The rape of Anatolia

Abstract

This chapter aims to cast a critical eye on the way relations between ruler and ruled, Muslim and Christian, and men and women are recounted in modern accounts of the history of medieval Anatolia. It consists of two parts: First a critique of scholarship, and second, an attempt to use a particular kind of contemporaneous source, the waqfiyya, to provide an alternative point of view. While the subject of rape, used literally, or metaphorically to mean prolonged or institutionalised sexual subjugation of women by men is not often treated in the Islamic scholarly literature, rape is such a prominent feature of classical antiquity, and mythological tales like that of Zeus and Io took place (at least partially) in Anatolia itself, that reference will also be made here to the scholarship on this subject in classical studies.2.