The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight

Muhammad ibn Muhammad Al-Nafzawi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317832300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight has a bad reputation and a tattered history. For over a century, it has been known in English through Sir Richard Burton's bizarre translation (from the French) which consistently elaborated and misinterpreted the original. If ever a book needed demystifying, it is this one. Although remarkably lewd at times, it does not linger over details nor does it contrive to excite. It does not, therefore, qualify as pornography. In fact, The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight is nothing more than a manual for the ordinary married man of its author's time and place – Tunisia, in the early part of the 15th century – but one that is not without some entertainment value.

The present translation is not only the first, published English version to be based upon an established Arabic text, but also the first to be translated directly from the original Arabic at all.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight

Preface

In the Name of God the Merciful and Compassionate. May He bless our Lord and Master, Muhammad, his family and descendants.

Praise be to God who has made a man and woman’s supreme delight the sex of one another. Neither sex finds satisfaction and fulfilment until the man’s has penetrated the woman’s. And when the two connect, they lock together in a wild and savage struggle in which each one drives relentlessly towards the single climax of desire. The man will rock and the woman roll¹ until their passion is spent.

The delight of kissing a woman on her lips, cheeks and neck, of hugging and holding her tight to his breast, are ways that God has made to bring a man to arousal. In His mercy, He created woman with breasts, neck and throat, and soft, blushed cheeks. He gave her eyes to entice and eyelashes long and sharp, like shining daggers. Her belly He curved and jewelled with a navel. He made her waist and hips and firm, round buttocks and below, between her thighs, created a fabulous thing like a lion’s head; and its name is cunt. To it He gave a mouth, a tongue and lips, and shape like the footprint of an ibex in the sand. How many heroes have fallen as its casualties in anguish and in sorrow! In His power and wisdom, He set all this on two wonderful limbs, not too long and not too short, gracing each with knee and calf and foot, and an ankle perfect to adorn with chains of gold and silver.

I praise the One who bathed woman in the sea of allure, delight and beauty, who made her body perfect joy to touch and hold, and her smile such sweet enchantment. I praise Him, the Omnipotent, who created woman to arouse and captivate with her finely curved figure, her breasts, her neck and hair, and so made her man’s bewitching. I praise Him, the All-Powerful, who humbled man to love of her, to rest and to repose with her, who made her the cause of his committment and farewell, the motive for his settling and the reason for his flight. I praise the One who breaks and humbles lovers’ hearts at parting, who burns them in the fire of unfulfilled desire and degrades them to contempt, disgrace and misery in their longing to be joined. I praise Him as His slave who can but love and take his pleasure from the love of women, powerless to relinquish or forsake them. I witness now, as I will at the hour of my death, that there is no god but God and our Lord and Master, Muhammad, is the Messenger of His Word. May God bless him, his family, descendants and companions. And may my witness avail me at the terror of His judgement.

This is a book of honourable purpose, written at the request of Muhammad ibn ‘Awana Zawawi, Chief Minister to the Sultan of Tunis, His Excellency ‘Abdal‘aziz Hafsi, after he had read my previous short work, Enlightened Performance in the Secrets of Coitus. The Sultan’s poet, adviser, secretary, confidant and friend, and an intelligent, understanding and wise man, the most worldly-wise of his day, he grew up in Algiers where he came to the Sultan’s attention after the fall of that city. He removed with him to Tunis and was there appointed his Chief Minister.

When my above book came to his notice, he sent for me and insisted that I come as quickly as I could; I was received most cordially at his residence. After three days of gracious hospitality, he granted me an audience, produced my book and inquired if I really was the author.

“Do not be modest,” he told me. “Everything you have written is true and no-one can take issue with it. You may not be the first to have dealt with this subject but, God knows, it’s one that needs to be more widely understood. Only an idiot or half-educated fool would laugh at this or shut his eyes to it.”

He then raised a number of points, suggesting that I expand some chapters and incorporate additional ones. In particular, he suggested the sections on the various remedies, which had been dealt with only briefly, should be expanded, unabridged versions of stories should be given, and the causes of sexual desire and reasons for abstinence should be explained. Methods of treating erection problems, of penis enlargement, of removing vaginal odour and of tightening the vagina, and treatments relating to pregnancy, should be also be included. In this way, he suggested, my book would become more comprehensive and achieve its aim more readily. I assured him that this would not be difficult to do. And so, seeking help from God and with prayers to the Messenger of His Word, I set about composing this book which I have called The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight. Success is God’s alone to grant or withhold and His alone is the power and the glory.

The book is arranged in chapters – twenty-one in all – to enable the reader more easily to find the topic he requires. Where appropriate, I have included tried and tested advice and remedies, as well as tales and anecdotes of cunning and intrigue. The arrangement is as follows:

Chapter One: The Man of Quality

Chapter Two: The Woman of Quality

Chapter Three: The Repulsive Man

Chapter Four: The Repulsive Woman

Chapter Five: Sexual Intercourse

Chapter Six: Sexual Technique

Chapter Seven: The Harmful Effects of Intercourse

Chapter Eight: Names for the Penis

Chapter Nine: Names for the Vulva

Chapter Ten: The Members of Animals

Chapter Eleven: Women’s Tricks

Chapter Twelve: Questions & Answers for Men & Women

Chapter Thirteen: The Causes & Stimulation of Sexual Desire

Chapter Fourteen : Remarks on Female Sterility & Methods of Treatment

Chapter Fifteen: The Causes of Male Sterility

Chapter Sixteen: Ways to Provoke Miscarriage

Chapter Seventeen: Treatment for Three Types of Erection Problem

Chapter Eighteen : How to Expand & Enlarge the Smaller Penis

Chapter Nineteen: How to Remove Underarm & Vaginal Odour & Tighten the Vagina

Chapter Twenty: The Symptoms of Pregnancy & How to Determine the Sex of the Unborn Child

Chapter Twenty-One: The Benefits of Eggs & Sexually Stimulating Beverages

Chapter One

The Man of Quality

You will be aware, Your Excellency – and may God be merciful to you – that there are many different types of men and women; among them are those who have quality and among them are those who do not.

For a woman, the man of quality has a large, hard and vigorous penis, quick to rise in the ache of its desire and slow to spend its passion. For intercourse, a woman enjoys a man who gives and takes his pleasure slowly, with gentle breast and heavy haunches, a man of size whose penis reaches deep within her vagina, to stretch her and to fill her, a man who is slow to come and quick to arousal again. Such a man is a woman’s pleasure. A poet said,

Women desire what in men cannot last,

Youth, wealth and health, and not coming too fast,

Long-lasting and slow is what women expect

And for seconds, he’s equally quick to erect.

Well-endowed, heavy-haunched with a light, gentle breast,

The man who has these, among women, is blessed.

There is a story that one day the Caliph ‘Abdulmalik ibn Marwan² met the poetess Layla Akhiliya and put all sorts of questions to her. They then had the following exchange:

“Layla, what is it in a man that women cherish?”

“Cheeks like a woman’s, Sire,” she replied.

“What else?”

“Hair like a woman’s.”

“And what else?”

“Sire, an older man needs authority or wealth to find success with women – so a man just like you, Commander of the Faithful.”

A poet composed the following verses about this:

Women to riches and wealth are in thrall,

A young man with land is, for them, best of all

When a man’s hair turns grey or his fortune grows less,

He will find himself lacking a woman’s caress.

The width of twelve fingers, or three hands, is the length of the largest male members, while the smallest are the length of six fingers-width, or one and one half hands. Some men measure twelve and some men ten, or two and one half hands, while some measure eight and others six. Anything less is no use to a woman.

One of the stimulants to sexual desire is the use of perfume by both partners. When a woman detects the scent of perfume on a man, she relaxes and unwinds. A man might thus try perfume as a means to coupling with a woman.

With this is mind, let us relate a story about Musaylima ibn Qays – may God curse him – the liar who claimed prophecy in the time of the true Prophet – may God bless him – and a band of perfidious Bedouin – may God damn them all!

This Musaylima used to produce his own fake and distorted versions of Quranic verses. A gang of hypocrites and dissenters once brought him the chapter of the Quran entitled, ‘The Elephant’, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.

“Gabriel revealed one just like it to me!” he announced and proceeded to recite,

“The elephant, who told you about the elephant? It has a tail like a rope and a very long nose. It is one of God’s creatures” (sic!).

He also produced a fake version of the chapter entitled, ‘al-Kawthar’³ that went:

“We have given you jewels, so choose what you will. But be quick about it and do not be greedy!” He distorted other chapters in a similarly facile way.

Some of Musaylima’s tribe had seen or heard that when Muhammad placed his hand on the head of a bald man, the hair grew back, or if he spat in a dried-up well, it filled with fresh water. If he spat in the eye of a blind man or of someone suffering from ophthalmia, the sight would be restored, while if he placed his hand on a child’s head and said, “May he live for one hundred years!” the child would live to be a hundred.

“Have you seen what Muhammad can do?” they asked him.

“I can do better than that,” was Musaylima’s reply.

But in trying to imitate the Prophet, this enemy of God would place his hand on the head of a balding man and what little hair he had fell out. If he spat in a well, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight