Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Map of Iran
- Introduction
- Part 1 Premodern practices
- 1 Formal marriage
- 2 Slave concubinage, temporary marriage, and harem wives
- 3 Class, status-defined homosexuality, and rituals of courtship
- Part 2 Toward a Westernized modernity
- Part 3 Forging an Islamist modernity and beyond
- Conclusion: Toward a new Muslim-Iranian sexuality for the twenty-first century
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Slave concubinage, temporary marriage, and harem wives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Map of Iran
- Introduction
- Part 1 Premodern practices
- 1 Formal marriage
- 2 Slave concubinage, temporary marriage, and harem wives
- 3 Class, status-defined homosexuality, and rituals of courtship
- Part 2 Toward a Westernized modernity
- Part 3 Forging an Islamist modernity and beyond
- Conclusion: Toward a new Muslim-Iranian sexuality for the twenty-first century
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Since the primary purpose of nekah marriage was procreation and the establishment of a family, men often looked for additional legal forms of sexual gratification in other relations. In the mid-nineteenth century, an ordinary urban man – a butcher or a baker with some discretionary spending – found pleasure in the arms of a sigheh (temporary wife). This could be for a few hours or a few days during his visits to provinces and shrines on business or pilgrimage. Sometimes he brought a temporary wife home, where she could become a maid to his ʿaqdi wife. Clerics of all social classes had access to divorced and widowed women, who approached them for legal aid and sometimes became their temporary wives. In addition, the business of contracting temporary marriage for others was an important source of income for low-level clerics. Bazaar merchants might keep temporary wives who also served as pieceworkers in their employ. Wealthy men from elite families might have a series of temporary wives, as well as one or two slave concubines. The harems at the royal court contained separate compounds for formal wives, temporary wives, slave concubines of both sexes, and boy concubines, as well as other female relatives. European men, who were denied access to the elite harems (except for medical doctors like Polak and Jean-Baptiste Feuvrier) often fantasized about the polymorphous sexuality of the andaruni.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sexual Politics in Modern Iran , pp. 50 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009