In Najmabadis article ’‘Early Qajar’’ Najmabadi provides an understanding of gender-undifferentiated notions of beauty and desire, she also explains the modes of maleness(amrad) in Qajar. At the time adolescent men with first trace of mustache, were the ideals of male beauty.
The amrad was represented as the male object of desire. In Sufi practices, ’‘the figure of young adolescent men as object of desire was linked with the practice of gazing’’(17). The desire of adolescent men was not considered a sin because sin belonged to the real of deeds(18). Although the practice was punished it didn’t prosper. Iranian images of beauty changed as the 19th century came to a close. When the images of beauty changed a normative concept of heterosexual love emerged.
In Khaled El-Rouayheb’s article ’’ Before Homosexexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800’’ he explains that the term ’‘homosexuality’’ was not used in the same way as it is today because before the 1900’s it didn’t even exist. ''Sodomy was according to the modern koran one of the worst sins you could make, ’’ However many of them clearly did not believe that falling in love with a boy or expressing this love in verse was therefor also illicit’’. For example there was a difference between ’’ falling ardently in love with a boy and expresing his love in verse and, on the other hand, committing sodomy with a boy’’(5). It was not possible to describe the forms of men loving each other because the term ’‘homosexuality’’ didn’t exist. El-Rouayheb mentioned three distinctions in in order to explain man-love. There was a distinction between ’‘active’’ and ’‘passive’’ partners , a disctinction between passionate infatuation and sexual lust, and a distinction between anal intercourse and non-anal intercourse. All these distinctions showed what man-love means. Depending on the culture people responded differently to each distincition.
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