Qajar Gender and Sexuality
I first became interested in the Qajar Persian dynasty after I met a man in a café in Baku on one of my last days of CLS. I was speaking English with the owner, over chay and mantu when he came up to me 
and started speaking a language I did not recognize. I imagined it was Azerbaijani at the time, but it may have been Persian. I was not as familiar with the distinctions then. While he was talking, he showed me his ring and I recognized the name Qajar when he said it. I hed hear about it briefly in my World War I in the Middle East course, but I new only that the Qajars were a dynasty that had gained control some years after the destruction of the Safavid empire. My host ultimately told me that the man was claiming to be an heir of the Qajars, a Persian dynasty as forgotten by mainstream western history as the Parthians or the Sassanids.
It is worth noting that the Qajars, while being a decidedly culturally Persianate dynasty, were not themselves originally ‘ethnically’ Persian. Like the the Seljuks, Timurids, Safavids, and Afsharids who dominated Iranian history after the decline of the power of the Abbasids, they were originally Turkic speakers.
To the extent that Qajar art and photography is well known, it is known for depictions of Persian court life. I would like to focus sexuality and gender, two of the most notable aspects of court life depicted in art. However, an obstacle lay between the modern mind and the norms of Qajar portraiture—gender. It seems the artistic elite as well as the dynasty had a keen eye for beauty. Even when inventorying prisoners of war, probably exclusively men, they would use adjectivally the names of flowers such as jasmines and pansies and plants, such as the cypress, to describe the beauty of the young men. Similar descriptions were also applied to the court and the harem, the members of which sponsored such descriptions (Najmabadi, 11). In the visual arts, the same markers of beauty were used for both male and female subjects.
Gender and sexuality in Qajar Persia, however was not defined by labels such as homo and heterosexual. These labels would be anachronistic. Rather, there was a locally originated, dominant, though not hegemonic, nuanced version of gender and sexuality at play. The boundaries of which were policed and enforced by marginalization, public shaming, falaka, castration, and sometimes even death. While there were boundaries of acceptable sexuality and gender expression, they were not as binary as they are often presented today in Iran.
This is largely because there was a third gender, the young male. What set a young male apart from a grown male was the ability to grow facial hair. Notably, this is the early stage in which the downy hair becomes noticeable, the peak of their appeal. Afterward, as many poets have mourned, they became out of reach.
The appeal and styles of facial hair, as in Europe, changed over time in Qajar Persia. Notably, the appeal of facial hair was not exclusively as a sign of masculinity. Women’s facial hair (taken in the broadest sense of the word “facial”) was not considered an aberration and may have also been emphasized for beauty. Eyebrows were often connected with makeup, especially in earlier Qajar paintings. Much to the pleasure of meme-makers, there are photographs of harem women with drawn or natural thin mustaches. While 500 words is not enough to explore this topic, it is enough to give this brief introduction.
https://tristans-expeditions.blog/2018/12/12/the-evolution-of-masculinity-and-views-on-male-homosexuality-in-qajar-iran-1785-1925/
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards : Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity, University of California Press, 2005.
Iznik Ceramics
Iznik tiles can be found in most of the imperial mosques of Istanbul and Edirne. They are known for 
their use of blue and red, the and their vegetal patterns. The construction of these mosques, popularly understood to mark the summit of Ottoman power, coincided the height of Ottoman monumentality in Architecture and ceramic art. If Suleiman Kanuni is understood commonly as the greatest of Ottoman sovereigns, and Mimar Sinan, the builder of the grand mosques, was understood as the greatest of Ottoman architects, it would follow that Iznik ceramics, patronized by the state often for the purpose 
of embellishing those mosques and making gifts for foreign diplomats, was the height of Ottoman ceramics.
Christie’s auction house breaks Izniks into three periods, the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centurys. The narrative is that Iznik tile was in it’s formative stages in the 15th, and reached its zenith in the 16th. However, due to Ottoman financial issues in the 17th century, the demand as well as the quality fell. It is notable that the style were inspired by Chinese porcelains. This probably explains the heavy use of blue in most of the designs. It is also noteworthy that the 
starting price for authentic 16th century Iznik in good condition is around $5,000 for a tile. Europeans even began to copy the Iznik style and this is also in demand. A Iznik style vase available on Cristies is estimated to be at least $8,000. Just think of the wealth on a single wall of Iznik tiles in Sultan Ahmed!
Iznik developed from from Chinese influence into a very regional craft. The traditional blue of fine china stuck. However the Ottomans developed it into a multi-colored palette. While the white the background and the clearness of the quartz glaze are some of its defining features, the Ottomans introduced a range of blues. They also added non-blue colors to the palate such as yellow, black, and red. The red in particular was the color that made Iznik from special. Like all colors, or the time, red had to be sourced naturally. Think of the purple of Rome being sourced from snails, for example. Iznik red came from clay. However, this particular clay, when fired created a color that has not been able to be replicated. This color most likely is due to the mineral composition of the clay owing to the particular environment in which it was formed. To this day, the source is still unknown.
http://www.iznik.com/history-of-iznik
https://www.afar.com/magazine/not-just-a-souvenir-the-untold-story-of-turkeys-iznik-tiles
https://www.christies.com/features/Iznik-Pottery-Collecting-Guide-7183-1.aspx?sc_lang=en&lid=1
Replies