Mustapha Ben Ismaïl (with Arthur Asseraf)

Bad Gays

Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

History

4.6 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today we welcome special guest (and Associate Professor in History at the University of Cambridge) Arthur Asseraf to talk about Mustapha Ben Ismaïl, a terrifyingly ambitious twink who rose from being an illiterate street beggar to Prime Minister on the strength of the king's love for him –– and whose disastrous policies helped bring an end to Tunisia's independence. Arthur's Twitter. Arthur's faculty page. ----more---- SOURCES: Ramy Khouili & Daniel Levine-Spound, Article 230: A History of the Criminalization of Homosexuality in Tunisia, available online: https://article230.com/en/article-320-eng/… Marcel Gandolphe, ‘Une figure tunisienne: Mustapha ben Ismaïl’, Revue tunisienne, 144, mars-avril 1921, p.83-87 Khayr al-Din al-Tunsi, Memoirs, (ed. Mohamed-Salah Mzali and Jean Pignon), Tunis, 1971. Ibn Abi Dhiaf, Ahmad, Ithaf Ahl al-zaman bi Akhbar muluk Tunis wa 'Ahd el-Aman (إتحاف أهل الزمان بأخبار ملوك تونس وعهد الأمان), (1990 edition), Tunis. Jean Ganiage, Les Origines du Protectorat français en Tunisie, Tunis, 1959. Guellouz, Masmoudi, Smida, Histoire générale de la Tunisie: t.3 les temps modernes, Tunis, 1983. Khaled el Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800, Chicago, 2005. Jocelyne Dakhlia, L’Empire des passions: l'arbitraire politique en Islam, Paris, 2005. Kenneth Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, Cambridge University Press, 2014. Abdelhamid Larguèche, Les Ombres de Tunis: pauvres, marginaux et minorités aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Tunis, 2000. Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, La sexualité en islam, Paris, 1975. Nizar ben Saad, Lella Kmar, le destin tourmenté d’une nymphe du sérail (1862-1942), Tunis. Robert Aldrich, 'Homosexuality in the French Colonies', Journal of Homosexuality, 41:3-4, 2002 Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs, Chicago, 2007. Sirat Mustafa bin Isma'il (سيرة مصطفى بن اسماعيل ( edited Rashad al-Imam, Tunis, 1981 Our intro and outro music are, respectively, Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien, and a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Season 6, Episode 4 of Bad Gays, a podcast all about evil and complicated
0:17.5	queers in history.
0:19.0	I'm Ben Miller, a writer, researcher, and member of the board
0:22.0	of the Shvoulos Museum in Berlin. Last week, we spoke about Jorge Balve, who was an
0:28.4	Argentinian naval cadet, who hosted some orgies that helped bring down the government, which,
0:34.9	you know, all in a day's work. We are sadly Hewless this week, but are happy this week to welcome Arthur Asaref, who is a
0:43.3	lecturer in history at the University of Cambridge, and who is going to tell us all about
0:49.3	our character of the week. So who are we talking about this week, Arthur?
0:52.3	Sure. So today we are going to talk about
0:55.4	Mustafa Benisnail. Mustafa was perhaps one of the ultimate, ruthlessly ambitious twinks in world history.
1:04.6	He was a man who essentially fucked the king, became the prime minister by the age of 25, and ruined his country
1:13.5	so badly that it was invaded by France in 1881.
1:18.0	So lots to go ahead.
1:21.7	I think it's, yeah, that's as evil of a twink as we've ever heard profiled on this show,
1:27.9	and we've heard some pretty evil ones profiled on this show.
1:31.6	Some twinks are evil, but some twinks are evil with far greater consequences,
1:35.2	and I think he's definitely one of them.
1:39.1	So he's not so famous in English, but he is an infamous figure in Tunisian history.
1:47.0	So if you have any Tunisian friends, you could ask them, and there is a strong likelihood
1:52.0	that they've heard of him.
1:54.0	He is probably universally reviled. I've never encountered a positive account of him, so it's not like particularly
2:03.2	divisive. It seems to be a consensus that, you know, he was pretty bad. So I'm going to get into it.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -675 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.