LGBT in the Ottoman Empire were the practices, tendencies and cultural assessments of LGBT that were deployed in the Ottoman Empire. In the Ottoman Empire, concepts as 'lesbian' or 'gay' did not exist. Instead of these concepts, terms as active 'sodomy' and passive (me'bun) were used.
The legal concept of gender in the Ottoman Empire consisted of two genders, male and female. Although heterosexuality was necessary for the continuation of the lineage of the Ottomans, homosexuality was culturally associated with love. Adolescent men may have desired older men or women at that time, after puberty however, they were expected to desire young boys or women. If they were both passive and active, they were also called out for heresy.
Terminology
Devshirme – the practice of gathering young "promising" boys from Christian families. The children would be victims of sexual molestation and pederasty. This horrified the Christian parents to the point of mutilating their children to make them less attractive to Ottoman inspectors.
Hammam – traditional Turkish bathhouse. In his work Sexuality in Islam, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba cites the hammam as a place where homosexual encounters in general can take place. He notes that some historians found evidence of hammams as spaces for sexual expression among women, which they believed was a result of the universality of nudity in these spaces. Hammams have also been associated with male homosexuality over the centuries and up to the present day.
Gulampare – old Turkish term for "male-lover".
Köçek – Term for male dancers, typically a handsome young male slave effeminate dancer (rakkas), who usually cross-dressed in feminine attire, and was employed as an entertainer.
Yamak - volunteers for the devshirme.
Yenicheri – literally "new troops", also known as janissaries. Famous slave soldiers.
Zenpare – old Turkish term for "woman-lover".
The History of Decriminalization of Homosexuality in The Ottoman Empire
Prosecution of homosexuality
The question of whether homosexuality is adultery, that is, whether it is punishable according to Islamic law, has been discussed by the ulama for a long time. This is because homosexual intercourse is not described as much as adultery in the Qur'an. The official sect of the Ottoman empire is the Hanafi school. For this reason, the punishments in the Ottoman Empire are similar to the rules of Imam Hanafi. According to Imam Abu Hanifa, the crime of adultery and the crime of sodomy are different crimes. Therefore, the penalties are also different. While the penalties on this subject were found in the classical period, such as the laws of Selim I and the Kanuni law, there is no regulation on this subject in the Tanzimat-era laws (the laws of 1840, 1851 and 1858), which nullified all previous laws.
Pre-Decriminalization (1800-1858) Prior to 1858, Ottomans did not base sexual identities on attraction to a specific gender but distinguished between active and passive partners, often distinguished as "the lover" and "the beloved". Therefore, choice of a partner was merely based on taste and not on sexual identity. However, marriage between a man and a woman was the only acceptable form of a legitimized relationship. Thus making it illegal for people to openly have relationships with partners of the same sex. If one were to express a homosexual relationship in public, society would retaliate in exclusion. During this time, some Ottoman men were executed for sodomy including two boys in Damascus in 1807.
Decriminalization (1858) In 1858, the Ottoman society constructed a reform to their penal code that was fairly similar to the 1810 French Penal Code. The 1858 Ottoman Penal Code stated the following:
Art. 202—The person who dares to commit the abominable act publicly contrary to modesty and sense of shame is to be imprisoned for from three months to one year and a fine of from one Mejidieh gold piece to ten Mejidieh gold pieces is to be levied (Penal Code of the Ottoman Empire,1858).
This statement is a translation from Article 330 of the French Penal Code which also decriminalizes homosexuality. Such a statement only partially decriminalizes homosexuality, making it legal for private same sex relationships while still holding public homosexual relationships to be unacceptable.
During this period of time, it is speculated that most homosexual relationships took place behind closed doors. In private hammams, individuals were free to express their feelings and emotions in a comfortable safe space. However, once an individual left that safe space, the acts one indulged in were not permitted to be spoken of in society.