“The Love for Young Men Shifted to Girls”: Cevdet Pasha’s Account of Istanbul’s Sexual Culture in the Mid-19th Century
How the Crimean War and the foreign gaze changed the romantic customs of the Ottoman elite.
Ottoman Empire
The Same-Sex Attraction of 15th-Century Turkish Official and Poet Ahmed Pasha to a Sultan's Page
How a scandal at the court of Mehmed II destroyed the career of an Ottoman Empire vizier.
Three Ottoman Homosexual Miniatures from the Manuscript of Atâyî's Poems
An 18th-century Ottoman manuscript: how love between men was judged, mocked, and celebrated in the empire.
Homoerotic Themes in Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey’s Ottoman Poem “Shah and the Beggar”
A rare example of 16th-century Turkish literature in which a man falls in love with another man.
The Homosexuality of Sultan Mehmed II
Sources on the possible same-sex relationships of the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople.