Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  The vision of The Perfumed Garden, then, combines tactile and olfactory sensations, eroticism of the body, imagination and religious spirituality. In this it belongs to the authentic Islamic tradition. Furthermore all the handbooks of erotology devote some section to corporal hygiene and the use of scent.36 For hygiene is an element of eroticism, just as eroticism is a factor in hygiene. Here is a simple recipe given by Suyūti: ‘Pound some spikes of dried lavender, knead with rose water and place in the vagina.’37

  Pharmacopoeia has an essential place in erotology. Compounds and simples are abundantly prescribed as aphrodisiacs or aborti-facients. To increase virile potency Kamal Pasah advocates taking every morning honey mixed with fenugreek; eating in the evening, before going to sleep, pistachio nuts, pine kernels, walnuts, almonds and coconuts. Poppyseed also increases virility as does cinnamon, safflower and bastard saffron.38

  The woman’s pleasure is increased if, before the work of the flesh, one has been prudent enough to proceed in the following manner: take pomegranate peel, finely pounded, stir in honey, form into small balls and, prior to coitus, take one of the balls and suck it. One may also dilute this product in saliva and smear it on the member.39 Kamal Pasha recommends as an aphrodisiac onion,40 scammony,41 purpura,42 linseed, raisins, lavender seed, radishes,43 and cress. Cabbages, too, have wonderful virtues.44

  Ejaculatio praecox may be retarded by treatment with honey and nutmeg. Impotence may be cured by eating honey, pyrethrum, nettle seed, spurge, green ginger and cardamom.45

  A treatment to keep the member erect consists in steeping leeches in good oil and smearing it on to the penis. The efficacy of the recipe is increased if one leaves the mixture to steep in a bottle that is itself buried in warm manure: this produces a homogeneous liniment.46 If one wishes to make the member longer, then the best recipe is the following:

  Five measures of nitrated borax, five measures of lavender seed dried or powdered, five measures of honey and five measures of milk. Pound well. Smear the member with a little of the product. Massage the member well, sprinkle hot water on it from time to time. When the member is red, wash it and massage it again. This recipe is guaranteed, well tried and effective.47

  Sometimes it is the woman who is to be treated. Frigidity is cured thus: ‘Camomile and asphodel pounded and mixed with lubin oil in equal quantities. The woman who smears it on her vagina will burn with desire and will not rest until she is satisfied.’48

  Here is another marvellous recipe, known as ‘the matter of life’ (mādaat al ḥayāt), especially intended for the use of philosophers. An ounce of each of the following ingredients: ground pimento, essence of pimento, ginger, tubipore, pine kernels, amlaj and ahlaj,49 a little of the powder known as ‘cold fire’, which may be replaced by walnut shell. To this one adds half an ounce of herbane, a coconut, and three ounces of the plants known as ‘fox’s testicles’ and ‘skeleton of red wolf. Work into an oily paste. Each time one must take of it an amount equal to five times the size of a hazelnut.50 This ‘philosopher’s jam is effective in eliminating phlegm, fortifying the spirits, aiding digestion, giving a youthful glow to the face, putting on weight, sharpening the wits, improving elocution, curing colds, cleaning the urethral tract, calming aerophagia, increasing and thickening sperm, lengthening the penis, keeping the teeth in place, eliminating aches in the back, the joints, the waist and the sides.’51

  Sheikh Suyūti provides a marvellous recipe that was given him by a sultan of Tlemcen, who had tried it out himself and succeeded in deflowering fifty virgins in a single night. One takes the testicles of three (or eight or fourteen) male chickens. One adds green ginger, nutmeg, walnut essence, pimento essence, tubipore, cloves, cinnamon, dried earth from India, palm seeds known as the seeds of intelligence, an ounce of salt from Hyderabad and a quarter of an ounce of saffron. Grind, work together and pound with a good skimmed honey. Put the mixture into a glass container. Seal hermetically with a stopper made of a little clay of wisdom. Leave the mixture to simmer near a fire for three nights and three days until it thickens. Leave it to cool. Form into small balls the size of chick peas and take the equivalent of a lentil grain whenever one wishes to make love. The member then becomes erect and nothing will be able to soften it unless one drinks a little vinegar.52

  Sheikh Nefzāwi recommends a diet of thick honey, almonds, pine kernels or a mixture of onion seeds pounded with honey. One may also ‘rub the member with ass’s milk or camel fat, which is a very effective lubricant. The man thus acquires a virile firmness that will win the congratulations of his partner.’53

  Among the hundreds of recipes to be found in this prolific literature I have found ones claiming to cure love, others that inflict it, others that sharpen the appetites of old women, or suppress those of the young, others that treat dysmenorrhoea and amenorrhoea, others that recreate an artificial virginity in girls who for one reason or another have lost it. One curious treatment is suggested for jealous husbands who wish to protect themselves from being cuckolded: such a man has merely to smear wolf’s bile on his penis and have intercourse with his wife. Any other man than he who tries to approach his wife will find himself impotent.54 The birth control section is rich and varied: it includes camphor, which the woman is supposed to eat, the urine of a castrated ram, which she must drink, and a rabbit’s heart embalmed in mint, which she must wear as an amulet. Another method of guaranteed efficacy is to place some alum powder in the vagina.55

  Nor should we forget all the recipes available for curing sterility56 and for ‘waking the sleeping child’,57 or aborting an unwanted foetus.

  The list, as we can see, is extremely rich, stretching from love philtres to abortifacients. Most of the recipes, whose effectiveness is praised and guaranteed, seem to be based on a good knowledge of the pharmaceutical virtues of a few simples such as lavender, fenugreek, scammony, ginger, saffron, etc. It certainly suggests a trade that must have been extremely active, survivals of which are still to be observed in the Sidi Mehrez souk at Tunis and at the Khan Khalili in Cairo or in Medina, where one can still find on sale dragon’s teeth and ogre’s milk or that celebrated clay of wisdom. . . .

  The psychical factors, especially in the case of Sheikh Nefzāwi, are far from being ignored and are indeed approached in a most interesting and thorough way. ‘There are subversive minds,’ he writes, ‘who attribute a woman’s inaptitude in love to the intervention of evil djinns. This is an aberration. To make love well one has only to be healthy in body and mind – and above all not to be over fat, which forces men and women to exhausting and somewhat grotesque gymnastic exercise.’58 He attributes impotence to psychological causes. ‘It often comes from ill-observed causes. First a general coldness of temperament, which may be altered by various means. . . . Treatment by suggestion . . . is sometimes very effective if the patient is emotional.’59 In fact the true remedy for impotence is – again – eroticism.

  For nothing can beat a good kiss as a prelude to love: ‘The kiss is a savoursome thing, like those delicacies intended to stimulate the appetite, but which must be followed by more substantial fare that nourishes a man’s body.’60 There is an art of kissing and even an entire gamut in that art:

  First on the cheeks, then on the lips, finally on the breasts, which one thus arouses into turgescence, then one descends lower to the belly, to the sweet convexity; the tongue is skilfully inserted in the crater of the navel, then into another more intimate one. . . . There is an art in bringing women’s sensuality to the point of effervescence that leads to perfect bliss. One must not be hasty, but carry out all the formalities, which are so many necessary stages to complete pleasure. Pleasure must be reciprocal if it is really to be the great festival of the senses: the man who is concerned only with coming himself, without at the same time getting the woman to come, is a poor wretch who wastes his virile strength. . . .61

  Of course there is nothing blameworthy in this art and the sheikh does not forget to remind us:

  Such are the r
ecommendations of the Most High to bring to its height an act so essential that it should never be a chore, but always a means of achieving happiness by making a woman happy. This is the secret of human happiness, permitted by God and even encouraged by Him, to whom we owe life and everything that embellishes it.62

  Lastly mention should be made of a sort of ‘geo-erotology’, the purpose of which is to distinguish the love practised by different peoples and to learn by varying the choice of partners to vary one’s own experiences.

  Byzantine women are supposed to have very healthy vaginas, but they are reproached with having them wide, and lacking in depth. Spanish women are the most beautiful and most perfumed. Indian, Chinese and Slav women are the most hateful, least good looking, dirtiest, most stupid. Negresses are delectable and obedient. Distinctions must be made among Arab women. Iraqi women are the most exciting, Syrian women the most affectionate, but the best, of course, are the Arab and Persian women. They are the most fruitful, the most loving and the most faithful. Nubian women have very warm vaginas, better furnished posteriors, more harmonious bodies and repeatedly arouse desire. Turkish women have cold vaginas. They get pregnant at once, are ill-tempered and rancorous, but are highly intelligent. . . . Egyptian women are clever at saying the right things. They are warm in temperament and easily abandon themselves to the joys of love. The most agreeable Egyptian women for coitus are those of the upper Nile region. Those of the lower Nile have larger vaginas and the peasant women are the most insatiable.63

  Such references belong of course to an erotic perspective historically conditioned by the political, economic and cultural factors of the period. The role of concubinage is obvious here, since it was this practice that made possible the co-existence in Muslim towns of jawāri from every part of the empire. Rotation of women, frequent changes of partner, contacts with civilizations geographically close to Islam provided something for all tastes and a desire to ‘collect’ a variety of pleasures. Hence that extraordinary erotic vision of the world open to every kind of amorous experience. Cultural exchanges and the processes of acculturation necessarily included an erotological dimension.

  Unfortunately we cannot at present explore this area further, for little is still known about it. The history of Arab eroticism is still to be written. There is still not a single scholarly edition of any of the innumerable treatises referred to above – and I have had to confine myself to a few references that, moving away from the obscene, give us a splendid, refined view of love. But in doing so I have had to set aside innumerable other works.64

  Indeed eroticism is so inextricably bound up with the cultural life of the Arabo-Muslim societies that annotations, passages, even whole chapters are to be found interpolated in any work of literature, law, history, etc. Eroticism is not exclusive.

  Thus Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih’s ‘Aqd al-farīd includes a fine chapter on women65 and an entire book on love. Muhammad Nāzli’s khazīnat al-asrār is a book of mysticism that treats of the spiritual values to be found in innumerable verses of the Quran and the hadiths. Nevertheless it includes a chapter devoted to zinā and how to protect oneself from it by, among other things, reciting certain quranic verses.66

  There is a treatise on physiognomy, the kitāb al-siyāsa fi ‘ilm al-firāsa by the imam Shamsal-dīn al Ansāri. The descriptive analysis of the anatomy of the soft parts of the body provides an opportunity, which the author does not miss, of innumerable erotic digressions.67

  The Mustafraf, which is presented as a sort of encyclopaedia, could not fail to pay a good deal of attention to the question. So chapters devoted to singing, musicians, love, women, poetry and affection find their place in the most natural way imaginable in the most specialized erotic treatises.68 And of course Ibn El Qayyam al-Jawzia’s akhbār al-nisā also contains a good measure of erotic material.69

  Without going into greater detail, I think I have now given a sufficiently clear account of the scope, nature and function of Arabo-Muslim eroticism. Eroticism is the art of arousing, sustaining, satisfying and renewing desire. Hence so much refinement, constantly imbued with love poetry, unbounded fantasy and powerful oneirism. The erotic science of the Arab allows him to spend a whole night in an orgy of perfumes, feasting, drinking and marvellous women, in turn maintaining, satisfying and renewing desire. The time of love is a magnificent arabesque in which failure is approached, but always avoided and achievement, once attained, turns out to be a starting-point for a new beginning. Only dawn prayers can put an end to this skilful use of the night. The sublimation of women is ultimately an art of spiritualizing the flesh, of going in a sense beyond sensuality and grasping through the enchantments of orgasm and the magic of love the splendid mystery of the work and love of God. One may really speak of an Islamic art of sexual ecstasy. By accepting and recommending the joys of love Islam made possible that integration of all forms of sensuality in a lyrical vision of life.

  This lyrical vision of life is also a sensualization in time. Nothing is so alien to our domain than the brief act. It is not a question of getting through the work of flesh as it were some chore that one has to carry out. One must lose oneself in pleasure and extend the time of its performance. Hence the importance of ‘foreplay’. The woman who goes to the hammam and spends long hours preparing the most varied, the most studied, the most skilfully composed delicacies and the man who goes to the market looking for food, drink, silks and perfumes are merely preparing themselves for long nights of love. Sometimes the whole of daily life is structured with a view to the supreme end of sexual bliss.

  Hence the importance of so many practices, that seem, at first sight, far removed from Eros, but which are in reality merely a prefiguration of it.

  Arab cooking is an erotic alchemy. Sport, hunting and dancing are also eroticized. The hammam is an eroticized place. In short, everything that concerns the body has a sexual dimension.

  Eroticism is also an attempt to attain the absolute through the body. The techniques of the body play a role here similar to those of gestures in prayer. Hence that positional eroticism that I have already referred to and which, implying a permanent adjustment of the partners to one another, is a gift of love through the mediation of gesture.

  So the bodies must be maintained in a fit condition so that they are able to carry out this mediating role. Hence the extraordinary place occupied by pharmacopoeia and perfumes. It is a question of nourishing the body, of arousing desire in it, of increasing its strength with a view to the splendid role that it has to play. Revelation is not a gratuitous gift, but is conveyed through the flesh. Mossaylama’s The Perfumed Garden is particularly revealing in this respect.

  Erogenous perfumes and aphrodisiacs throw us at once into the oneiric world in which matter serves as a support and contributes its immense power of suggestion. Erotic unctions, the use of smells, pleasant or strong, heavy or intoxicating, form part of the preparation for love. The erotic atmosphere is certainly enhanced by the odours, whose role in the treatment of anxiety and impotence are described at length in the Arabic treatises.

  ‘The associative power of olfactory sensations is immense. The habit of practising coitus in a fragrant atmosphere, of linking the possession of a partner with a particular scent, is regarded as a very strong conditioned reflex.’70 Here Gérard Zwang is merely taking up where Nafzāwi and Siyūti left off, but without knowing it.

  Perfume is such an airy form of matter that it penetrates the body and gives the illusion of a marriage between the spirit and the senses. It is no accident if it is an attribute common to amorous and religious practices. Here again we find the intimate union of the most aroused sensuality and the most spiritual faith.

  Eroticism is total. It goes well beyond the simple domain of coitus. As a quest for the absolute, it tends to reconstitute on the basis of the religious and the profane a sacred that embraces them both within a spiritual and carnal sacrality.

  Canalizing the spirit and spiritualizing the flesh is, in my opinion, the essential fe
ature of the Islamic undertaking. The sublimation of the flesh is the work at once of speech, the body and the material imagination. Arab erotology – and Muhammad himself set the example – insists that words should accompany coitus. Silent, furtive coitus is worthless. Love cannot be silent. This is because language conveys tenderness and makes the feelings reciprocal. It makes the desire shared. By giving expression to desire language makes it a possession shared jointly by the speaker and the listener. So speech becomes song, music, even pure music. If Eros and Logos go together it is because they are both carnal and spiritual reciprocity. And it is speech, in its true forms of poetry and song, that makes this reciprocity possible.

  Hence the idea of a total, absolute Eros that is its own end. Procreation may occur, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. One may try to integrate it or to eliminate it entirely. That is not the problem. For sensuality still preserves a value per se. It is a reunion with the absolute and even with a fourfold absolute: the absolute of my body, the absolute of the other, the absolute of love, the absolute of creation. Love, then, is so rich and so enriching that it is worth the trouble to bring everything possible into its service. Arab eroticism is ultimately a service of the absolute.

  CHAPTER 12

  Certain practices

  In posing the radical legitimacy of the practice of sexuality, Islam helped in the formation of a specific form of culture. The continuous outpouring of oneirism, combined with the exuberance of the most delicate and most elaborate eroticism, gave birth to a particularly original and attractive mode of life. In various ways, conscious and unconscious, social and individual, enigmatic and clear, this mode of life reveals the many, sometimes contradictory implications of the fundamentally lyrical way in which Islam confronts life. To be attentive to one’s own body, to assume it in its totality, to take one’s own fantasies seriously, to make the quest for orgasm an essential aim of earthly life and even of the life to come, are some of the aims of Islam. This was expressed on the concrete plane by a number of ‘features’, which I have already described. A highly elaborate doctrine of nikāḥ and ḥisān; a vision of ritual purity; an obsession, mixed with a very serious hope, of having relations with the world of the spirits; a structure of domestic life based on the rotation of women and the complementary co-existence of wives and anti-wives; the promotion of eroticism to the rank of a science, on a level with grammar, the fiqh or quranic exegesis. . . . It also became apparent that social structures left their mark on a history of which I have been able to provide no more than, a few glimpses. We have seen how concubinage finally affected Arab femininity and expressed in Manichean terms what in principle ought to be complementarity and harmony. If Arab woman qua wife came to embody seriousness, motherhood and the survival of the group, it was left to the jawāri to make their own the ludic, the poetic and aesthetic. Similarly it became apparent that economic, even ecological, considerations finally separated the rotation of women and the circulation of goods so that, excluded from inheritance and from any claim to a share of the patrimony, Arab woman saw her de facto condition fall well below that of the most solemn quranic statements. Hence the need to construct, on the basis of other sacred texts, which, though just as authentic as the first, were divorced from their context and interpreted from a misogynist point of view, a justification for the intrinsic inferiority of woman. Of course the development of eroticism and mujūn also involved, in view of this context, the terrible risk of reducing women to the rank of playthings whose sole purpose was the satisfaction of the sexual selfishness of more or less blasé males. Hence, too, that obsession with ‘sexual renewal’, sometimes impossible to achieve, except at the expense of enormous sacrifices imposed on women who, married too young and to old, impotent men, had no sooner reached woman-hood than they were widowed.