Organizing, Presenting, and Reading Sexual Knowledge: The Abbasid Context of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha
Abstract The oldest surviving erotic manual in Arabic, Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha , is characterised by a mix of medical and technical advice, interspersed with entertaining stories, hadith, poetry and historical anecdotes. In this article, I survey the organization of information in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha and...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2020
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| In: |
Journal of Abbasid Studies
Year: 2020, Volume: 7, Issue: 2, Pages: 182-206 |
| Further subjects: | B
Medicine
B Encyclopaedias B ʿilm al-bāh B erotic literature B Sexuality B Buyids B Adab |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Abstract The oldest surviving erotic manual in Arabic, Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha , is characterised by a mix of medical and technical advice, interspersed with entertaining stories, hadith, poetry and historical anecdotes. In this article, I survey the organization of information in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha and discuss its contribution to Arab-Islamic scholarship. I argue that the author and his intended readers lived in the second half of the fourth/tenth century. The organization of sexual knowledge was part of the scholarly pursuit to organize the massive amount of pre-Islamic scholarship translated into Arabic during the Abbasid caliphate as well as the growing body of Arabic-Islamic scholarship. Although the presentation of this knowledge varies in the extant manuscript copies of the book, which were written for later audiences, all manuscripts share some basic tools for navigating the content, which suggests that the author made efforts to make it accessible for readers. |
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| ISSN: | 2214-2371 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Abbasid Studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/22142371-12340059 |