The general purpose of this project was to examine attitudes to erotic love, marital as well as extramarital, gender roles in love relationships, and ideas about women´s bodies and sexuality in premodern Arabic-Islamic literature, from the eight to the fifteenth century. In particular, it aimed at examining attitudes towards erotic love and women’s sexuality during the early Abbasid caliphate and Buyid rule of Baghdad (750-1055) and how these were elaborated and accommodated in premodern Arabic erotic, medical, philosophical, religious-legal, and belletrist literature. This general purpose has been kept throughout the project, whereas the specific aims have been somewhat modified. Most importantly, instead of examining Encyclopaedia of Pleasure in light of the emerging Shiite traditionalist and legislative literature in the tenth century, I added a new specific aim, namely to distinguish more categories of women and analyze the attitudes to slave courtesans. This change of direction is partly due to my findings of citations of earlier unknown medieval slave purchase manuals and partly due to an invitation to participate in a program on medieval slavery at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2016, as I had previously worked on women and slavery. This change led to a stronger focus on attitudes to women’s sexuality.

During the first part of the project (2015-2016), I focused on a few specific topics, which were covered by the specific aims of the project. First, I compared ideas about women’s bodies and sexuality in sex manuals from the tenth century to the late fifteenth century, which resulted in one paper and one article. I presented the paper ”Women’s agency and bodily integrity in the Arabic erotic tradition up to Suyūṭī” in a panel on women and gender at the Conference of the School of Mamlūk Studies, Liège, June, 2015. A revised version of this paper was published as ”Women and men in al-Suyūṭī’s guides to sex and marriage,” in Mamluk Studies Review 21 (2018).

Secondly, I examined the role of and attitudes to slave courtesans in the early medieval period, which resulted in two papers and one article. The first paper was “Concubinage and sexual slavery in medieval Arab-Islamic erotic literature”, which I presented at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, mentioned above. The second paper, “Free women and slave concubines in medieval Arabic erotic literature,” was presented in a panel on slave courtesans at MESA’s (Middle East Studies Association) 50th Anniversary Meeting, Boston, November 2016. I also wrote an article, entitled Slaves for Pleasure in Arabic Slave purchase and Sex Manuals from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries, which is peer-reviewed and is planned to be published in Journal of Global Slavery, summer 2019.

Thirdly, I examined female characters in erotic literature from the period covered by the project. I presented the results at two conferences. The first paper, “Words of advice and desire: Elderly women as erotic experts and mediators in premodern Arabic erotica,” was presented at the conference vid Les mots du désir ; La langue de l’érotisme arabe et sa traduction, Sorbonne, Paris, May 2016. The second, “Experts in intimacy: Female characters in fourth/tenth century erotic stories,”was presented at the Thirteenth Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies, Leiden, July 2016.

In the second half of the project (2017-2018), I focused on ideas about women’s bodies and sexuality in the Abbasid period, in particular the late eight to the late tenth centuries, when some of the key medical, legal and literary texts in classical Islamic and Arabic tradition were produced. I examined medical, legal, theological and belletrist literature, in addition to the earliest extant sex manual, Encyclopaedia of Pleasure. The research resulted in a monograph, entitled Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World, which will be published by IB Tauris in July 2019. The publisher has a long history in publishing in the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies; they provided peer-reviewers who are experts in the field from whom I got extremely helpful and valuable comments. They also help me in with English language editing.

The most important result of the project is the monograph on female sexuality mentioned above. It is the first major study on attitudes to women’s sexuality in the earlier period of Islamic history. It uncovers new sources, which are only available in manuscripts, and provides translations of texts that are of interest for a wider community of scholars. The second most important result is that the project has generated new knowledge about the genre of medieval Islamic-Arabic sex manuals and makes a first attempt to use them as sources for historical enquires. This important and interesting source material is neglected although it has great potential for for social and cultural history, not the least for studies on gender and sexuality.The third most important result is the uncovering of sources on sex slavery in medieval Islamic history, a topic that until now has been neglected.

During the course of the project, I have realized the potential of the medieval sex manuals as sources for historical studies. However, it is pivotal to examine the manuscript tradition as there are almost no scholarly editions and there are no studies of the genre as such.. Therefore, I have participated in several workshops and courses on the Islamic manuscript tradition. I received funding from the Swedish Research Project for a project entitled “Medieval Arabic Sex Manuals: Manuscript Tradition and Reception”, 2018-2021, which enables me to continue this research. There are two other major questions generated by the project that I hope to be able to address in the future. The first is Abbasid philologists as sources for early Arab women’s oral culture. For this, there is a need to reassess the sources with a particular focus on unpublished manuscripts. The second is the history of sexual slavery.

In addition to the international conferences mentioned above, I have presented the project at several seminars at University of Gothenburg. I have also participated in a Swedish Radio history program and will give several public talks in 2019 (for example at the Gothenburg Science festival).