Reconfiguring the Abbasid court : the case of al-Amin

Abstract

The Abbasid court has been sparsely analyzed. In particular, the study of sexuality and gender within court culture has been limited to readings of adab and poetry. This thesis analyzes how Abbasid sources depicted al-Amīn’s gender identity and his sexual practices and how modern sources present him. Abbasid writers did not classify al-Amīn’s sexuality by his partners. Rather, I contend that early Abbasid society understood gender, sex, and sexuality differently from modern designations of him as a homosexual, as they reflect purely Euro-American constructs of a homosexual- heterosexual binary. In lieu of such previously postulated ideas, I contend that Abbasid writers understood al-Amīn as involved in non-normative sexual practices but these actions did not destabilize his gender identity. Therefore, instead of imposing current interpretations of those categorizations, I analyze depictions of Caliph al-Amīn’s gender identity and his sexual practices in the historical works of al-Tabarī, al-Jahshiyārī, and al-Mas‘ūdī. Two divergent patterns emerge in the reconfiguring of al-Amin’s identity from the twentieth century onwards. On one hand, some modern writers treat al-Amīn and his court as involved in homosexuality. On the other hand, some writers have virtually erased him from the historical record altogether due to his sexual irregularities, while trying to normalize the peculiarities of his reign within a normalized Abbasid culture.