Some Ottoman manuscripts and literary works depict or discuss male-male desire. They show that such themes had a place in particular literary and artistic settings, but they do not prove that Ottoman society as a whole was accepting in the modern sense. The headline’s “ancient Turkish” wording is loose: its central example is an eighteenth-century Ottoman manuscript, not an object from antiquity.
Which manuscript is the headline about?
The headline refers to British Library manuscript Or. 13882, an eighteenth-century Ottoman copy of the Hamse-i Atā’ī, a collection of four mesnevis by Atā’ī. A 2019 Scroll.in article describes the volume as containing 30 miniatures and discusses how some images may relate to poems that invoke same-sex desire. The manuscript’s colophon is reported as dated 10 Rebiülahir 1151 AH, or 28 July 1738 CE.
That interpretation belongs to the article’s reading of the relationship between poem and image; it does not mean every miniature depicts a sexual encounter, or that an image by itself establishes the subjects’ genders, identities, or relationship. The example is one manuscript, not a representative sample of Turkish or Ottoman books.
What do other Ottoman manuscripts show?
Two museum catalogues document separate manuscripts that make male-male erotic themes more explicit. Their different genres and contents help show why each object must be read on its own terms.
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| Manuscript | Date and genre | What the catalogue describes | What the evidence supports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hubanname of Enderuni Fazıl | LACMA dates its manuscript to 1795/A.H. 1210 and identifies it as made in Turkey. It is versified writing about men’s amorous qualities. | LACMA describes a risqué text paired with portraits that may appear almost innocuous, and says the work explores the “true” love enjoyed between men. It places the work alongside Fazıl’s Zenanname, concerning relations with women. | The catalogue supports the presence of male-male desire as a literary and visual theme in this work; it does not establish what all readers thought about such desire or conduct. |
| The David Collection’s manuscript with sexual illustrations | The museum dates this Ottoman manuscript to 1799–1817 and places it in the bahname genre of erotic literature. | It contains a Turkish translation of an Arabic erotic manual attributed to al-Tifashi; shorter texts about the beauty and characteristics of men, women, and young boys; erotic anecdotes; and 85 miniature paintings on vellum by several anonymous artists. The museum says some images follow the texts while others intensify their erotic undertones. | One scene shows two Greek boys dressed as women dancing in Galata. The catalogue suggests that a seated Ottoman official may recur in later sexual scenes and may have been the patron, but presents that identification cautiously. |
These examples are not interchangeable. The Hubanname and the David Collection’s bahname are separate works, with different texts and images. A catalogue’s interpretation of an image, including a possible identification of a patron, should be treated as an interpretation rather than an established fact.
How should poems and images be interpreted?
Ottoman poetry and manuscript painting use conventions that complicate a modern, literal reading. A poem’s beloved may be a figure within a genre, and an image may relate to a text in ways that are conventional, suggestive, or deliberately ambiguous. Neither automatically gives us a direct account of an author’s private relationships or the depicted person’s identity.
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At the same time, genre does not make this evidence meaningless. As historian Noel Malcolm argues in his 2022 study of early-modern male-male relations, sustained cultural enjoyment of homoerotic genres is evidence of what could be expressed and recognized. His article also examines a 1588 scandal investigated at the Venetian embassy in Istanbul and other evidence to argue that Western visitors’ accounts—often prejudiced—can be considered alongside Ottoman sources documenting a wider pattern of same-sex relations in the Mediterranean. He stresses that practice and the degree of public expression varied across contexts.
Malcolm writes: “Historians now avoid the terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘homosexuality’, which indicate a distinct type of disposition or personality, as the applicability of such a category in the pre-modern period is problematic.” The point is not to deny that people engaged in same-sex relations; it is to avoid assigning historical people a modern identity category without evidence. It is more precise to describe the acts, relationships, literary conventions, and social roles that sources actually document. Read more in Malcolm’s “Forbidden Love in Istanbul,” published in Past & Present in 2022.
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Does this prove the Ottoman past was more inclusive?
Not on its own. “Inclusive” can refer to different things: whether desire appeared in literature, whether people could express it publicly, how particular relationships were treated, or whether a society recognized identities comparable to modern LGBTQ categories. Manuscripts can provide evidence about literary and visual expression; by themselves, they cannot establish universal acceptance, safety, or a society-wide level of tolerance.
A study in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, “Efendilik: Civility, Urbanity, and Homohistoricism in Contentious Istanbul,” discusses public homoerotic expression in Ottoman divan poetry, often structured around male and younger male beloveds. It also examines how competing accounts of Ottoman history are used in contemporary disputes. Claims that the Ottoman past was either simply tolerant or simply intolerant can therefore do political work in the present as well as describe the past.
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- Over 200 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and conceptual pieces
- Length: 7.75in / 20cm, Depth: 2in / 5cm, Width: 6in / 15cm
- By Hans Werner Holzwarth
- Hardcover
- 696 pages
A careful comparison asks what kind of evidence is being used: a poem, an image, a museum catalogue, or a scholarly study; what the work’s genre is; what its text says versus what an image depicts; and whether a claim concerns literary visibility, documented practice, public expression, or social acceptance. The surviving examples establish that male-male desire had a place in particular Ottoman cultural settings. They do not settle how inclusive Ottoman society was as a whole.
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