Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  In order to grasp the most radical implications of this dialectic of the sacral, the sexual and the social, perhaps one should go back to an even more basic level and try to understand the organization of sexual experience as it has existed in everyday life. Without in any way claiming to exhaust a subject that is as vast as life itself, I propose to examine a few particularly significant aspects of everyday life: the hammam, circumcision, prostitution and obscene folklore, all areas in which scientific exploration certainly makes possible a more detailed, more judicious approach.

  1 The hammam

  ‘Cleanliness is part of the faith,’ a hadith declares. As we have seen, ritual purification is required after performing physiological activities. Washing oneself, cleaning oneself, purifying oneself, scenting oneself, in short, taking care of one’s own body has always been the quranic obligation that has been most widely observed in all countries and at every period affected by Islam. So it is hardly surprising if the institution of the public bath (hammam) spread so widely and so rapidly during the period of Islamic expansion.

  In the tenth century Baghdad boasted twenty-seven thousand hammams or even, according to some obviously exaggerated claims, sixty thousand. Cordoba had between five and six thousand. Whereas the Roman thermae were concentrated only in the larger cities, the hammams were everywhere. Every small township or village had its hammam. In the towns there was at least one hammam in each district, if not in each street. I have calculated that there was one hammam per fifty inhabitants in Baghdad and per eighty inhabitants in Aghlabite Kairwan.1

  Certainly pre-Islamic Arabia does not appear to have benefited, as did the Middle East and especially Egypt, the Maghreb and Andalusia, from the Roman inheritance. But, in the civilization that it built up on the ruins of the Roman empire, Islam was to integrate the imperial thermae, taking over its structures and organizations, but putting it to new uses. A systematic comparison from the cultural point of view of the Roman balneae and the Muslim hammam would be fascinating and instructive. This is not the place to make such a comparison, but it is worth pointing out that the ludic, athletic aspect declined in favour of the performance of a ritual that is essentially religious. Moreover entry to the balneae was mixed: under Trajan, for instance, women bathed quite freely with the men. ‘Those women who disliked this promiscuity were not obliged to frequent the thermae, but could go to balneae that catered exclusively for women. But there were now many women who had come to enjoy the sports that preceded bathing in the thermae and who, rather than give up their pleasure, preferred to compromise their reputation by bathing with the men.’2 And it was not until Hadrian that the sexes were officially separated in the balneae: ‘lavacra pro sexibus separavit’.3 Islam, on the other hand, appears to have had a very strict attitude on the separation of the sexes from the very beginning.

  The vogue for the hammams was to rival the popularity of the Roman thermae. Both were an important aspect of a civilization and give us some insight into how men and women saw their bodies, their concern for hygiene and their cult of physical beauty. In both cases what we are dealing with is a form of culture. It was never simply a matter of having a dip and leaving, of having a quick wash, or hastily carrying out some necessary ritual. On the contrary, the bath was a place where one spent a great deal of one’s time. There was a time scale proper to the hammam as there had been to the balneae.

  The different rooms were placed in a special order. They began with the sqīfa, the mythological and functional equivalent of the apodyterium: a cloakroom situated near the entrance, where the bathers undressed and rested. There were broad, deep seats covered with rush mats or silk rugs, depending on the class of hammam. Next to this was the bait al-bārid, the successor to the frigidarium, which contained one or two pools filled with cold water, in which one immersed oneself. Then came the wistya, a large central room that, like the tepidarium, contained tepid water and served as an intermediary between the bait al-bārid and the bait al-sākhin, which, like the Roman caldarium, was the hottest part of the bath, where the high temperature caused one to sweat. Off the bait al-sākhin were small rooms to which one could withdraw for private, individual ablutions.4

  So the thermae and hammams depended on an ingenious arrangement in which the most varied and refined forms of bathing were combined together: a hot, dry room for sweating, a steam bath, hot baths, cold baths, swimming pools, hot and cold showers.

  The Romans had gone further: they had annexed to the balneae innumerable shops, gymnasiums, rest rooms, massage rooms, and even libraries and museums. The hammam, too, was a complex and very soon developed in the direction of a very specialized beauty centre. Firstly there were the masseurs, called ṭayyāb in the Maghreb and mukayyir in Egypt, experts in the art of cracking bones and relaxing muscles. Then there was the hairdresser, ḥajjām. The art of shaving heads held no secrets for him. With very sharp knives he would polish them, scent them and make them extremely shiny. But the attentions paid to the beard were much more delicate. It had to be washed, trimmed, dyed and scented. The hairdresser also practised medicine. He carried out bleedings, using lancets and cupping glasses, or quite simply by applying leeches to the appropriate place, where an incision had previously been made. And there were few hammams that did not have their quacks, magicians, herbalists, etc. So a multiplicity of functions, hygienic, therapeutic, aesthetic, were added to the initial ritual function of purification – so much so indeed that the original function often came to be regarded as secondary and incidental.

  Of course the ladies went one better. For them going to the hammam was a real ‘outing’, a spectacle, an entertainment, a change of scene, in every sense. They would spend all afternoon, even all day there. We have been able to reconstitute from contemporary documents5 a day spent in the hammam by a Baghdad lady of the thirteenth to fourteenth century. She arrives in the morning, by coach, accompanied by a maid and a eunuch carrying lacquered coffers or brass boxes containing all her toiletries: gloves, brushes, combs, creams and unguents, perfumes, towels, clothes, oranges, hard-boiled eggs, orange blossom water, orgeats and, of course, the eternal Arabo-Mediterranean gazuz or lemonade.

  After undressing in the sqīfa or, if possible, in an adjoining maqsūra, or private room, she passes into the sweat room. After an hour or so an attendant comes and rubs her with an extremely fine, hard woollen glove: massage and cleansing of the skin combined. After a rinsing the head is smeared with Nile mud, or, failing that, Armenian mud or fuller’s earth. This is followed by rinsing and a rub-down. Then comes pumicing of the feet with special stones that are usually to be found lying about in various parts of the hammam. The hair is then henna-ed, meticulously, lock by lock, making quite sure that none of the colouring touches the skin, and one then waits for it to take.

  Usually at this point the morning comes to an end and food is taken. This is followed by a well-deserved rest, interrupted only by gossip. Then comes the shaving of the arms, the neck, the armpits, the legs and lastly the vagina. For this a strong ointment is used made of yellow arsenic (dhaehab maqsūr), iron arsenate ḥadīda) or a mixture of wax or caramel thickened with lemon.

  The end of the afternoon was devoted to the face: a slow, continuous massage, followed by delicate plucking of hairs. Unwanted hair was plucked hair by hair with tweezers (mulqāṭ) or sometimes, if the ḥannāna or beauty specialist was sufficiently expert, with two threads of silk wound around one another, in which the hairs were patiently extracted one by one. Indeed depilatory creams were never used for the face.

  Then came the make up. One started with the teeth, which were whitened either with pounded eggshells, or with powdered vegetable carbon; after this the lady slowly chewed betel nuts or the outer layer of walnut root (suwāk), which, apart from the tonic, astringent effect that it had on the lips and jaw, gave the gums and lips a fine carmine colour and a highly sought-after brilliance. A foundation cream was spread over the face or a cream composed of a mixture of rice powder, white of egg and w
hiting. A little red cochineal powder and the cheeks acquired a fine pink sheen. The eyebrows were smeared with dabgha (wasma in the Middle East), a product of incense, tar, gallnut, yellow arsenic or copper sulphate. Antimony powder, kohol of Isfahan or ithmīq placed on the eyelids helped to enlarge the eyes. Ḥarqūs, a lighter, more perfumed variant of dabgha, served to decorate the face with delicate beauty spots and fine designs between the eyelashes, on the sides or on the middle of the nose or sometimes, as in Morocco, on the cheeks, suggesting two symmetrical lines of tears.

  The list of strong, heavy perfumes is endless. Particularly highly prized were amber, saffron, extracts of camomile or violets, ghalya, which was a mixture of equal quantities of musk, camphor, civet and sandalwood (qumāry) or myrtle. Nor should we forget the list of lighter waters distilled from rose petals, orange blossom, or the flowers of jasmine, geranium, laurel or eglantine. Ylang-ylang was known, but was used more in funerary rites.

  A dab of perfume, a little jewellery, clean clothes and a veil and the women, rejuvenated and regenerated, painted and embellished, tired but satisfied, made tracks for home, ready for a fine night of love, amply deserved and prepared for at enormous length.6

  It had always been a short step from hygiene to eroticism. But unlike a modem beauty salon or the Roman balneae, the hammam went well beyond this functional level. We saw above what was involved in the religious obligation of ṭahāra, which embraces all the ritual techniques of purification. Whatever leaves the body bears impurity with it, whether it be blood, urine, gas, vomit or excrement. But whereas the waste matter of the digestive activities are the cause only of minor impurities, the products of sexual activity, sperm, menstrua, or lochia, produce major impurity, which can be cleansed by a general washing of the body, whereas minor purity may be obtained through local, limited washing.

  When impure, man is moving dangerously towards evil. The protecting angels desert him. He is no longer permitted to pray, to recite the Quran, to touch the sacred Book, even to enter a mosque. He is no longer safe. Purification is a security technique. One should resort to it as soon as possible in order to reestablish the disturbed order and to chase away the shaytans (devils), which, as we have seen, lie in wait for the slightest show of weakness. The hammam is a place of safety or rather a transitional zone, a centre of alternation between purity and impurity.

  Of course, according to Islam, there are three purificatory elements, which, in order of importance, are fire, water and earth. It is not possible to handle fire in a way that is safe for our bodies. Fire burns, destroys, violates. Earth has virtues that are limited from a practical point of view. It is dust and derision. It is a heavy, ambiguous material. If one is to use it, one does so in the form of lustrative stones (ḥajarat al-tayammum), in exceptional circumstances, when water is not available. But water reigns over all purification. It is identified with life, with growth, with wealth. Water provides a pleasure that is readily identified with revitalization. So the ritual of the hammam is quite clear. One must purify oneself with water, wash oneself according to a precise ritual: three times the mouth, three times the forearms, twice the head, etc.

  So, as a place of major purification, the hammam is itself subject to a number of taboos. One enters it with the left foot; one leaves it with the right.

  Certain phrases have to be used, such as ‘In God’s name’ (Bismillāh). But once inside one must not recite the Quran. One must not greet people with the traditional assalāmu ‘alaikum. One must stick to profane expressions. Indeed one must not forget that in the hammam everything is impure to start with and that it is a haunt of the djinns, who hold sovereign sway there.

  But from another point of view, as a place of purification, the hammam is the ante-chamber of the mosque, for which it is a preparation. On leaving the hammam, the Muslim recovers his canonical purity and is reconciled with his faith and the absolute. He can then rediscover the rhythm of religious practice that he has abandoned only temporarily in giving himself up to the healthy joys of Eros.

  So the hammam is a great deal more than mere hygiene or ritual. It is a highly eroticized place – so much so indeed that the name has come to signify for the masses the sexual act itself. In many Arab countries, ‘going to the hammam’ quite simply means ‘making love’, since going to the hammam is part of the process of removing the impurity consequent on the sexual act; and since the hammam, by virtue of the various forms of cleansing practised there, is also a preparation for the sexual act, it can be said that the hammam is both conclusion and preparation for the work of the flesh. The hammam is the epilogue of the flesh and the prologue of prayer. The practices of the hammam are pre- and post-sexual practices. Purification and sexuality are linked. The hammam appears as the necessary mediation between sexual pleasure, from which the Muslim becomes impure and loses his ṭahāra, and the moment when he prays, reads the Quran and returns to the security obtained by rediscovered purity. The practices of the hammam are a set of adaptations to the spiritual and appeasements of the physical and psychical tensions caused by sexual intercourse.

  So the everyday life of the Muslim is subject to a rhythm in which sacrality leads to sexuality and sexuality to sacrality. Thus love and faith emerge as two poles of everyday existence. One must know how to pass as rapidly as possible from one to the other and this is precisely the role of the purificatory techniques available in the hammam. The rhythm of the practices of the hammam follow the rhythm of virility. There are those who go to the hammam every day in the early morning, there are those who go every two or three days. There are also those who go once a week, or every month. How much the manager of the hammam must know about the married life of the couples in his district! Of course, there may be financial reasons that force a man to go to the hammam only on Friday mornings to prepare himself for communal prayer, but a man who only goes to the hammam once a week certainly runs the risk of having his potency questioned by his friends and neighbours!

  Indeed at the hammam one finds an extreme degree of intimacy: the North African adage puts it well when it says that a naked man meets another naked man only in the hammam. The hammam is the social meeting place par excellence. So ḥisba, fiqh and ethics in general have paid considerable attention to regulating its functioning. Paradoxically, this typically Islamic institution is at the same time the one that has perhaps aroused most disapproval. The Prophet, such a strong advocate of cleanliness and hygiene, was somewhat reserved as to the practices of the hammam. For al-Ghazāli entrance to the hammam was unlawful for women unless they were ill or in childbed.7 And he insisted that they cover themselves with a pagne, or loincloth. For ‘Uqbani the hammam was lawful in itself, but a husband was perfectly within his rights to forbid his wife to go to it. Even today, at Madhya in Tunisia, for instance, women go to the hammam only on exceptional occasions: a wedding or childbirth.

  The problem of nudity in the hammam is at the centre of the question. All justification or prohibition of the hammam comes down to notions of ‘aura, of the lawful look, of decency. The separation of the sexes must be absolutely observed and one must expose to the gaze of others of the same sex only what is strictly permitted: for men, it is unlawful to expose the part of the body between the navel and the knees, but for women, the whole body ‘except the face and the palms of the hands, and, if necessary, the arms and legs’8 must not be exposed. A similar scruple arises in the case of massage, It is lawful to have one’s leg or back massaged. But what of the thighs? The buttocks? The belly? The breasts? This is why there were so many precise and restrictive rules, often regarded as casuistical and meaningless, whereas, on the contrary, they concern the obviously erotic signification of practices in the hammam. It is in this context that one must understand the adab al ḥammām, ‘good manners for the hammam’, to which al-Ghazāli9 devotes a chapter in the Iḥyā. He lays it down that a man should wear a double pagne, one for the lower part of the body, to protect it from the indiscreet looks of others, and the other for the head
in order to cover the eyes, lest some immodest bather expose some non-canonical part of his body to others’ eyes.