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The origin of the book was as follows: A small work, The Torch of the World, 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."
But "Moslems," says Burton, "who do their best to countermine the ascetic idea inherent in Christianity, are not ashamed of the sensual appetite, but rather the reverse." 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.
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, 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 first two chapters were a raw translation of the works of Numa Numantius without any annotations at all, or comments of any kind on Richard's part, and twenty chapters, translations of Shaykh el Nafzawi from Arabic. In fact, it was all translation, except the annotations on the Arabic work."
Nafzawi, indeed, is the very antithesis of the English Sir Thomas Browne, with his well-known passage in the Religio Medici, 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.
If it be urged that the bulk of Burton's notes, both to the Nights proper and the Supplemental Nights, are out of place in a work of this kind all we can say is "There they are." We must remember, too, that he had absolutely no other means of publishing them. Bibliography: 77. The Scented Garden. "My new Version," translated 1888-1890. Nafzawi. As we learn from a letter to Mr.
The date of his birth is unrecorded, but The Scented Garden seems to have been written in 1431. 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."
He considers that the idea Nafzawi wished to convey was the tower-like form of the neck, 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, for a true Arab values slenderness.
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.
Washington Irving epitomises it in his inexpressibly beautiful "Successors" of Mahomet and Gibbon 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, but Nafzawi staunch Mohammedan will not let "the Whig dogs have the best of the argument."
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