read: “And if two (men) among you commit the crime, then punish
them both,” the penalty being some hurt or damage by public
reproach, insult or scourging. There are four distinct references
to Lot and the Sodomites in chapters vii. 78; xi. 77–84; xxvi.
160–174 and xxix. 28–35. In the first the prophet commissioned to
the people says, “Proceed ye to a fulsome act wherein no creature
hath foregone ye? Verily ye come to men in lieu of women
lustfully.” We have then an account of the rain which made an end
of the wicked and this judgment on the Cities of the Plain is
repeated with more detail in the second reference. Here the
angels, generally supposed to be three, Gabriel, Michael and
Raphael, appeared to Lot as beautiful youths, a sore temptation
to the sinners and the godly man’s arm was straitened concerning
his visitors because he felt unable to protect them from the
erotic vagaries of his fellow townsmen. He therefore shut his
doors and from behind them argued the matter: presently the
riotous assembly attempted to climb the wall when Gabriel, seeing
the distress of his host, smote them on the face with one of his
wings and blinded them so that all moved off crying for aid and
saying that Lot had magicians in his house. Hereupon the “Cities”
which, if they ever existed, must have been Fellah villages, were
uplifted: Gabriel thrust his wing under them and raised them so
high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven (the lunar sphere)
could hear the dogs barking and the cocks crowing. Then came the
rain of stones: these were clay pellets baked in hell-fire,
streaked white and red, or having some mark to distinguish them
from the ordinary and each bearing the name of its destination
like the missiles which destroyed the host of Abrahat
al-Ashram.[FN#385] Lastly the “Cities” were turned upside down
and cast upon earth. These circumstantial unfacts are repeated at
full length in the other two chapters; but rather as an instance
of Allah’s power than as a warning against pederasty, which
Mohammed seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference.
The general opinion of his followers is that it should be
punished like fornication unless the offenders made a public act
of penitence. But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too
clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear
to have seen rem in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious
opinion that the Ghilmán or Wuldán, the beautiful boys of
Paradise, the counter parts of the Houris, will be lawful
catamites to the True Believers in a future state of happiness:
the idea is nowhere countenanced in Al-Islam; and, although I
have often heard debauchées refer to it, the learned look upon
the assertion as scandalous.
As in Marocco so the Vice prevails throughout the old regencies
of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and all the cities of the South
Mediterranean seaboard, whilst it is unknown to the Nubians, the
Berbers and the wilder tribes dwelling inland. Proceeding
Eastward we reach Egypt, that classical region of all
abominations which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest
contact with men leading the purest of lives, models of
moderation and morality, of religion and virtue. Amongst the
ancient Copts Le Vice was part and portion of the Ritual and was
represented by two male partridges alternately copulating
(Interp. in Priapi Carm. xvii). The evil would have gained
strength by the invasion of Cambyses (B.C. 524), whose armies,
after the victory over Psammenitus. settled in the Nile-Valley
and held it, despite sundry revolts, for some hundred and ninety
years. During these six generations the Iranians left their mark
upon Lower Egypt and especially, as the late Rogers Bey proved,
upon the Fayyum, the most ancient Delta of the Nile.[FN#386] Nor
would the evil be diminished by the Hellenes who, under Alexander
the Great, “liberator and saviour of Egypt” (B.C. 332),
extinguished the native dynasties: the love of the Macedonian for
Bagoas the Eunuch being a matter of history. From that time and
under the rule of the Ptolemies the morality gradually decayed;
the Canopic orgies extended into private life and the debauchery
of the men was equalled only by the depravity of the women.
Neither Christianity nor Al-Islam could effect a change for the
better; and social morality seems to have been at its worst
during the past century when Sonnini travelled (A.D. 1717). The
French officer, who is thoroughly trustworthy, draws the darkest
picture of the widely spread criminality, especially of the
bestiality and the sodomy (chaps. xv.), which formed the “delight
of the Egyptians.” During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his
letter to General Bruix (p. 19) says, “Les Arabes et les
Mamelouks ont traité quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme
Socrate traitait, dit-on, Alcibiade. Il fallait périr ou y
passer.” Old Anglo-Egyptians still chuckle over the tale of Sa’id
Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer, the high-dried and highly respectable
Consul-General for the Netherlands, who was solemnly advised to
make the experiment, active and passive, before offering his
opinion upon the subject. In the present age extensive
intercourse with Europeans has produced not a reformation but a
certain reticence amongst the upper classes: they are as vicious
as ever, but they do not care for displaying their vices to the
eyes of mocking strangers.
Syria and Palestine, another ancient focus of abominations,
borrowed from Egypt and exaggerated the worship of androgynic and
hermaphroditic deities. Plutarch (De Iside) notes that the old
Nilotes held the moon to be of “male-female sex,” the men
sacrificing to Luna and the women to Lunus.[FN#387] Isis also was
a hermaphrodite, the idea being that Aether or Air (the lower
heavens) was the menstruum of generative nature; and Damascius
explained the tenet by the all-fruitful and prolific powers of
the atmosphere. Hence the fragment attributed to Orpheus, the
song of Jupiter (Air):—
All things from Jove descend
Jove was a male, Jove was a deathless bride;
For men call Air, of two fold sex, the Jove.
Julius Pirmicus relates that “The Assyrians and part of the
Africians” (along the Mediterranean seaboard?) “hold Air to be
the chief element and adore its fanciful figure (imaginata
figura), consecrated under the name of Juno or the Virgin Venus.
* * * Their companies of priests cannot duly serve her unless
they effeminate their faces, smooth their skins and disgrace
their masculine sex by feminine ornaments. You may see men in
their very temples amid general groans enduring miserable
dalliance and becoming passives like women (viros muliebria
pati), and they expose, with boasting and ostentation, the
pollution of the impure and immodest body.” Here we find the
religious significance of eunuchry. It was practiced as a
religious rite by the Tympanotribas or Gallus,[FN#388] the
castrated votary of Rhea or Bona Mater, in Phrygia called Cybele,
self mutilated but not in memory of Atys; and by a host of other
creeds: even Christianity, as sundry texts show,[FN#389] could
not altogether cast out the old possession. Here too we have an
explanation of Sotadic love in its second stage, when it became,
like cannibalism, a matter of superstition. Assuming a nature-implanted
tendency, we see that like human sacrifice it was held
to be the most acceptable offering to the God-goddess in the
Orgia or sacred ceremonies, a something set apart for peculiar
worship. Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of Isis (Inachidos
limina, Isiacæ sacraria Lunæ) were centres of sodomy, and the
religious practice was adopted by the grand priestly castes from
Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.
We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical
destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.), Sodom, Gomorrah (=
’Amirah, the cultivated country), Adama, Zeboïm and Zoar or Bela.
The legend has been amply embroidered by the Rabbis who make the
Sodomites do everything à l’envers: e.g., if a man were wounded
he was fined for bloodshed and was compelled to fee the offender;
and if one cut off the ear of a neighbour’s ass he was condemned
to keep the animal till the ear grew again. The Jewish doctors
declare the people to have been a race of sharpers with rogues
for magistrates, and thus they justify the judgment which they
read literally. But the traveller cannot accept it. I have
carefully examined the lands at the North and at the South of
that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea, whose tranquil
loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab, is an object of
admiration to all save patients suffering from the strange
disease “Holy Land on the Brain.”[FN#390] But I found no traces
of craters in the neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no
remains of “meteoric stones”: the asphalt which named the water
is a mineralised vegetable washed out of the limestones, and the
sulphur and salt are brought down by the Jordan into a lake
without issue. I must therefore look upon the history as a myth
which may have served a double purpose. The first would be to
deter the Jew from the Malthusian practices of his pagan
predecessors, upon whom obloquy was thus cast, so far resembring
the scandalous and absurd legend which explained the names of the
children of Lot by Pheiné and Thamma as “Moab” .(Mu-ab) the water
or semen of the father, and “Ammon” as mother’s son, that is,
bastard. The fable would also account for the abnormal fissure
containing the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea, which the late Sir
R. I. Murchison used wrong-headedly to call a “Volcano of
Depression”: this geological feature, that cuts off the
river-basin from its natural outlet, the Gulf of Eloth (Akabah),
must date from myriads of years before there were “Cities of the
Plains.” But the main object of the ancient lawgiver, Osarsiph,
Moses or the Moseidæ, was doubtless to discountenance a
perversion prejudicial to the increase of population. And he
speaks with no uncertain voice, Whoso lieth with a beast shall
surely be put to death (Exod. xxii. 19): If a man lie with
mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an
abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall
be upon them (Levit. xx. 13; where v.v. 15–16 threaten with death
man and woman who lie with beasts). Again, There shall be no
whore of the daughters of Israel nor a sodomite of the sons of
Israel (Deut. xxii. 5).
The old commentators on the Sodom-myth are most unsatisfactory,
e.g. Parkhurst, s.v. Kadesh. “From hence we may observe the
peculiar propriety of this punishment of Sodom and of the
neighbouring cities. By their sodomitical impurities they meant
to acknowledge the Heavens as the cause of fruitfulness
independently upon, and in opposition to, Jehovah;[FN#391]
therefore Jehovah, by raining upon them not genial showers but
brimstone from heaven, not only destroyed the inhabitants, but
also changed all that country, which was before as the garden of
God, into brimstone and salt that is not sown nor beareth,
neither any grass groweth therein.” It must be owned that to this
Pentapolis was dealt very hard measure for religiously and
diligently practicing a popular rite which a host of cities even
in the present day, as Naples and Shiraz, to mention no others,
affect for simple luxury and affect with impunity. The myth may
probably reduce itself to very small proportions, a few Fellah
villages destroyed by a storm, like that which drove Brennus from
Delphi.
The Hebrews entering Syria found it religionised by Assyria
and Babylonia, whence Accadian Ishtar had passed west and had
become Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth or Ashirah,[FN#392] the Anaitis of
Armenia, the Phnician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, the great
Moon-goddess,[FN#393 ] who is queen of Heaven and Love. In another
phase she was Venus Mylitta = the Procreatrix, in Chaldaic Mauludatá
and in Arabic Moawallidah, she who bringeth forth. She was worshipped
by men habited as women and vice-versâ; for which reason in the Torah
(Deut. xx. 5) the sexes are forbidden to change dress. The male
prostitutes were called Kadesh the holy, the women being Kadeshah,
and doubtless gave themselves up to great excesses. Eusebius (De bit.
Const. iii. c. 55) describes a school of impurity at Aphac, where women
and “men who were not men” practiced all manner of abominations in
honour of the Demon (Venus). Here the Phrygian symbolism of Kybele and
Attis (Atys) had become the Syrian Ba’al Tammuz and Astarte, and the
Grecian Dionæa and Adonis, the anthropomorphic forms of the two greater
lights. The site, Apheca, now Wady al-Afik on the route from Bayrut to
the Cedars, is a glen of wild and wondrous beauty, fitting frame-work
for the loves of goddess and demigod: and the ruins of the temple
destroyed by Constantine contrast with Nature’s work, the glorious
fountain, splendidior vitro, which feeds the River Ibrahim and still at
times Adonis runs purple to the sea.[FN#394]
The Phnicians spread this androgynic worship over Greece. We
find the consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian
Aphrodite called Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten
thousand courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple: from this
excessive luxury arose the proverb popularised by Horace. One of
the headquarters of the cult was Cyprus where, as Servius relates
(Ad Æn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded Aphrodite with
feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred like a man. The
sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits and here the virginity
was offered in sacrifice: Herodotus (i. c. 199) describes this
defloration at Babylon but sees only the shameful part of the
custom which was a mere consecration of a tribal rite. Everywhere
girls before marriage belong either to the father or to the clan
and thus the maiden paid the debt due to the public before
becoming private property as a wife. The same usage prevailed in
ancient Armenia and in parts of Ethiopia; and Herodotus tells us
that a practice very much like the Babylonian “is found also in
certain parts of the Island of Cyprus:” it is noticed by Justin
(xviii. c. 5) and probably it explains the “Succoth Benoth” or
Damsels’ booths which the Babylonians bans planted to the cities
of Samaria.[FN#395] The Jews seem very successfully to have
copied the abominations of their pagan neighbours, even in the
matter of the “dog.”[FN#396] In the reign of wicked Rehoboam
(B.C. 975) “There were also sodomites in the land and they did
according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord
cast out before the children of Israel” (I Kings xiv. 20). The
scandal was abated by zealous King Asa (B.C. 958) whose
grandmother[FN#397] was high-priestess of Priapus (princeps in
sacris Priapi): he “took away the sodomites out of the land” (I
Kings XV. 12). Yet the prophets were loud in their complaints,
especially the so-called Isaiah (B.C. 760), “except the Lord of
Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should have been as
Sodom” (i. 9); and strong measures were required from good King
Josiah (B.C. 641) who amongst other things, “brake down the
houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where
the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Kings xxiii. 7). The
bordels of boys (pueris alienis adhæseverunt) appear to have been
near the Temple.
Syria has not forgotten her old “praxis.” At Damascus I found
some noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great Amawi
Mosque. As for the Druses we have Burckhardt’s authority (Travels
in Syria, etc., p. 202), “unnatural propensities are very common
amongst them.”
The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia
now occupied by the “unspeakable Turk,” a race of born pederasts;
and in the former region we first notice a peculiarity of the
feminine figure, the mammæ inclinatæ, jacentes et pannosæ, which
prevails over all this part of the belt. Whilst the women to the
North and South have, with local exceptions, the mammæ stantes of
the European virgin,[FN#398] those of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan
and Kashmir lose all the fine curves of the bosom, sometimes even
before the first child; and after it the hemispheres take the
form of bags. This cannot result from climate only; the women of
Marathá-land, inhabiting a damper and hotter region than Kashmir,
are noted for fine firm breasts even after parturition. Le Vice
of course prevails more in the cities and towns of Asiatic Turkey
than in the villages; yet even these are infected; while the
nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies,
those Badawin of India. The Kurd population is of Iranian origin,
which means that the evil is deeply rooted: I have noted in The
Nights that the great and glorious Saladin was a habitual
pederast. The Armenians, as their national character is, will
prostitute themselves for gain but prefer women to boys: Georgia
supplied Turkey with catamites whilst Circassia sent concubines.
In Mesopotamia the barbarous invader has almost obliterated the
ancient civilisation which is ante-dated only by the Nilotic: the
mysteries of old Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure
tribes like the Mandæans, the Devil-worshippers and the
Alí-iláhi. Entering Persia we find the reverse of Armenia; and,
despite Herodotus, I believe that Iran borrowed her pathologic
love from the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from
the then insignificant Greeks. But whatever may be its origin,
the corruption is now bred in the bone. It begins in boyhood and
many Persians account for it by paternal severity. Youths arrived
at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies
fornication. Onanism[FN#399] is to a certain extent discouraged
by circumcision, and meddling with the father’s slave-girls and
concubines would be risking cruel punishment if not death. Hence
they use each other by turns, a “puerile practice” known as
Alish-Takish, the Lat. facere vicibus or mutuum facere.
Temperament, media, and atavism recommend the custom to the
general; and after marrying and begetting heirs, Paterfamilias
returns to the Ganymede. Hence all the odes of Hafiz are
addressed to youths, as proved by such Arabic exclamations as
’Afáka ’llah = Allah assain thee (masculine)[FN#400]: the object
is often fanciful but it would be held coarse and immodest to
address an imaginary girl.[FN#401] An illustration of the
penchant is told at Shiraz concerning a certain Mujtahid, the
head of the Shi’ah creed, corresponding with a prince-archbishop
in Europe. A friend once said to him, “There is a question I
would fain address to your Eminence but I lack the daring to do
so.” “Ask and fear not,” replied the Divine. “It is this, O
Mujtahid! Figure thee in a garden of roses and hyacinths with the
evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a fair youth of twenty
sitting by thy side and the assurance of perfect privacy. What,
prithee, would be the result?” The holy man bowed the chin of
doubt upon the collar of meditation; and, too honest to lie,
presently whispered, “Allah defend me from such temptation of
Satan!” Yet even in Persia men have not been wanting who have
done their utmost to uproot the Vice: in the same Shiraz they
speak of a father who, finding his son in flagrant delict, put
him to death like Brutus or Lynch of Galway. Such isolated cases,
however, can effect nothing. Chardin tells us that houses of male
prostitution were common in Persia whilst those of women were
unknown: the same is the case in the present day and the boys are
prepared with extreme care by diet, baths, depilation, unguents
and a host of artists in cosmetics.[FN#402] Le Vice is looked
upon at most as a peccadillo and its mention crops up in every
jest-book. When the Isfahan man mocked Shaykh Sa’adi by comparing
the bald pates of Shirazian elders to the bottom of a lotá, a
brass cup with a wide-necked opening used in the Hammam, the
witty poet turned its aperture upwards and thereto likened the
well-abused podex of an Isfahani youth. Another favourite piece
of Shirazian “chaff” is to declare that when an Isfahan father
would set up his son in business he provides him with a pound of
rice, meaning that he can sell the result as compost for the
kitchen-garden, and with the price buy another meal: hence the
saying Khakh-i-pái káhú = the soil at the lettuce-root. The
Isfahanis retort with the name of a station or halting-place
between the two cities where, under presence of making travellers
stow away their riding-gear, many a Shirazi had been raped: hence
“Zín o takaltú tú bi-bar” = carry within saddle and saddle-cloth!
A favourite Persian punishment for strangers caught in the Harem
or Gynæceum is to strip and throw them and expose them to the
embraces of the grooms and negro-slaves. I once asked a Shirazi
how penetration was possible if the patient resisted with all the
force of the sphincter muscle: he smiled and said, “Ah, we
Persians know a trick to get over that; we apply a sharpened tent
peg to the crupper bone (os coccygis) and knock till he opens.” A
well known missionary to the East during the last generation was
subjected to this gross insult by one of the Persian Prince-governors,
whom he had infuriated by his conversion-mania: in his
memoirs he alludes to it by mentioning his “dishonoured person;”
but English readers cannot comprehend the full significance of
the confession. About the same time Shaykh Nasr, Governor of
Bushire, a man famed for facetious blackguardism, used to invite
European youngsters serving in the Bombay Marine and ply them
with liquor till they were insensible. Next morning the middies
mostly complained that the champagne had caused a curious
irritation and soreness in la parse-posse. The same Eastern
“Scrogin” would ask his guests if they had ever seen a man-cannon
(Adami-top); and, on their replying in the negative, a grey-beard
slave was dragged in blaspheming and struggling with all his
strength. He was presently placed on all fours and firmly held by
the extremities; his bag-trousers were let down and a dozen
peppercorns were inserted ano suo: the target was a sheet of
paper held at a reasonable distance; the match was applied by a
pinch of cayenne in the nostrils; the sneeze started the
grapeshot and the number of hits on the butt decided the bets. We
can hardly wonder at the loose conduct of Persian women
perpetually mortified by marital pederasty. During the unhappy
campaign of 1856–57 in which, with the exception of a few
brilliant skirmishes, we gained no glory, Sir James Outram and
the Bombay army showing how badly they could work, there was a
formal outburst of the Harems; and even women of princely birth
could not be kept out of the officers’ quarters.
The cities of Afghanistan and Sind are thoroughly saturated with
Persian vice, and the people sing
Kadr-i-kus Aughán dánad, kadr-i-kunrá Kábuli:
The worth of coynte the Afghan knows: Cabul prefers the
other chose![FN#403]
The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and each
caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in
woman’s attire with kohl’d eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses
and henna’d fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in Kajáwas or
camel-panniers: they are called Kúch-i safari, or travelling
wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by their sides. In
Afghanistan also a frantic debauchery broke out amongst the women
when they found incubi who were not pederasts; and the scandal
was not the most insignificant cause of the general rising at
Cabul (Nov. 1841), and the slaughter of Macnaghten, Burnes and
other British officers.
Resuming our way Eastward we find the Sikhs and the Moslems of
the Panjab much addicted to Le Vice, although the Himalayan
tribes to the north and those lying south, the Rájputs and
Marathás, ignore it. The same may be said of the Kash mirians who
add another Kappa to the tria Kakista, Kappado clans, Kretans,
and Kilicians: the proverb says,
Agar kaht-i-mardum uftad, az ín sih jins kam gírí;
Eki Afghán, dovvum Sindí[FN#404] siyyum
badjins-i-Kashmírí:
Though of men there be famine yet shun these three-
Afghan, Sindi and rascally Kashmírí.
M. Louis Daville describes the infamies of Lahore and Lakhnau
where he found men dressed as women, with flowing locks under
crowns of flowers, imitating the feminine walk and gestures,
voice and fashion of speech, and ogling their admirers with all
the coquetry of bayadères. Victor Jacquemont’s Journal de Voyage
describes the pederasty of Ranjít Singh, the “Lion of the
Panjáb,” and his pathic Guláb Singh whom the English inflicted
upon Cashmir as ruler by way of paying for his treason. Yet the
Hindus, I repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are as much
scandalised by being called Gánd-márá (anus-beater) or Gándú
(anuser) as Englishmen would be. During the years 1843–44 my
regiment, almost all Hindu Sepoys of the Bombay Presidency, was
stationed at a purgatory called Bandar Ghárrá,[FN#405] a sandy
flat with a scatter of verdigris-green milk-bush some forty miles
north of Karáchi the headquarters. The dirty heap of mud-and-mat
hovels, which represented the adjacent native village, could not
supply a single woman; yet only one case of pederasty came to
light and that after a tragical fashion some years afterwards. A
young Brahman had connection with a soldier comrade of low caste
and this had continued till, in an unhappy hour, the Pariah
patient ventured to become the agent. The latter, in Arab.
Al-Fá’il =the “doer,” is not an object of contempt like Al-Mafúl
= the “done”; and the high caste sepoy, stung by remorse and
revenge, loaded his musket and deliberately shot his paramour. He
was hanged by court martial at Hyderabad and, when his last
wishes were asked, he begged in vain to be suspended by the feet;
the idea being that his soul, polluted by exiting “below the
waist,” would be doomed to endless trans-migrations through the
lowest forms of life.