Reading the familiarity of the past : an introduction to medieval Arabic literature on female homosexuality

This paper introduces a selection of mainly medieval material (written between the ninth and eighteenth centuries AD in Arabia), not previously available in English and dealing with female homosexuality. The critical and theoretical importance of this material casts a new light on approaches to sexuality studies, particularly in the framework of queer theory which, in recent years, has abandoned an essentialist analytical approach in favour of the view of sexuality-as-a-concept. The introductory paper challenges the assumption that sexualities are the sheer products of discursive structures and hence not the properties of individuals themselves. The paper also addresses a number of orientalist stereotypes that have dominated the (mis)understanding of female homosexual relations and behaviours in the Arab world, indicating that female homosexuality in this region has a long recognised history among the Arabs which has only in the most recent centuries been ignored