums

Down the (digital) rabbit hole: Mapping and decolonizing Safavid women's imagery in digital museums

Gendered and Ethnic Captivity and Slavery in Safavid Persia: A Literature Review

Sex Manuals in Malay Manuscripts as Another Transcript of Gender Relations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About