Musical savant Blind Tom Wiggins died decades before autism was identified. Modern neurologists speculate Wiggins' symptoms might meet the criteria for an Autism spectrum disorder.

A retrospective diagnosis is the practice of identifying a condition in a historical figure using modern knowledge, methods and medical classifications.^[1][2]

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were first identified by Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner in 1943, and it was not until many years later that they were formally recognised by the medical community. Journalists, academics and autism professionals have speculated that certain famous or notable historical people had autism or other autism spectrum disorders such asAsperger syndrome. Such speculations are often disputed. For example, several autism researchers speculate that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was autistic or otherwise neurodivergent, while other researchers say there is not sufficient evidence to draw such conclusions.^[3][4] Temple Grandin, a professor who is herself autistic, speculates that very early inventions like the stone spear were probably the work of autistic cavemen.^[5][6]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Validity of retrospective diagnoses
• 2 List of individuals
• 3 Specific individuals
  • 3.1 Isaac Newton
  • 3.2 Nikola Tesla
  • 3.3 Albert Einstein
• 4 References

Validity of retrospective diagnoses[edit]

Further information: Michael Fitzgerald (psychiatrist)

Michael Fitzgerald of the Department of Child Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin has written numerous books and articles on the subject, identifying over 30 individuals as possibly having AS.^{[7][8][9][10]} Ioan James is a British mathematician who, in 2005, published Asperger's Syndrome And High Achievement: Some Very Remarkable People, identifying a number of historic figures as autism candidates.^[11]

Speculation of this sort is, by necessity, based on reported behavior and anecdotal evidence rather than any clinical observation of the individual. Psychologist and author Oliver Sacks wrote that many of these claims seem "very thin at best",^[12] and Fred Volkmar, of the Yale Child Study Center, has remarked that "there is unfortunately a sort of cottage industry of finding that everyone has Asperger's".^[13] Michael Fitzgerald's research, in particular, has been heavily criticised, and described by some as "fudged pseudoscience"^[14] and "frankly absurd".^[15]

List of individuals[edit]

See also: List of people on the autistic spectrum

Person	Speculator
Hugh Blair of Borgue – 18th century Scottish landowner thought mentally incompetent, now studied as case history of autism.	Rab Houston and Uta Frith[16] Wolff calls the evidence "convincing".[17]
Prince John of the United Kingdom – 20th century British prince famous for his epilepsy and isolation. He exhibited repetitive behavior and is often believed to be autistic and intellectually disabled.	K. D. Reynolds[18] and Paul Tizley[19]
Stanley Kubrick – filmmaker	Michael Fitzgerald and Viktoria Lyons see it as "convincing" stating that he was well known to have obsessive traits and found it socially difficult with his collaborators on set.[7][20]
Henry Cavendish – 18th century British scientist. He was unusually reclusive, literal minded, had trouble relating to people, had trouble adapting to people, difficulties looking straight at people, drawn to patterns, etc.	Oliver Sacks,[12] and Ioan James;[4][11] Fred Volkmar of Yale Study Child Center is skeptical.[13]
Charles XII of Sweden – speculated to have had Asperger syndrome	Swedish researchers, Gillberg[21] and Lagerkvist[22]
Jeffrey Dahmer – serial killer	Silva, et al.[23]
Anne Claudine d'Arpajon, comtesse de Noailles – French governess, lady of honor, tutor	Society for French Historical Studies, New York Times[9]
Emily Dickinson – poet	Vernon Smith[9]
Paul Dirac – quantum physicist	Graham Farmelo, biographer[24]
Glenn Gould – Canadian pianist and noted Bach interpreter. He liked routine to the point he used the same seat until it was worn through. He also disliked social functions to the point that in later life he relied on the telephone or letters for virtually all communication. He had an aversion to being touched, had a different sense of hot or cold than most, and would rock back and forth while playing music. He is speculated to have had Asperger syndrome.	Michael Fitzgerald,[7] Ioan James,[11] Tony Attwood,[25] Peter Ostwald[26]
Adolf Hitler – Austrian born, Nazi German politician, chancellor and dictator	Michael Fitzgerald[9] and Andreas Fries;[27]although others disagree and say that there is not sufficient evidence to indicate any diagnoses for Hitler.[14]
Thomas Jefferson – President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence	Norm Ledgin,[28] Tony Attwood,[25] and Ioan James[11]
James Joyce – author of Ulysses	Michael Fitzgerald and Antionette Walker;[8]this theory has been called "a somewhat odd hypothesis".[29]
Bohuslav Martinů – Czech-American composer (1890 -1959)	F. James Rybka[30]
William McGonagall - poet, notoriously bad yet he never understood that others mocked him	Norman Watson[31]
Michelangelo – Italian Renaissance artist, based on his inability to form long-term attachments and certain other characteristics	Arshad and Fitzgerald;[7][32] Ioan James also discussed Michelangelo's autistic traits.[11]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – composer	Tony Attwood[25] and Michael Fitzgerald;[7]others disagree that there is sufficient evidence to indicate any diagnoses for Mozart.[3]
Charles Richter – seismologist, creator of the eponymous scale of earthquake magnitude	Susan Hough in her biography of Richter[33]
William James Sidis	Michael Fitzgerald [34]
Alan Turing – pioneer of computer sciences. He seemed to be a math savant and his lifestyle has many autism traits about it.	Tony Attwood[25] and Ioan James[11]
Michael Ventris – English architect who deciphered Linear B	Simon Baron-Cohen[35]
Blind Tom Wiggins – autistic savant	Oliver Sacks[36]
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Austrian philosopher	Michael Fitzgerald[37] Tony Attwood,[25] and Ioan James;[11] Oliver Sacks seems to disagree.[12]

Specific individuals[edit]

Nikola Tesla

Isaac Newton (1643–1727), Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955) all died before Asperger syndrome became known, but Ioan James,^[4] Michael Fitzgerald,^[7] and Simon Baron-Cohen^[38] believe their personalities are consistent with those of people with Asperger syndrome. Tony Attwood has also named Einstein as a likely case of mild autism.^[25]

Not everyone agrees with these analyses. According to Oliver Sacks, the evidence that any one of these figures had autism "seems very thin at best".^[12] Glen Elliott, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco, is unconvinced that either Newton or Einstein had Asperger syndrome, particularly due to the unreliability of diagnoses based on biographical information. Elliot stated that there are a variety of causes that could explain the behaviour in question, and points out that Einstein is known to have had a good sense of humour, a trait that, according to Elliot, is "virtually unknown in people with severe Asperger syndrome".^[38]

Isaac Newton[edit]

Isaac Newton hardly spoke and had few friends. He was often so absorbed in his work that he forgot to eat, demonstrating an obsessive single-mindedness that is commonly associated with Asperger's. If nobody attended his lessons, he reportedly gave lectures to an empty room. When he was 50, he suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by depression and paranoia.^[38] After Newton's death, however, his body was found to contain massive amounts of mercury, probably from his alchemical pursuits, which could have accounted for his eccentricity in later life.^[39]

Nikola Tesla[edit]

In Nikola Tesla's autobiography, My Inventions, he claims to have the ability to "visualize with the greatest facility", allowing him to fully design and test his inventions in his mind:

It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever, the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything.^[40]

Tesla also displayed other suggestive behaviours.^[41]

Albert Einstein[edit]

Albert Einstein is sometimes thought to have had Asperger syndrome, despite forming close relationships with a number of people, marrying twice, and being outspoken on pro-social political issues. According to Baron-Cohen, "passion, falling in love and standing up for justice are all perfectly compatible with Asperger syndrome",^[38] although he notes that Einstein's delayed language development and educational slowness may be more indicative of high-functioning autism.^[11]

Fitzgerald describes Einstein's interest in physics as "an addiction", and says that it was important for him to be in control of his life. He also points to Einstein's occasionally perceived lack of tact, social empathy, and naivety, as further apparent traits he had in common with people with autism spectrum disorders.^[10] Ioan James adds that Einstein was much better at processing visual information than verbal; Einstein himself once said "I rarely think in words at all".^[11]

In her 1995 book In a World of His Own: A Storybook About Albert Einstein, author Illana Katz notes that Einstein "was a loner, solitary, suffered from major tantrums, had no friends and didn't like being in crowds", and conjectures that he may have had some form of autism.^[4

Thesis: Eunuchs are Gay Men

(with a listing of secondary sources)

by Mark Brustman

One day I read in the Bible that Jesus said there were eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb.1 To my knowledge, a eunuch was a man who had been castrated, so how could he be born that way? As a translator by profession, I was aware that ideas are sometimes distorted in translation, and that this was particularly a problem in the Bible. In this case, the context was about men's obligation to marry, and these and other kinds of eunuchs were said to be exempt. As a proud gay man and, at that time, a Christian, I was intrigued by this. Since I firmly believed (and still do) that I was born gay and that, on this basis, it would be a bad idea for me to marry a woman, it occurred to me that a so-called born eunuch might mean a gay man like myself.2

    The common denominator in gay men and castrated men, which could be the basis for categorizing both groups under the term eunuch, is that neither one is suitable for marriage. This indeed was the point of the gospel verse. But in order to prove beyond a doubt that born eunuchs were gay men, I had to prove that, like gay men:

(1) born eunuchs could have complete genitals,
(2) they had no lust for women, and
(3) they had lust for men.

     There is little agreement nowadays about what causes sexual orientation and what it consists of. Some say it is a matter of genetics, others that it is caused by psychological influences in early childhood. Still others say that it is fluid and changeable over the course of a person's life. To my mind, the best way to accommodate all of these ideas within one system is to say that most people are born bisexual, but a few are not. Most of the born bisexuals learn to avoid homosexual interaction. Europeans and Americans are raised to suppress homosexual erotic impulses, and direct their sexual attention exclusively to the opposite sex, so their so-called straight orientation is a result of environmental factors, which can change over time. Some resist the indoctrination and express both sides of their sexual nature freely -- these are what our society calls bisexuals. But a small percentage of people genetically just don't have the capacity to feel attraction to the opposite sex. These are the people who say they were born gay. I am one of them. By the same token, just as few people lack the capacity to feel attraction to their own sex. In this culture, these people simply blend in with the majority.
     A bisexual in my terminology is anyone who genetically is able to feel lust for men and women. This describes the majority of people. What we call a "straight person" is, in most cases, a bisexual who has been conditioned to avoid acting on his or her homosexual side. Gay people are monosexuals who are genetically unable to feel lust for their respective opposite sex. A few straights are monosexual like gays, in that they are genetically unable to feel lust for people of their own sex. I believe this inability has something to do with some people lacking sexual pheromone receptors for one sex or the other. The argument I am making in this essay is that men who were genetically unable to feel lust for women, i.e. what we call gay men today, were called eunuchs by our pre-Christian ancestors.
     Almost all current dictionaries define a eunuch as a man missing a crucial part of his reproductive anatomy, either due to castration or birth defect. But I will show in Section 1 of this essay that most so-called "eunuchs" in the ancient world were not anatomically deprived and were able to procreate. Moreover in Section 2, I show that one of the central defining characteristics of a eunuch in the ancient world was his lack of a sexual drive for women, something which is not true of castrated men. Men who lust after women will continue to do so even if they are genitally mutilated. Castration may prevent a straight man from impregnating a woman, but it will not change his desires. In Section 3, I show that eunuchs were stereotyped as lustful sex objects for men.
 

---

    When I began my research back in 1991, I set out to define the category Jesus had called the "born eunuch," which was something different from a castrated man, or "man-made eunuch."
     The oldest available version of Matthew is a translation probably from Aramaic or Hebrew into Greek,3  and the word used in the Greek translation is eunouchos, from which we get our word eunuch. Most scholars state that the word eunouchos comes from eune (bed) and echein (to have), and claim that it means "one who guards the bed." [Note in 2015: I have recently become convinced that the real etymology of eunouchos is not from eune, but rather from eunous ("good-minded") and echein, and is a contraction of a Greek expression meaning "to be good in mind; to be loyal, good-natured."] But Jesus would not have used the Greek word, since he spoke Aramaic. The Hebrew and Aramaic word for eunuch is saris, an Assyrian loan word that has been interpreted to mean "at the head."4  None of these etymologies ruled out my hypothesis that born eunuchs were, in general, anatomically whole like gay men. Later I learned that an ancient Syriac translation of the Bible used the word mu'omin for eunouchos andsaris. Mu'omin means "person of faith" or "person of trust."
     I began a search lasting several years to find proof, either that a born eunuch was born missing some male reproductive parts, or that he simply lacked desire for women. The field of evidence I had to search through consisted of dozens, even hundreds, of ancient texts in which eunuchs were mentioned. By analyzing what each author or text said about an individual eunuch or about the category of eunuchs, I could put all the texts together and observe the common trends in the way ancient authors defined eunuchs.
      An ancient Roman novel I had read in college, Petronius's Satyricon, raised an initial theoretical problem for my thesis, however. The Satyricon is a comic novel about two men lusting after a teenage boy. Most people today, at least in Europe and America, would identify them as gay men because of their homosexual lifestyle, but none of the main characters called themselves eunuchs. In fact, there are scads of homosexually active men throughout Greek and Roman literature who are not called eunuchs. This can be explained in two ways.
     First, homosexual behavior, though disapproved of particularly for the passive partner, was tolerated a lot more in ancient Greece and Rome than it has been in modern Europe and the United States. Significant numbers of Greek and Roman men appear to have been actively bisexual: having sex with other men, but also fulfilling their marriage duties. I hear that is still the custom today in those countries. So it is possible and even likely that many younger Roman men, without actually being born gay, avoided the responsibilities of marriage by pursuing a wholly homosexual lifestyle. This would certainly fit the carefree character of the protagonists in the Satyricon. Nothing prevents bisexuals from getting married, though, so they would not be eunuchs.
     On the other hand, unless you wanted a job as a domestic servant for women or at the imperial court, being known as a eunuch in Rome entailed no special advantage. On the contrary, eunuchs were ridiculed in ancient Greece and Rome like gays are today. Xenophon, the Greek historian of the fifth century BCE, wrote: "There is not a man in the world who would not think he had the right to overreach a eunuch." So even if a man was a born eunuch (and the first-person narrator of the Satyricon does betray some anxiety about his own ability to perform with women), he might very well not want to carry that label. 
     The first place I looked for evidence about born eunuchs was a religious reference work called the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. The article on the wordeunouchos by Johannes Schneider stated that the Greek word appeared in two chapters in the New Testament, and the Hebrew word saris occurred 40 times in the Old Testament5 (which latter figure I later discovered was an underestimate). Moreover, Schneider asserted that many men were called saris in the Old Testament who were not actually eunuchs, by which he meant to say they were not castrated. Schneider also mentioned a discussion in the Talmud concerning differences between born versus man-made eunuchs.6  Of course, this was just the kind of source text I was looking for: ancient scholars arguing over what a born eunuch was. I will present and analyze the evidence that I found below, but for now I am merely retracing my steps in my research.
     From Schneider I learned of an article  published in Germany just before World War I, concerning the attitudes of the early church fathers to eunuchs, and their interpretations of Matthew 19:12.7 On the "eunuch" shelf at the library, I found a recent German book on eunuchs in classical Greece and Rome which provided a list of names of eunuchs. That book cited another German article concerning the word eunouchos and related terms in secular Greek and Latin sources.8  This article referred me to a still another German article  on eunuchs, with extensive references to ancient sources, in a nineteenth-century encyclopedia of classical Greek and Roman historical figures and literature.9  I compiled a list of over 500 classical references to eunuchs from these German secondary sources, and I determined to look up as many as I could get hold of.
     Thank goodness, German is my second language. I could never have gotten off the ground with this project if I did not know German. Whatever else you might say about Germany, it has produced some thorough and conscientious scholars. I am grateful that some of them chose to direct their attention to eunuchs.  Thank goodness, too, that I took Greek and Latin in college, and that my alma mater is U.C. Berkeley, which has one of the world's greatest libraries and grants borrowing privileges to its alumni.
     I collected references to eunuchs in the Bible using Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible, finding forty-five rather than forty Old Testament verses containing the word saris,10  in addition to the two New Testament chapters referring to eunuchs.11  Later I also found eight apocryphal verses using the word eunouchos.12  I had to learn a little Hebrew to look up the Old Testament references.
     None of the Bible verses indicated that eunuchs were castrated. And a verse about castration, Deuteronomy 23:1, said nothing about eunuchs. What's more, looking in the concordance, I discovered something very strange. The King James Version translates saris variously as chamberlain, eunuch, officer, or as a proper name Rabsaris (literally "chief eunuch"). As a translator, I was appalled at the inconsistency, which to me smacked of a cover-up of some kind. I checked Martin Luther, who translated the German Bible. He was more consistent in his mistranslation, using Kämmerer or Erzkämmerer (chamberlain or head chamberlain) in every single case except Isaiah 56:3-5 and Matthew 19:12. In Matthew, Martin Luther translates the born eunuch category as "es sind etliche verschnitten, die sind aus Mutterleibe also geboren" or in English, "there are some cut (!) who are born so from their mother's womb." Ouch!
     Schneider's article offered an explanation, albeit somewhat implausible, for the inconsistency in translation. He said that the term saris had a dual meaning, with the other being "palace official." Apparently, sarisim had participated in religious rites (Jeremiah 34:19), which would be impossible if they were castrated. Deuteronomy 23:1 says castrated men cannot enter the congregation of the Lord. Therefore, modern religious scholars, assuming all eunuchs were castrated, concluded that a saris must not necessarily be a eunuch. But Isaiah 56:3-5 and Matthew 19:12 clearly imply that the procreative ability of a saris is compromised somehow. It sounds unlikely to me that a term that implies one is not fully male would also be used to cover ordinary men, especially when there were other perfectly good words for palace officials. I see no reason why those sarisim participating in religious rites could not be uncastrated, born eunuchs.

     From Greece, Rome, and the Bible, I expanded my search for eunuchs to other ancient cultures and spiritual traditions, and some of my most helpful resources were the following.
     A friend of mine who studies ancient Egypt turned me on to a book about the Egyptian mythical figure Seth,13  which provided several references to articles about homosexuality and eunuchs in ancient Egypt.
     Bernadette Brooten's Love Between Women provided references to ancient astrologists who wrote about eunuchs and other homosexuals.14
     David Greenberg's The Construction of Homosexuality referred to a French-language article  on homosexuality in an encyclopedia about the Sumero-Babylonian and Assyrian cultures.15 That and another article  from the same encyclopedia, on eunuchs,16 provided important references. Greenberg's book, an exhaustive cross-cultural history of homosexuality, also contained references to eunuchs and third-gender roles in traditional African communities which paralleled the understanding of eunuchs in ancient Middle Eastern cultures.17 [Since composing this website, I found a great new book on Africa edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.]
     In addition, while studying circumcision rituals (which I have come to believe are derived from a primeval association between holiness and a diminished capacity for sexual pleasure), I came across an anthropological report of a spiritual role reserved for unmanly men among the Mbo people of Zaire.
     [Also since first posting this website, I was introduced to the work of Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé, a married couple who both come from the town of Dano in Burkina Faso and write about Dagara rituals and spirituality for a broad audience. Sobonfu Somé's book The Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient Teachings in the Ways of Relationships contains a chapter on "Homosexuality: The Gatekeepers," in which she writes, "Gatekeepers are people who live a life at the edge between two worlds -- the world of the village and the world of the spirit."]
     Murray and Roscoe's Islamic Homosexualities and Shaun Marmon's Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society, as well as the Encyclopedia of Islam, provided references to eunuchs in Islam.
     Zia Jaffrey's recent study of eunuchs currently living in India,18 and a psychological study called The Life Style of the Eunuchs,19 provided insight into the lives of contemporary Indian eunuchs as well as references to traditional Indian sources.
     An early twentieth-century book by Richard Millant, entitled Les Eunuques à travers les Ages or "eunuchs across the ages," gave some juicy anecdotes, but not enough references to primary sources. Like most modern scholars, Millant was operating from an assumption that being a eunuch meant being castrated. Without being able to check his sources for myself, I could not challenge his interpretations. Eventually, though, I found many of Millant's sources through the German articles and other secondary sources.
     Taisuke Mitamura's Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics was also stingy with footnotes, and anyway I could not check its references for lack of translations of the original sources into European languages. Mitamura did mention a nineteenth-century article on Chinese eunuchs by a European named G. Carter Stent ("Chinese Eunuchs," in Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series No. 11, Shanghai, 1877, pp. 143-184), who, like Millant, provides lots of interesting references, but also assumes that eunuchs are defined by castration.

     From these works, I have gathered several hundred ancient references to eunuchs, and over the course of seven years, I have assiduously looked up the primary sources in order to determine whether eunuchs, or born eunuchs, met my three definitive criteria for gay men. I checked primary sources in their original languages whenever my language skills permitted, that is in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and to some extent Egyptian and Akkadian. For ancient Indian sources, I relied on translations,20 but they supported my findings in Middle Eastern and Western sources.
     Most of the references neither proved nor disproved my hypothesis. The pre-Christian ancient writers were never specific in defining a eunuch as lacking a penis and/or testicles. Many of them made vague allusions to an imperfection, lack of power, femininity, or impotence, which did not exclude either genital deformity or a gay man's kind of impotence with women. A lot of them merely mentioned that a particular person was a eunuch, period. Although I was sometimes discouraged during the first few years because of not finding definitive proof that eunuchs and gay men shared the same characteristics, the very fact that hundreds of references did not exclude my hypothesis was cumulatively encouraging. With the overwhelming number of sources failing to specify that eunuchs were castrated, it seemed that I only needed to find one eunuch with a full set of genitals to throw the burden of proof off of my hypothesis and onto the opposite view.
     The evidence I eventually found was tailor-made to prove my hypothesis. Eunuchs as a category were able to procreate (except "if someone is a eunuch in such a way that he lacks a necessary part of his body"), and they had a sexual aversion to women and an attraction to men. Moreover, the early Indo-European cultures attacked them with the same kind of negative stereotypes that are inflicted on gay men today. But even more interesting was the reverence and appreciation enjoyed by eunuchs in many non-Indo-European ancient cultures, for which eunuchs/homosexuals assumed priestly roles.
     In the following I will bring the citations that were most relevant to proving my thesis. First, I will present quotes from ancient works indicating -- and even stating categorically -- that eunuchs could procreate. Then I will present quotes to the effect that eunuchs avoided sexual interaction with women or were impotent with them. This abstinence with respect to women was actually what defined the eunuch in the ancient mind, so the category covered not only gay men but any man who was unable or unwilling to have sex with women. Thirdly, lest the religious homophobes try to insist eunuchs are simply impotents and sexual abstainers, I also bring quotes demonstrating that eunuchs were known for sexually pursuing and accommodating other men. Thus eunuchs are gay men, and gay men are eunuchs.
     Think about it. Jesus spoke specifically about gay men in Matthew 19:12. He even said people might become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He did not anywhere say eunuchs should avoid their own kind of sexual expression. The church's condemnation of gay sexuality thus falls into the same category as its former hatred of straight sexuality, namely the category of irrelevance. In fact, you could even call it complicity in genocide, given the number of gay people who have been tortured and killed, either by the church or with its condonation.
    A lot of the ancient authors and works mentioned on this website are unfamiliar even to well-educated people who are not specialists in religious history, the Greek and Roman classics, and ancient multicultural literature. I would like for this research to be meaningful to a broad spectrum of people, and for that to be possible, it has to be easy for people of all walks of life to follow. The argument I am making is dividing into three sections. As stated above, the first section includes quotes that show their authors felt eunuchs could procreate. The second section contains quotes showing that their authors felt eunuchs were impotent with or sexually turned off to women. The third section includes quotes from authors attesting to the frequent sexual interaction between eunuchs and other men.
     What I intend to prove with these quotes is that people living thousands of years ago all across Europe and Asia acknowledged a certain category of men as different from the norm; that their difference consisted in the fact that they had no sex drive toward women, while they did enjoy sex with other men; and that their difference was conceived of as natural and inborn. I will bring also evidence that some cultures recognized that there were women who by nature had no lust for men. In sum, I intend to prove that gay men and women existed in the ancient world as categories distinguished from the norm.
     I welcome any questions that readers may have. You can direct them to my email address at <aquarius@well.com>.
     Please read on!
Go on to Section 1: Eunuchs are Able to Procreate --- Table of Contents --- Home
            

 

Queer Sexuality and Identity in the Qur'an and Hadith

by Mark Brustman

The Qur'an generally scorns "approaching males in lust", as well as the castration of males, as the sin of the people of Lot (Qur'an 7:81, 26:165-166, 27:55, 29:28-29).
 

7:81 "Indeed you approach males in lust in place of women..." 
Arabic: اِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّنْ دُوْنِ النِّسَآءِ

26:165-166 "What! Do you approach the males of the worlds and forsake those whom your Lord has created for you for your mates?" 
Arabic: آ تَاْتُوْنَ الذُّكْرانَ مِنَ الْعلَميْنَ \ وَتَذَرُوْنَ مَا خَلَقَ لَكُمْ رَبُّكُمْ مِّنَ اَزْوَاجِكُمْ

27:55 "Will you indeed approach males in lust in place of women?"
Arabic: آ ئِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّنْ دُوْنِ النِّسَآءِ

29:28-29 "Most surely you are guilty of an indecency which none of the nations has ever done before you; What! do you come unto the males and cut the passageways [i.e. vas deferens and/or urethra] and commit evil in your clubs?"
Arabic: اِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الْفَاحِشَةَ مَا سَبَقَكُمْ بِهَا مِنْ اَحَدٍ مِّنْ الْعلَمِيْنَ \ آ ئِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الرِّجَالَ وَتَقْطَعُوْنَ السَّبِيْلَ وَتَاْتُوْنَ فِي نَادِيْكُمْ المُنْكَرَ 
 

But the Qur'an does not prohibit using, as passive sex partners, the ancient category of men who by nature lacked desire for women, since such men were not considered "male" as a result of their lack of arousal for women. This kind of man is often known as "gay" in modern times, but in the ancient world he was identified as an anatomically whole "natural eunuch." Although the Qur'an never uses the word eunuch [خَصِي], the hadith and the books of the legal scholars do. Furthermore, the Qur'an recognizes that some men are "not possessors of the desire (or skill) that belongs to adult males" (24:31: غَيْرِ اُولىِ الاِرْبَةِ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ) and so, as domestic servants, are allowed to see women naked. This is a reference to natural eunuchs, i.e. innately and exclusively gay (if not totally asexual) men.

A person had to be indifferent to women's bodies in order to assume the role as a servant in women's private space. In the following case from the hadith, a household servant who had been falsely assumed to be indifferent to women due to his being an "effeminate man" [mukhannathمُخَنَّث ] was evicted by the Prophet because he unexpectedly exhibited a lascivious attitude toward women:
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 114:
What is forbidden concerning the entering upon the wife by those imitating women.
(162) Umm Salama reported that the Prophet, peace be upon him, was at her house, and in the house there was an effeminate man [مُخَنَّث], and the effeminate man said to the brother of Umm Salama, Abdullah bin Abi Umayya: "If God makes you all conquer Ta'if tomorrow, I will point out to you the daughter of Ghailan, for surely she has four when coming towards you and eight when she turns her back." Then the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: "This one shall not call upon you (pl.)."

Muslim, Collection of Authentic Traditions, Book XXVI (Greetings), Chapter 12:
(5415) Umm Salama reported that she had an effeminate man [مُخَنَّث] in her house. The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, was once at the house when he (the effeminate man) said to the brother of Umm Salama, 'Abdullah b. Abu Umayya: "If God makes you all conquer Ta'if tomorrow, I will point out to you the daughter ofGhailan, for surely she has four when coming towards you and eight when she turns her back." The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, heard this and he said: "These ones shall not call upon you."

(5416) 'A'isha reported that an effeminate man [مُخَنَّث] used to call upon the wives of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and they considered him to be "not a possessor of the desire/skill" [فكانوا يعدونه من غيْر أولى الارة]. The Prophet, peace be upon him, came by one day as he (the effeminate man) was sitting with some of his wives and he was describing a woman, saying: "When she comes towards you, she has four, and when she turns her back, she has eight." Then the Prophet, peace beupon him, said: "I see this one knows these things! He shall not call upon you (pl.)." She ('A'isha) said then they began to observe veil from him.
 

Note that in 'A'isha's telling of the story, she states that the women allowed him into their private rooms because they assumed he lacked "the desire/skill". (I use the words desire and skill together because the Arabic word has both meanings and because this particular skill depends on desire.) 'A'isha actually quotes the Qur'anic verse about men who are "not possessors of the desire/skill that belongs to males," demonstrating that his presence in the women's space would have been proper according to the Qur'an if only he had in fact lacked "the desire/skill." However, the statement of the effeminate man about the daughter of Ghailan, whatever it meant, indicated to Muhammad that he possessed the desire/skill that characterized adult males and that he had an appreciation of women as sexual objects. This disqualified him as an intimate domestic servant according to the Qur'an as well as the standards of the day. In a system that depended on household servants to be heterosexually indifferent, the main risk was that this indifference could be faked. In other words, an ordinary male could pretend to be an exclusive homosexual in order to gain free access to the private space of women.

There are other ahadith against cross-dressers in which the Prophet specifically curses "males" who imitate women and women who imitate males, and in which the consequence of their malfeasance is that he "evicts them from the houses." The specific reference to "males" who do this (as opposed to non-male eunuchs, for example) is made very explicit:
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXXII (Dress), Chapter 61:
(773) The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, cursed female-impersonators [m.pl.] who are males, and male-impersonators [f.pl.] who are women.
Arabic: لَعَنَ رَسُولُ اللهِ صلى اللهُ عليهِ وَسلَّمَ المُتَشَبِّهِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ بالنِّساءِ وَالمُتَشَبِّهاتِ مِنَ النِّساءِ بالرِّجالِ

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXXII (Dress), Chapter 62:
(774) The Prophet, peace be upon him, cursed the effeminate men [m.pl.] who are males, and the male-pretenders [f.pl.] who are women, and he said: Evict them from your houses, and the Prophet, peace be upon him, evicted such-and-such [m.sg.] and 'Umar evicted such-and-such [f.sg.].
Arabic: لَعَنَ النَّبِي صلى اللهُ عليهِ وَسلَّمَ المُخَنَّثِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ وَالمُتَرَجِّلاتِ مِنَ النِّساءِ وَ قَالَ: أخْرِجُوهُمْ مِنْ بُيُوتِكُمْ، قالَ: فأخْرَجَ النَّبِيُّ صلى اللهُ عليهِ وَسلَّمَ فُلانا، وأخْرَجَ عُمَرُ فُلانَةَ

The words "males" and "women" are obviously emphatic here because the grammar does not really require them to be used, unless it be for emphasis or clarification. Masculine gender is already provided grammatically by the endings on the words "impersonators" and "effeminates," and feminine gender is already provided in the words "impersonators" and "male-pretenders." Given the emphasis, the curse is specifically directed only at "males" and "women," and does not cover non-males who might be female-impersonators (or non-women who might be male-impersonators, if indeed there was a recognition of "non-women"). It's okay to be a drag queen as long as you are not a straight man posing to gain access to unsuspecting women, or to the wives of unsuspecting husbands.

The Qur'an recognizes that there are some people who are "non-procreative" [عَقِيم], thus neither male nor female:

42:49 "To Allah belongs the dominion over the heavens and the earth. It creates what It wills. It prepares for whom It wills females, and It prepares for whom It wills males. 
50 Or It marries together the males and the females, and It makes those whom It wills to be non-procreative. Indeed It is the Knowing, the Powerful."
Arabic: لله مُلْكُ السَّموتِ وَالْاَرْضِ يَخْلُقُ مَا يَشَآءُ يَهَبُ لِمَنْ يَّشَآءُ اِنَاثاً وَّيَهَبُ لِمَنْ يَّشَآءُ الذُّكُوْرَ \ اَوْ يُزَوَّجُهُمْ ذُكْرَاناً وَّاِنَاثاً وَيَجْعَلُ مَنْ يَّشَآءُ عَقِيْماً اِنَّهُ عَلِيْمٌ قَدِيْمٌ

These last two verses (42:49 and 50) are usually interpreted differently in English translations to say that God bestows daughters or sons on whom It wills and gives some people both sons and daughters. But there are problems with this interpretation, one of which being that the word for causing to marry or pairing up [زَوَّجَ] is used in the second verse. When families have boys and girls, the boys and girls do not usually arrive in pairs! The second problem is that, in Qur'anic verses mentioning males and females together, the males are usually mentioned first, and the females second (e.g., 3:195, 4:12, 4:124, 6:143-144, 16:97, 40:40, 42:50, 49:13, 53:21, 53:45, 75:39, 92:3). This is the only verse in the Qur'an, as far as I know, in which the female is mentioned before the male. If these two verses were talking about sons and daughters, we would expect sons to be mentioned before daughters.

In this case, the "males first" principle would indicate that the lines are referring to females and males not as offspring, but as counterparts, i.e. objects of desire, for "whom(ever) God wills." The female objects of desire are mentioned first because they are most typically objects of desire for males. Hence, even this verse is referring to males first, as the most typical "whom(ever)" for whom God prepares females. Yet the use of the word "whom(ever)" leaves it open for females to be objects of desires for other females as well, when God wills, and for males to be love objects for females and other passive non-males. I believe this verse is very neatly and concisely describing the varieties of sexual orientation and gender, which Allah, the All-Knowing and All-Powerful, creates as Allah wishes.

The non-procreative can include abstinent women as well as men, and in fact "the abstinent ones among women, who do not hope for marriage" [وَالْقَوَاعِدُ مِنَ النِّسآءِ الّتِي لَا يَرْجُوْنَ نِكَاحاً], are permitted to "put off their cover" in Sura 24:60.

Another intriguing example of a gender variant woman is Jesus's mother Mary. According to ancient notions about procreation, males were the only ones capable of producing seed. It would be impossible for a woman to give birth to a child, let alone a boy, without receiving seed from a male. In Christianity, this problem is solved by making God the male father of Jesus. According to the Qur'an, however, God does not procreate. This means that the seed that became Jesus came from within Mary. If Mary carried viable seed originating from within her, then by ancient definitions, she was a male, despite appearances to the contrary. So the Qur'an says that, when Mary was born, her mother declared that she was a female baby, but God knew better:
 

(Qur'an 3:36) Lord, surely, I have brought it forth a female - and Allah knew best what she brought forth - and the male is not like the female...
Arabic: رَبِّ اِنِّي وَضَعْتُها اُنْثى وَاللهُ اَعْلَمُ بِمَا وَضَعَت وَلَيْسَ الذَّكَرُ كَالاُنْثى

There are other traditions about the gender variance of Mary. I have argued elsewhere that Mary's virginity is not merely the innocent state of a girl who has not yet known a man, but a more permanent rejection of sex with men, like that of the Vestal virgins in Rome. In Isaiah 7:14, it is predicted that a virgin will conceive bear a son, but the word for virgin used there is not the generic bethulah (בתולה) used throughout the Hebrew scripture for girls who have not yet had sex. Instead, the word almah (עלמה) is used, a very rare word in the scriptures, which is the female counterpart to elem (עלמ), meaning boy. In the other verses in which it is used, it is compatible with a meaning of tomboy or rebuffer of men (cf. Proverbs 30:18-19, in which an almah appears to be impermeable to men).

Homosexual activity by straight men
Homosexual activity by homosexuals (eunuchs) is not spoken of in the Qur'an, which mentions only the unjust homosexual rape perpetrated by straight men against other straight men. Besides the Lut story, sexual exploitation of straight males is also alluded to in the assurance that the prophet Joseph's slaveholders "abstained from him" (12:20: وَكَانُوْا فِيهِ مِنَ الزَّاهِدِيْنَ).

But the Qur'an and hadith also have traces of the permitted homosexual desires of straight men. There is even a hadith in Bukhari, admittedly giving not the Prophet's opinion but that of Abu Jafar, according to which a pedophile is prohibited from marrying the mother of his boy-beloved if there is penetration:
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 25:
As for whom(ever) plays with a boy: if he inserted it into him, then he shall not marry his mother.
Arabic: فِيمَنْ يَلْعَبُ بالصَّبِي: إنْ أدْخَلَهُ فِيهِ فَلا يَتَزَوَّجَنَّ أُمَّهُ

(This rule is accompanied in the same chapter by prohibitions against a man marrying both a mother and her daughter.) Apparently according to this hadith, even sexual penetration of a boy is not considered sodomy, because if it was, surely the sodomite would have more worries than whether he could marry the boy's mother! Like whether he preferred to die by fire, stoning, or falling from a high tower! These are some of the punishments mentioned in the hadith for "doing as the people of Lut did." [A reader wrote in to say that this hadith would not necessarily imply that penetration of boys was not sodomy, but could be a recognition of the fact that not all crimes will be discovered and punished and that one who does penetrate a boy, even if he is not punished for sodomy for whatever reason, should at least know in his own conscience that the mother of his boyfriend is off limits. In any case, one possible inference from this hadith is still very interesting: namely, that if a man plays with a boy without penetration, then marrying the mother is still a possibility!!]

The distinction between pederasty (sex with boys) and sodomy (penetration of "males") was commonly, albeit not universally maintained throughout the ancient world, and indeed survived throughout most of the history of Islam until at least the nineteenth century (in spite of the futile objections of some medieval scholars). Apparently, boy-love was considered okay by many people because, like "natural eunuchs," adolescent boys were also thought to lack the "desire/skill that belongs to adult males" (sexual potency with women, or at any rate fertility). The Qur'an itself gives support to pederasts in its glimpses of paradise:
 

52:24 And they shall have boys [غِلْمَانٌ] who will walk around among them, as if they were hidden pearls.

56:22-23 And dark-eyed ones [حُوْرٌ عِيْنٌ], the like of hidden pearls

76:19 And boys never altering in age [وِلْدَانٌ مُتَخَلَّدُوْنَ] will circulate among them, when you see them you will count them as scattered pearls.

2:25 And they shall have immaculate partners [اَزْوَاجٌ مُّطَهَّرَةٌ] in [the gardens] ...

4:57 And they shall have immaculate partners [اَزْوَاجٌ مُّطَهَّرَةٌ] in them ...

One of the great male Sufi contemporaries of Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya provided a divine justification for a pederastic relationship, which was repeated without a hint of disapproval in a 10th century book about great Sufi women:
 

One day Rabi'a saw Rabah [al-Qaysi] kissing a young boy [وهو يقبّل صبيا صغيرا]. 'Do you love him?' she asked. 'Yes,' he said. To which she replied, 'I did not imagine that there was room in your heart to love anything other than God, the Glorious and Mighty!' Rabah was overcome at this and fainted. When he awoke, he said, 'On the contrary, this is a mercy that God Most High has put into the hearts of his slaves.'
(Quoted from as-Sulami, Early Sufi Women = ذكر النّسوة المتعبّدات الصّوفيات, translated by Rkia E. Cornell, Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999, pp. 78-79.)

Sexual use of eunuchs
Besides boys, straight Muslim men were occasionally interested in grown adults as well, provided they were not "male." There is a hadith in which the Prophet's companions asked whether they were allowed to use men (presumably prisoners of war) as eunuchs to fulfill their sexual urges, since they were far from their wives.
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 6:
(9) Narrated ibn Mas'ud: We used to fight alongside the Prophet, peace be upon him. There were no women with us, so we said: "O Messenger of God, may we not treat some as eunuchs [ألا نَستَخْصِي]?" He forbade us to do so.

The version in Bukhari, Book LXII Ch. 8:13a says that rather than let the companions "treat [some] as eunuchs" while stuck out on military campaign, the Prophet allowed them to have sex with a sexually experienced, unmarried woman who would take a cloak as compensation [رَخَّصَ لَنا أنْ نَنكِح المَرأَة بالثَّوْبِ], and he recited to them from the Qur'an (5:87): "O ye who believe! Make not unlawful the good things which Allah has made lawful for you, but commit no transgression." This mention of a cloak as compensation is a reference to a story that is told with more details in Sahih Muslim, Book of Nikah, Hadith 13, 22 and 23. The permission to have sex with a woman for an agreed price reflects the ancient view that a man could not commit adultery by having sex with an unmarried, sexually experienced woman, but only by having sex with a married woman or a marriageable daughter.

Clearly, when the companions came to the Prophet asking if they could designate eunuchs, it was because they were seeking a way to find lawful sexual release, and they saw eunuchs as such a way. The fact that Muhammad forbade the companions from treating captive men as eunuchs, or making them into eunuchs, is not the point here. Of course, using a straight male as a eunuch was wrong -- that was essentially the sin of the people of Lut. But what about using a natural eunuch (i.e. one who permanently lacks arousal with women) as a eunuch? Given that ibn Mas'ud made reference to the use of eunuchs for sexual gratification, and given that the Prophet understood what he meant, that indicates that the use of eunuchs for sexual gratification was known in Arabic society, and was considered a use that was appropriate to eunuchs. Since eunuchs were not considered male, there was no prohibition against it, not even in the Qur'an.

Eunuchs were still sex objects for straight men in the Mamluk dynasty, according to David Ayalon in Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans: A Study in Power Relationships(Jerusalem, 1999). They not only served to prevent older Mamluks from having sexual access to younger trainees:
 

The eunuchs seem to have served as a shield against homosexual lust in yet another way. They themselves formed the target of that lust, thus diverting it from the youngsters. They are described as being womanly and docile in bed at night and manly and warlike by day in a campaign and in similar circumstances (hum nisaa' li-mutma'inn muqeem wa rijaal in kaanat al-asfaar; li-annahum bil-nahaar fawaaris wa-bil-layl 'araa'is). [Arabic transcribed by Ayalon on page 34, from Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi, Al-Lataa'if wal-Zaraa'if, Cairo 1324/1906-7, p. 79, lines 1-7; and the same quote from Tha'alibi in his Tamtheel wal-Muhaadara, Cairo 1381/1961, p. 224.]

A eunuch Companion?
As for the issue of whether Muhammad himself expressly acknowledged that some people by nature are incapable of heterosexuality, thus being natural eunuchs, consider the following ahadith.

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 2:
The Statement of the Prophet, peace be upon him: "Whoever is able to perform coitus should get married, for it helps him lower his gaze and use his private parts in the best way." And should he get married who does not have a desire for conjugal intercourse?
(3) Narrated 'Alqama: [...] I heard [Abdullah] saying [to Uthman]: [...] The Prophet, peace be upon him, once said to us: "O young men! Whoever among you is able to perform coitus, he should get married, and whoever is not able, should abstain, because it will unnerve him."
The Arabic of the last sentence is: يا مَعْشَرَ الشَّبابِ مَن اسْتَطاعَ مِنْكُم الباءَةَ فَلْيَتَزَوَّجْ، وَمَنْ لَمْ يَستَطِيع فَعَلَيْهِ بالصَّوْم، فإنَّهُ لَهُ وِجاءٌ

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 3:
Whoever is not able to perform coitus should abstain.
(4) Narrated Abdullah: We were with the Prophet, peace be upon him, as young men and we did not feel any passion. And the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, said to us: "O young men! Whoever among you is able to perform coitus, he should get married, and whoever is not able, should abstain, because it will unnerve him."

In the next case, a specific man, Uthman bin Madh'un, comes to ask if he can be permitted to live a life of asceticism, and he is not allowed to:

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 8:
What is disliked about asceticism and eunuchism.
(11) Narrated Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas: The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, forbade Uthman bin Madh'un to be an ascetic, and if he had allowed him, we would have lived as eunuchs.
(12) Narrated Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas: He forbade this, that is to say, the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, forbade 'Uthman bin Madh'un, and if he had allowed him to be an ascetic, we would have lived as eunuchs.
The Arabic of the last sentence is: وَلَوْ أجازَ لَهُ التَّبَتُّلَ لإخْتَصَيْنا

But notice the different outcome in the following case:

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 8:
(13b) Narrated Abu Huraira: I said, "O Messenger of God, I am a young male, and I fear torment for myself, but I do not feel that with which to marry women" [إنِّي رَجُلٌ شابٌّ وأنا أخافُ على نَفسِي العَنَتَ وَلا أجِدُ ما أتَزَوَّجُ بِهِ النِّساءَ]. He remained silent. Then I said something similar to that, and he remained silent. Then I said something similar to that, and he remained silent. Then I said something similar to that. Then the Prophet of God, peace be upon him, said: "O Abu Huraira, the pen is dried as to what you are experiencing. So be a eunuch for that reason or leave it alone." [يا أبا هُرَيْرَةَ، جَفَّ القَلَمُ بِمَا أنتَ لاق فاخْتَصِ عَلى ذَلِكَ أوْ ذَرْ].

This hadith is packed with information that raises a load of questions: What does he mean by his being a "young male"? What is the torment that he fears for himself? What does he not have that he would need in order to pair up with women? And why does he use the plural "marry women" and not say "marry a woman" as one might well expect? Why does the Prophet (sas) stay silent, and wait for him to repeat the statement, and why does he answer on exactly the fourth time? Finally, what does the Prophet's command mean: "So be a eunuch for that reason or leave it alone"? Leave what alone? Stop doing what?

Since Abu Huraira calls himself a young male or male youth, we have to assume he is on the verge of adulthood or has just crossed over into adulthood when he makes his statement. He is at the point when his maleness will really have to show itself -- if not, he will find himself in the eunuch category. The test of manhood is precisely sexual potency with women, which in a fully grown adult signifies fertility. Whoever did not develop that skill, would be a eunuch by default.

Abu Huraira is at a critical time of life when everything changes for a male. In ancient times throughout the Mediterranean world, beardless adolescent boys were often objects of adoration and courtship for other older men, and there is some evidence that this situation was also known among the Arabs, as indicated above. But when a boy crossed over into manhood, he was no longer a fit object for this kind of attention. What made him no longer fit was his newly acquired status as a full-grown male, which implied that he was now fertile for procreation with women as evidenced by, among other things, his getting erections around women.