t 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) [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. [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," [582]
which, of course, proves that he had some share in it. [583]

There is no doubt that the average Englishman [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 [585] and
Ham