A Glimpse into the Perfumed Garden

I was browsing in the discount box outside a local bookstore a while back when a book caught my eye. It was entitled The Perfumed Garden and had an Arabic-style geometric design on the cover. I thought: Oh, wow, an Arabic herbal. This I’ve got to see. I opened it.

The inside page told me that the translator was none other than Sir Richard Burton, the same man who translated the Thousand and One Nights (and who performed the hajj disguised as a Muslim). That should have clued me, but it didn’t. It took a few more pages for me to realize that The Perfumed Garden is not an herbal, and it is not even about gardening. It is a fourteenth-century sex manual for men.

Well, a men’s sex and health manual, to be precise, since it contains quite a few tips for a healthy lifestyle. For example, it says, men shouldn’t have sex more than once or twice a month because it drains their life force. On the other hand, women can have sex much more often. (Since men are allowed more than one wife and women can have only one husband, I have to wonder how seriously the men of that time took that idea. Probably as seriously as today’s men do.)

The book has entire chapters devoted to the various descriptive names of the male and female sexual organs, explicit illustrations from around the time the book was written and spicy stories meant to amuse the guys. I skimmed through one story that featured a sweet, innocent male protagonist who is seduced by a wily, clever and extremely eager woman. At one rather intense point during their encounter, the woman tells the reluctant, modest man: “By my father’s religion, you must put your — into my —!”

And I’m thinking to myself: Lady, at a time like this you’re thinking of your father’s religion?!

(In the book, the words I omitted are as clinical and clean as anyone could wish, but I’m not including them here because this is a family blog.)

As I put the book back into the discount bin, I couldn’t help indulging in a little fantasy of my own: that the next time the Hamasniks get up on their high horse and start going on about purity, I’d like to wave a copy of The Perfumed Garden in their faces and tell them: Come off it, fellas. The author of this book was a Muslim sheikh. You can stop pretending now.

(Yes, I know I wouldn’t survive such a stunt by two seconds. That’s why it’s a fantasy.)

Update from Meryl: Angie found it for us online. I’m currently reading chapter six, which is utterly hilarious and discusses (by names and methods) various sexual positions. I’m trying to figure out what “The Tail of the Ostrich” might be.

Update 2: Oh. They explain it further down the page.