2009/01/01 by Sahar Amer · 70 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Marriage and Sexual Relationships #African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Lesbian #Gender studies #History #Psychology #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1353/sex.0.0052
published in Journal of the History of Sexuality 18(2), 215-236 (University of Texas Press)
openalex publication_date 2009/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/28
If t h e a b s e n c e o f a s p e c i f i c terminology to denote lesbianism in medieval Europe seems to have compromised the production of scholarship about same-sex love and desire among women, the existence of the label sahq and sihaqa, musahaqat al-nisa’, or sahiqa (Arabic words for “lesbianism” and “lesbian,” respectively) in medieval Arabic writings did not result in a richer critical production. In fact, if relatively little research has been conducted on female same-sex desire in medieval Europe, even less has been produced on homosexuality in the medieval Arabic literary or Islamicate tradition, and almost no research at all has been done on medieval Arab Islamicate lesbianism. 1 This state of scholarship into alternative sexual practices in the Arab Islamicate world is especially astonishing considering the survival of a noteworthy body of primary texts dealing precisely with this topic. Furthermore, if one broadens the category of medieval Arab lesbian to include women who were “lesbian-like,” as Judith Bennett has invited us to do in our construction of the history of Western female homosexuality, we uncover additional expressions of medieval Arab lesbian I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the Journal of the History of Sexuality who made countless helpful suggestions. 1