Famous Arabic sex manual - The Perfumed Garden

The Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui is the most famous Arabic sex manual and remains one of the world's great classic works of erotic literature.

It was originally written in Arabic in 16th Century Tunis - modern day Tunisia - by Umar Ibn Muhammad el-Nafzawi.

This fascinating manual on the erotic arts closely resembles its more famous cousin Hindu Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana in many ways. However, many who read both works have find The Perfumed Garden to be far more interesting, entertaining and erotic. The 22 stories contained in the Perfumed Garden are very like those found in the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. The Kama Sutra by comparison contains no stories and is a relatively dry work, depicting a very different cultural, literary and religious tradition.

In The Perfumed Garden there are many fascinating, surprising and humorous insights into the sexual mores and customs of medieval Arab Islamic society. For today's scholars it provides an abundance of important historical and anthropological insights. But it also holds for the ordinary reader many teachings that are timeless and universal, and are as useful today for understanding and expressing human sexuality as they were in medieval Islamic society..

- September 9, 2003