Chapter XXXIV

. "The Scented Garden"

Bibliography:

77. The Scented Garden. "My new Version," translated 1888-1890.

158. Nafzawi.

As we learn from a letter to Mr. Payne, 8th November 1888, Burton began his "new version" of The Scented Garden, or as it is sometimes called, The Perfumed Garden, in real earnest early in that month, and Lady Burton tells us that it "occupied him seriously only six actual months," [569] that is, the last six months of his life.

The Scented Garden, or to give its full title, "The Scented Garden for the Soul's Recreation" was the work of a learned Arab Shaykh and physician named Nafzawi, who was born at Nafzawa, a white, [570] palm-encinctured town which gleamed by the shore of the Sebkha--that is, salt marsh--Shot al Jarid; and spent most of his life in Tunis. The date of his birth is unrecorded, but The Scented Garden seems to have been written in 1431. [571] Nafzawi, like Vatsyayana, from whose book he sometimes borrows, is credited with having been an intensely religious man, but his book abounds in erotic tales seasoned to such an extent as would have put to the blush even the not very sensitive "Tincker of Turvey." [572] It abounds in medical learning, [573] is avowedly an aphrodisiac, and was intended, if one may borrow an expression from Juvenal, "to revive the fire in nuptial cinders." [574] Moslems read it, just as they took ambergrised coffee, and for the same reason. Nafzawi, indeed, is the very antithesis of the English Sir Thomas Browne, with his well-known passage in the Religio Medici, [575] commencing "I could be content that we might procreate like trees." Holding that no natural

## action of a man is more degrading than another, Nafzawi could never

think of amatory pleasures without ejaculating "Glory be to God," or some such phrase. But "Moslems," says Burton, "who do their best to countermine the ascetic idea inherent in Christianity, [576] are not ashamed of the sensual appetite, but rather the reverse." [577] Nafzawi, indeed, praises Allah for amorous pleasures just as other writers have exhausted the vocabulary in gratitude for a loaded fruit tree or an iridescent sunset. His mind runs on the houris promised to the faithful after death, and he says that these pleasures are "part of the delights of paradise awarded by Allah as a foretaste of what is waiting for us, namely delights a thousand times superior, and above which only the sight of the Benevolent is to be placed." We who anticipate walls of jasper and streets of gold ought not, perhaps, to be too severe on the Tunisian. It must also be added that Nafzawi had a pretty gift of humour. [578]

159. Origin of The Scented Garden.

The origin of the book was as follows: A small work, The Torch of the World, [579] dealing with "The Mysteries of Generation," and written by Nafzawi, had come into the hands of the Vizier of the Sultan of Tunis. Thereupon the Vizier sent for the author and received him "most honourably." Seeing Nafzawi blush, he said, "You need not be ashamed; everything you have said is true; no one need be shocked at your words. Moreover, you are not the first who has treated of this matter; and I swear by Allah that it is necessary to know this book. It is only the shameless boor and the enemy of all science who will not read it, or who will make fun of it. But there are sundry things which you will have to treat about yet." And he mentioned other subjects, chiefly of a medical character.

"Oh, my master," replied Nafzawi, "all you have said here is not difficult to do, if it is the pleasure of Allah on high."

"I forthwith," comments Nafzawi, "went to work with the composition of this book, imploring the assistance of Allah (May He pour His blessing on the prophet) [580] and may happiness and pity be with him."

The most complete text of The Scented Garden is that now preserved in the library at Algiers, and there are also manuscripts in the libraries of Paris, Gotha and Copenhagen. In 1850 a manuscript which seems to have corresponded practically with The Torch of the World was translated into French by a Staff Officer of the French Army in Algeria, and an edition of thirty-five copies was printed by an autographic process in Algiers in the year 1876. [581] In 1886 an edition of 220 copies was issued by the French publisher Isidore Liseux, and the same year appeared a translation of Liseux's work bearing the imprint of the Kama Shastra Society. This is the book that Burton calls "my old version," [582] which, of course, proves that he had some share in it. [583]

There is no doubt that the average Englishman [584] would be both amazed and shocked on first opening even the Kama Shastra Society's version; unless, perchance, he had been prepared by reading Burton's Arabian Nights or the Fiftieth Chapter of Gibbon's Decline and Fall with the Latin Notes, though even these give but a feeble idea of the fleshiness of The Scented Garden. Indeed, as Ammianus Marcellinus, referring to the Arabs, says: "Incredible est quo ardore apud eos in venerem uterque solvitur sexus."

160. Contents of The Scented Garden.

Nafzawi divided his book into twenty one-chapters "in order to make it easier reading for the taleb (student)." It consists of descriptions of "Praiseworthy Men" and "Praiseworthy Women" from a Nafzawin point of view, interpretations of dreams, medical recipes for impotence, &c., lists of aphrodisiacs, and stories confirmatory of Ammianus's remark. Among the longer tales are those of Moseilma, "Bahloul [585] and Hamdonna," and "The Negro Al Dhurgham" [586]--all furiously Fescinnine. The story of Moseilema, Lord of Yamama, is familiar in one form or another to most students of Arab History. Washington Irving epitomises it in his inexpressibly beautiful "Successors" of Mahomet [587] and Gibbon [588] tells it more fully, partly in his text and partly in his Latin footnotes. Moseilema was, no doubt, for some years quite as influential a prophet as his rival Mohammed. He may even have been as good a man, [589] but Nafzawi--staunch Mohammedan--will not let "the Whig dogs have the best of the argument." He charges Moseilema with having perverted sundry chapters in the Koran by his lies and impostures, and declares that he did worse than fail when he attempted to imitate Mohammed's miracles. "Now Moseilema (whom may Allah curse!), when he put his luckless hand on the head of some one who had not much hair, the man was at once quite bald... and when he laid his hand upon the head of an infant, saying, 'Live a hundred years,' the infant died within an hour." As a matter of fact, however, Moseilema was one of the most romantic figures in Arabic history. [590] Sedja, Queen and Prophetess, went to see him in much the same spirit that the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon. Moseilema, who outlived Mohammed about a year, was defeated and slain near his capital Yamama, by the Mohammedan hero Khalid, and Sedjah subsequently embraced Islamism.

In the tale entitled "Djoaidi and Fadehat el Djemal" [591] appears that hoary poet, philosopher and reprobate, Abu Nowas [592] of The Arabian Nights. Like the Nights, The Scented Garden has a cycle of tales illustrative of the cunning and malice of women. But all the women in those days and countries were not bad, just as all were not plain. Plumpness seems to have been the principal attraction of sex, and the Kama Shastra version goes so far as to assure us that a woman who had a double chin, [593] was irresistible. If so, there were probably no words in the language good enough to describe a woman with three chins. According, however, to the author of the recent Paris translation [594] this particular rendering is a mistake. He considers that the idea Nafzawi wished to convey was the tower-like form of the neck, [595] but in any circumstances the denizens of The Scented Garden placed plumpness in the forefront of the virtues; which proves, of course, the negroid origin of at any rate some of the stories, [596] for a true Arab values slenderness. Over and over again in the Nights we are told of some seductive lady that she was straight and tall with a shape like the letter Alif or a willow wand. The perfect woman, according to Mafzawi, perfumes herself with scents, uses ithmid [597] (antimony) for her toilet, and cleans her teeth with bark of the walnut tree. There are chapters on sterility, long lists of the kind to be found in Rabelais, and solemn warnings against excess, chiefly on account of its resulting in weakness of sight, with other "observations useful for men and women."

While chapters i. to xx. concern almost entirely the relations between the opposite sexes,