The Perfumed Garden

The author praises God for having given us the pleasures of love-making. He says that God endowed women with beauty to inspire men to make love to them. He says that men have a natural weakness for the love of women. He says that he is a Muslim, that there is only one God and that Mohammed is his prophet. He says that he is the servant of God. He says that he wrote this book in Tunis for the Grand Vizir. He says that he had divided his work into different chapters to make it easier to read and understand.

A man worthy of praise can easily get an erection, he is not quick to discharge and, once he has lost his sperm, his member is soon stiff again. His member is long enough to reach the end of his partner's vagina and large enough to fill it. A man whose penis is too small cannot please women.

Nefzawi carries on with the fact that perfumes can excite women and that it is clever to use them. He tells the story of a man called Mocailma who used perfumes to possess a woman called Chedja, and it made wonders: she lost all her presence of mind and gave herself to him. It is at this point that three sexual positions are described for the first time: the man on top of the woman, who is lying on her back; the woman on all fours; the woman in prayer position, with her forehead on the ground and her buttocks in the air, elevated.

After the story, the author adds that a man worthy of praise is anxious to please women. He takes care of his appearance; he is truthful and sincere; he is brave and generous; he can be trusted; he is a good conversationalist. However, he does not boast about his relationship with other women.

To illustrate all this, the author tells the story of Bahloul, a buffoon who managed to make love to Hamdonna, the daughter of the King and the wife of the Grand Vizir. He first seduced her with his words. He then showed her his erected penis, which was strong and large. Upon doing this, she desired him and they made love. After they had climaxed, he kissed her lips and her breasts and then gave her cunnilingus. By that time, Bahloul was stiff again. They made love a second time; and then, when they had both climaxed, a third time.

A woman worthy of praise, according to Nefzawi has a perfect waist and is plump and lusty. She has black hair, large black eyes, an elegant nose, and vermilion lips. Her breath is of pleasant odour. Her breasts are full and firm. Her vulva does not emit a bad smell. Her hips are large. Her hands and her feet are of striking elegance.

Furthermore, she speaks and laughs rarely. Nefzawi adds that she never leaves the house and that she is not treacherous. If her husband shows his intention to make love, she complies with it. She assists him in his affairs. She does not complain or cry much. When her husband is downhearted, she shares his troubles. In public, she hides her secret parts and does not let anyone see them. She always dresses well and avoids showing her husband what might be repugnant to him.

At this point, the author tells the story of Dorerame, a slave who enjoyed making love with the most beautiful and well-born young women of his time, even if they belonged to other men. It is the longest story of the Perfumed Garden. We learn various things. For example, a woman says that a well-born lady could remain as long as six months without sex. We also learn that women can be very dangerous: he concludes this second chapter by saying that the moral of this tale is that "a man who falls in love with a woman imperils himself, and exposes himself to the greatest troubles."

Men who are misshapen, whose member is short, who do not make love with vigour or in a manner that gives women enjoyment, who skip foreplay, who are quick to discharge their sperm and leave their partner right after the ejaculation, are men who are held in contempt by women.

Men who lie, who cannot be trusted, who conceal to their wives what they have been doing, except their adulterous affairs, are also men worthy of contempt.

The Perfumed Garden first became widely known in the English-speaking world through a translation from the French in 1886 by Sir Richard Francis Burton. Burton mentions that he considers that the work can be compared to those of Aretin and Rabelais, and the French book Conjugal Love by Nicolas Venette. But what he believes makes The Perfumed Garden unique in the genre is "the seriousness with which the most lascivious and obscene matters are presented." Burton points out that not all of the ideas in The Perfumed Garden are original: "For instance, all the record of Moçama and of Chedja is taken from the work of Mohammed ben Djerir el Taberi; the description of the different positions for coition, as well as the movements applicable to them, are borrowed from Indian works; finally, the book Birds and Flowers by Azeddine el Mocadecci (Izz al-Din al-Mosadeqi) seems to have been consulted with respect to the interpretation of dreams."

The French manuscript that Burton translated from was one printed by Isidore Liseux in 1886. This manuscript's last chapter — Chapter 21 — was incomplete, apparently because it contained material on homosexuality and pederasty which had been removed. When Burton died in late 1890, he was working on a new translation of the original manuscript, including this missing chapter. The revised translation, due to be retitled The Scented Garden, was never published as Burton's wife Isabel burned the manuscript soon after his death.

A new French translation by René R. Khawam was published in 1976.

In 1999, Jim Colville published the first English Perfumed Garden translated directly from the Arabic original. Of the Burton translation, he says, "details were expanded, episodes introduced and whole sections incorporated from other, non-Arabic, sources. The text is dressed up in a florid prose alien to the style of the original and many of the notes are sheer speculation. The result is a consistently exaggerated and bizarre misrepresentation of the original".

Exaggeration on the part of Burton is vividly illustrated in Chapter 6, titled "Sexual Technique" in Colville's translation and "Concerning Everything That Is Favourable to the Act of Coition" in Burton's. Burton's translation is perhaps 25 pages long, lists 39 sex positions as well as 6 types of sexual movement, and gives creative names to many of these. Colville's translation is 2½ pages long, and lists 12 unnamed sex positions.