Sh Abdal-Hakim Murad on ‘The Perfumed Garden’ by al-Nafzawi 

Salaams,

I asked Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad about this text and here is his response:

Muhammad al-Nafzawi was an obscure counsellor to the Hafsid ruler Abu Faris, who lived in the early part of the 9th Hijra century. The work, al-Rawd al-Atir fi nuzhat al-khatir, has never figured conspicuously in Arabic erotic and aphrodisial literature, and has been popularised in the Arab world in recent years largely through acquaintance with a French translation made in Algiers in 1876, frequently reprinted, and influential on several 20th century bohemian figures such as Anais Nin. Like a fair number of Arabic works of its genre it contains descriptions of freak practices, including sodomy, and hence should not be used by Muslims, even in those parts that appear to be heterosexual and halal. The author’s pious phrases argue against, rather than for, his seriousness as a guide for Muslims.

The origins of Islamic erotic literature probably lie in early Abbasid Baghdad, where a fusion took place in educated circles between ancient Arab poetic traditions of amatory verse which described female beauty and the act of love with considerable frankness, and the translation of Indian texts. No Arabic version of the Kama-Sutra is known, but al-Hakim al-Azraq’s Alfiyya, which supposedly contained instructions on a thousand different sexual positions, was probably influenced by an Indian text known in Arabic as the Kitab al-Bah.

The genre is, when maintained within the fiqh boundaries, a legitimate branch of the Islamic sciences, rooted in hadiths such as Hadith 25 in Nawawi’s 40: ‘and in the sexual act of each of you there is a sadaqa.’ This is because, on the most elementary level, it preserves the self and the spouse from adultery; but also because for many Sufis the gendering of humanity and the natural world reflects in some way the divine qualities of Beauty and Rigour, which oppose but complement each other, and come together in love. This has been explored, albeit in ways that could be strongly criticised, at www.penkatali.org

There are several works on the subject by Imam al-Suyuti, but apparently the most influential such text by an alim was the Ruju’ al-shaykh ila sibah fi’l-quwwa ala al-bah, by the great Shaykh al-Islam Kemal Pasha-zade, the leading scholar of the Ottoman state in the time of Selim I.

There is certainly a case for producing an advanced manual in English drawing on Islam’s rich legacy in this field. Perhaps somewhere on the Al-Zawiya list there is someone with the necessary expertise.