(Boylove Documentary Sourcebook) - The Ideal Age for Young Male Beloveds in Ottoman Turkish Literature, and the Contemporaneous Pederastic Terminology Applied to Them, as Featured in 'Ardour-Inducing' by Sünbül-zâde Vehbî

Portrait of a young Turk (second half of the 1830s–1840s) by Grigory Grigorievich Gagarin. Unfinished. Oil on canvas, 94 × 76.5 cm (Saint Petersburg, Russia: State Russian Museum).

From "Three Genders, Two Sexualities: The Evidence of Ottoman Erotic Terminology" by İrvin Cemil Schick, in Sex and Desire in Muslim Cultures: Beyond Norms and Transgression from the Abbasids to the Present Day, edited by Aymon Kreil, Lucia Sorbera and Serena Tolino, Gender and Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2021). Footnotes omitted.

Note: Ardour-inducing (Şevk-engîz) is an Ottoman Turkish ribald poem by Sünbül-zâde Vehbî (d. 1224/1809), written in the form of a debate between two men on the respective merits of sexual relations with women and with boys.

The ideal age for boy-beloveds was described fairly precisely by Vehbî in his Şevk-engîz:

A new moon [shaped] like his eyebrows when a child,
He becomes a full moon when he reaches his fourteenth year.
[...]
[First] a child, he becomes a beardless youth to play with;
Once his beard sprouts, playing with him goes bad.

The word emred (from the Arabic amrad), which appears in the second couplet, signifies beardless youth and is a recurring theme in Ottoman – as well as Arabic and Persian – literature.

[...]

Other terms for a boy as sex-object included civân or cüvân (from the Persian jawān = young man), gulâm (from the Arabic ghulām = young man whose moustache is jut sprouting), hîz (from the Arabic ḥîz = catamite), hûbân (from the Persian khūb = beautiful, here pl.), oğlan (from the Old Turkic oğul = boy, son), uşak (from the Early Turkish uşak = little), tâze (from the Persian tāza = fresh, new, young), puşt (from the Persian pusht = back) and vâsıla (from the Arabic wāşala = one who ‘held communion, or commerce, of love’). A selection of couplets from Vehbî’s Şevk-engîz illustrates some of these terms:

Know that the soul of the world is the young boy.
He turns the old lover into a young man.
[...]
When you get hold of such a young man,
Make sure you do not miss the opportunity of union [sex] with him.
[...]
Each was a leader in the kingdom of words;
From beginning to end, they sang the praises of boys.

Fragmentary tile depicting a young man. North-western Iran (?), Safavid period, first quarter of the 17th century. Stonepaste, overslip and underglaze painted decoration. Paris, Musée du Louvre, OA 5544.

See also

• Adult friend (dictionary)
• Age of attraction (dictionary)
• Boylove
• Ephebophilia
• Ghilman
• Loved boy (dictionary)
• Minor-attracted person (dictionary)
• Pederasty in the Middle East and Central Asia
• Pedophilia
• Situational homosexuality (dictionary)
• Sufism
• Tellak
• Young friend (dictionary)

External links

• THE AGE OF THE LOVED BOY IN THE ARAB-ISLAMIC WORLD, 1500-1800 (Greek Love Through the Ages)