...kind of.

Not "homosexuality" as we think of it today, though. That is to say, an outright sexual relationship between two adult men would not have been regarded as acceptable behavior. However, under certain limited circumstances same-gender love and (depending on whom one asked) even same-gender sexual relations could be viewed as normal. Here I'm going to limit my discussion to male "homosexuality" in the Ottoman Empire prior to the nineteenth century.

 

Terminology and Law

"Homosexuality" as a category of sexual orientation was not a concept that existed in the Muslim world prior to its importation from the West. Sexually, a man was defined primarily by the acts he performed rather than the gender of the person with whom he performed those acts. Specifically, one adopted either an active or a passive role in sexual intercourse. Men were expected to actively penetrate; women were expected to passively be penetrated, and this basic dichotomy extended to the terminology used to describe male-male intercourse. One wasn't a "homosexual" engaging in a relationship with another "homosexual." Rather, one either took on the active role, thus becoming a lūṭī (sodomizer) or took on the passive role, becoming a mukhannath (Turkish: muhannes, catamite). There was no single term to refer to someone who took on both active and passive roles, although in Islamic Law the term lūṭī was sometimes used to refer to any man who engaged in anal intercourse. This emphasis on the act as such rather than an abstract "homosexuality" meant that non-anal intercourse between men was not condemned to the same degree. That's not to say that the Islamic jurists were fine with men kissing, caressing, or engaging in intercrural intercourse with one another, but these acts did not make one a lūṭī and therefore constituted only minor sins (ṣaghā'ir). Likewise, there was no legal distinction between engaging in anal sex with a man and engaging in anal sex with a woman. It was the act that mattered.

The act of anal sex, however, was universally condemned by Islamic jurists. As we will see, some groups have at some times tolerated anal sex between males under particular circumstances, but the Islamic jurists who determined what was and was not lawful were unanimous in condemning it. They nevertheless differed somewhat in how serious of a sin they considered it to be. Of the four main legal schools of Sunni Islam, three regarded anal sex as falling into the category of zinā, or illicit sexual intercourse. Punishment differed based on marital status: a married man would be liable for the death penalty by stoning, while an unmarried man would be punished with a hundred lashes. It is worth mentioning in this context that these strict punishments, called ḥadd ("limit") punishments, required either voluntary confession or the testimony of four reliable witnesses who actually saw the act being committed, while the judge was expected to make every possible excuse for the sake of the defendant, in accordance with the saying of the Prophet Muhammad: "Ward off ḥadd punishments as much as you can." We have no statistics, of course, but it seems as though ḥadd punishments occurred only infrequently because of the difficulty of actually convicting someone, and the jurists regarded this rarity of conviction as a good thing.

The fourth legal school of Sunni Islam, the Hanafi school, was the official school supported by the Ottoman Empire, and was predominant in modern-day Turkey, the Balkans, and Syria. This was the only school that did not regard anal sex as an act of zinā, simply because zinā was technically defined as the unlawful insertion of a penis into a vagina. Therefore, Hanafi jurists regarded anal sex as less of a sin than the other law schools. It could not be punished by the death penalty except potentially in the case of repeat offenders; its actual punishment was up to the discretion of the judge, but it could not be any greater than 39 lashes, one less than the lowest of all the ḥadd punishments. Most often punishment entailed some combination of lashes and a monetary fine. On the other hand, since it didn't entail a ḥadd punishment, conviction was also easier, requiring only two witnesses rather than four.

 

Sex, Love, and Beauty

One of the most striking cultural differences one finds prior to the nineteenth century has to do with the conceptual separation of romantic love and sex, and particularly how this related to the love of boys. Adolescent boys, particularly those who lacked beards (a quintessential element of manhood), were regarded as not yet belonging to the same socio-cultural category as men. Boys were widely regarded as aesthetically beautiful in a sexually neutral sense. One could look upon and appreciate a boy's handsome features without that necessarily implying sexual attraction. One finds this attitude expressed in the works of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), one of history's most influential Islamic theologians:

(Quoted in Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 54)

Do not think that the love of beautiful forms is only conceivable with an eye toward satisfying carnal desire, for satisfying carnal desire is a distinct pleasure that may be associated with the love of beautiful forms, but the perception of beauty in itself is also pleasurable and so may be loved for its own sake. How can this be denied, when greenery and flowing water are loved, not with an eye toward drinking the water or eating the greenery or to obtain anything else besides the looking itself?

Common opinion held that observing the beauty of boys was neither sinful nor deviant. Likewise, there was nothing inherently sinful or deviant about forming close relationships with them, or ultimately with falling in love with them. The two males in such a relationship would take on the roles of lover and beloved, corresponding to the older, active, pursuing man and younger, passive, pursued boy - the latter in a sense being conceptually feminized by this relationship. The chaste love of boys for their beauty was not condemned by any aside from the most puritanical of Islamic jurists, and even then not because it was objectionable in and of itself, but because of its potential to inspire unchaste feelings. Indeed, one's ability to properly recognize and praise beauty was part of what made one a cultivated and civilized person; this attitude is what led to the creation of an enormous body of "homosexual" love-poetry in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Yet most of the authors of these poems would not have viewed themselves as homosexuals even had the concept existed - many of them would have looked upon the idea of actual sex with boys as abhorrent. There was no contradiction between being married and sexually active with a woman while also appreciating the beauty of boys.

Of course, this sharp distinction between romantic love and sexual desire did not hold for everyone. Those jurists who held that it was sinful to gaze upon boys did so because they recognized that the line was so frequently crossed. Because romantic love in this context was widely regarded as normal, so too was a certain degree of physical affection. But there was a line somewhere, in which love and affection ceased to be chaste and started to be sinful. Naturally, there existed a range of opinions on this issue. Kissing appears to have been fairly common, but we do not know to what degree various forms of sexual activity were or were not tolerated and by whom. A fair bet seems to be that sexual activity was more tolerated among groups who derived their religious authority from places other than scholarly Sunni Islam, such as certain Sufi organizations, whose members were endlessly lampooned by their religious opponents for being lūṭīs. Indeed, for some Sufis, gazing at beauty was considered one way of increasing one's closeness to God (insofar as all beauty was a reflection of the beauty of the divine), thus giving religious sanction to pederastic relationships.