PIMPS, PANDERERS AND GO-BETWEENS
BY AHMAD AL-TIFASHI

“Pimps, panderers and go-betweens” is the first chapter of The Delight of Hearts by Aḥmad ibn Yusuf al-Tifashi (1184-1253), which, with its translation (through the French of René R. Khawam) into English by Edward A. Lacey, and the amendments to it made on this website, are introduced here. A glossary there is critically important for the reader wanting to understand the precise meaning in what follows of various key words as ordinary as “boy”. 

Only five anecdotes in this chapter were translated by Lacey as being of homosexual interest, and only four of them are presented here, the other, concerning “eunuchs and queens”, not being of Greek love interest.

Pimps, panderers and go-betweens, male and female. Curious facts, anecdotes and poems about them.

1

     There remain two other kinds of go-betweens in illicit love affairs, called, respectively, “usurers of desire” and “sandalwoods.”
     The use of the term “usurer of desire” stems from two facts: the client’s violent desire, and the exorbitant profit that can be realized from it. The pimp in this case indeed happens to be an ardent sodomite. His problem is that he isn’t wealthy enough to be able to afford love affairs with handsome boys and to get what he wants from them. So he offers his services to them as a pimp. And when, eventually, they owe him a large enough amount of money and can’t pay it back, he has them in his power and obliges them to gratify his desires. He also has the opportunity of insinuating himself into their presence when they are drunk or asleep, making use of the innumerable excuses for intimacy that close contact and licentious behavior always offer.
     The “sandalwood,” on the other hand, tries to look and act like an amrad for hire, but, unfortunately, he’s not attractive enough to score. He’s not sharp enough to be a real amrad for hire, and accordingly hardly anybody ever picks him up. Most men pass him by, because he just hasn’t got it. So he procures boys. And then, one fine day, one of his young protégés doesn’t show up for a date that has already been set up for him. The host has already laid on the food and drink; the people who usually live in the house have gone out so as to leave the coast clear; and the client is all keyed up sexually. Finding no other outlet, he turns to the go-between and, driven by necessity, takes what the latter has to offer. The expression “sandalwood” itself refers to a proverb: “If the wagon doesn’t bring a load of firewood for you, imagine that it’s bringing you sandalwood.” That is, if it doesn’t bring you the wood that you expected for heating purposes, then the wood frame of the wagon itself will do for those purposes, and you’ll accept it as eagerly as if it were a load of rare sandalwood. This kind of young go-between usually has at best a poor complexion, with none of the freshness of youth, and his cock is generally very tiny. He has some of the qualities of both the boy and the confirmed sodomist, but he’s basically neither one thing nor the other. He always manages to badmouth the amrads for hire he knows, because his real aim is to obstruct their business in every way possible and to supplant them.

2

    

     Here’s a story told about al-Mubarrad.^[1] He had a man who used to supply him with boys. One day, when various other people were around, he held a strange conversation with the fellow:
     “Go now. If you see him, don’t say anything to him. If you don’t see him, tell him to come here.”
     The man left and then returned, saying:
     “I didn’t see him, so I told him to come. But he arrived, so he couldn’t come.”
     The bystanders who had overheard this confusing verbal exchange asked the messenger what it was all about.
     “He sent me to see a boy,” replied the fellow, “and he told me ‘if you see him,’ that is, ‘if you see his master,’ ‘don’t say anything to him,’ which means ‘don’t say anything to the boy.’ ‘If you don’t see him,’ in other words, ‘if you don’t see his master,’ tell him to come here,’ that is to say, ‘tell the boy to come here.’ So I went to find the boy he mentioned. ‘I didn’t see him,’ that is, I didn’t see his master. “So I told him to come here,’ which means, I told the boy to come here. ‘But he arrived,’ in other words, his master arrived just at that moment. ‘So he couldn’t come,’ that is to say, the boy couldn’t come here.”

3

     Mubarrad relates the following anecdote:
     Sulayman son of Wahb,^[2] who was the secretary of Musa son of Muadh, is said to have fallen passionately in love with one of his patron’s mamalukes^[3]. One day Musa went out hunting with the scribe Abu’l-Khattab. At one point along the way he for some reason needed the services of his secretary and ordered him to be sent for immediately. Abu’l-Khattab transmitted this order to the boy we have just spoken of, saying:
     “Run and get Sulayman!”
     When Sulayman saw the slave boy he so ardently desired approaching his house, he rushed out to meet him and welcomed him with open arms, showering him with attentions, until the boy finally yielded to his entreaties. So the secretary got what he wanted from the boy. Then he got up, and they both went to join the hunt. They soon reached the others, and Sulayman presented himself to Musa, obedient to his orders. The next day Abu’l-Khattab composed the following poem for him:

I suppose there is not much
to be hoped for from a friend
who sleeps while we are keeping watch.

Did you thank me afterward
for the kindness I displayed
by my way of sending word?

We wore ourselves out in vain,
hunting in the hills, while you
--you were hunting on the plain! ^[4]

     Iraqis, as is well-known, call pimps “prefects.” That’s why al-Sahib Ibn-Abbad ^[5] wrote as follows:

O son of Yaqub, prefect
of moonlit nights,
be my messenger
to a joyful youth!

Tell him: “There is
an obligatory tax to be paid
on beauty as well as on money earned:
be fair, pay it
to the one you’ve spurned!”

^[1]  Al-Mubarrad (ca. 826-ca. 898) was a famous grammarian from Basrah who taught in Baghdad for  the second half of his life. [Website note]

^[2] Sulayman ibn Wahb (died 885) was a secretary and later thrice briefly vizier to the caliph in Baghdad between 869 and 878 [Website note]

^[3] Mamalukes مماليك (better transliterated mamālīk) in this context means “slave boys”, as Lacey indeed translates it. More generally though, they were some of those multitude of foreign boys from different ethnicities whom the early Arab conquerers used to take as a prize of war, to groom them as future loyal soldiers. As such, they sometimes eventually gathered enough power to turn against their old masters, even leading to the creation of a powerful state of their own, called in their name, the Islamic sultanate of al-Mamālīk. [Website note]

^[4]  In all Arab erotic poetry of this sort the love of boys is symbolized by the “plain” or the “prairie.”(Note by Lacey)

^[5] The Persian Al-Sahib Ibn-Abbad (938-95) was vizier  at Baghdad from 980 until his death in 995. [Website note]