The two Muslim poets featured in Scott Kugle's comparative study
lived separate lives during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth
centuries in the Deccan region of southern India. Here, they meet
in the realm of literary imagination, illuminating the complexity
of gender, sexuality, and religious practice in South Asian Islamic
culture. Shah Siraj Awrangabadi (1715-1763), known as "Sun," was a
Sunni who, after a youthful homosexual love affair, gave up sexual
relationships to follow a path of personal holiness. Mah Laqa Bai
Chanda (1768-1820), known as "Moon," was a Shi'i and courtesan
dancer who transferred her seduction of men to the pursuit of
mystical love. Both were poets in the Urdu language of the ghazal,
or love lyric, often fusing a spiritual quest with erotic
imagery.
Kugle argues that Sun and Moon expressed through their poetry
exceptions to the general rules of heteronormativity and gender
inequality common in their patriarchal societies. Their art
provides a lens for a more subtle understanding of both the reach
and the limitations of gender roles in Islamic and South Asian
culture and underscores how the arts of poetry, music, and dance
are integral to Islamic religious life. Integrated throughout are
Kugle's translations of Urdu and Persian poetry previously
unavailable in English.