The origin of the book was as follows:  A small work, The Torch of the World,[FN#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)[FN#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.[FN#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,"[FN#582] which, of course, proves that he had some share in it.[FN#583]

There is no doubt that the average Englishman[FN#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[FN#585] and Hamdonna,” and “The Negro Al Dhurgham"[FN#586]—­all furiously