بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

'In Persia, as elsewhere, mystic writers, especially Jalal al-Din al-Rūmī (1207–73), produced a rhetoric of sexual union between two males as a metaphor, or as training for, or as a foretaste of, or as (in itself) ecstatic union with God. While as early as the middle of the eighth century, with the rise of the ʕAbbāsid caliphate, as Marc Daniel pointed out, "Moslem mystics adopted the vocabulary of boy-love poetry in order to signify the love of God, . . . they never succeeded in integrating it into their conception of the relationship between man and God." Perhaps there was more integration than has been seen by outsiders, because the focus of Orientalist research has been on written texts rather than on the homoerotic relationship between spiritual masters and their disciples. As Trix observed, "Previous Islamic studies have preserved the poetry of murshids and certain biographical details but have tended to take for granted the process of teaching." Naim explained, "A Sufi seeker [talib] should first direct all his love toward his mentor (murshid), who is always a male; only later, through the help of the mentor, can he reach his true love, God, who is again always referred to in the masculine."' (Murray p. 132)