– maḍhi: ‘A light, whitish fluid. It appears on a man during the erotic games prior to coitus.’ This is the prostatic fluid;
– qaḍhi: the female equivalent of maḍhi;
– wadi: ‘Very thick urine. It flows after post-coital washing or after urine itself.’
Cf. Fatāwā, vol. I, p. 10 and ‘Ainī, vol. I, pp. 626 and 630.
12 Fatāwā Hindiyya, vol. 1, p. 10ff.
13 Indeed sleep systematically breaks minor purification, for it is possible that wind may have escaped without one being aware of it.
14 There was a widespread belief in women’s ability to ejaculate.
15 Fatāwā, vol. I, pp. 14, 15 and 16.
16 Cf. Fatāwā, vol. I, pp. 204–5: Ghazali, Iḥyā, vol. I, p. 209ff.
17 Fatāwā, vol. I, pp. 36–7.
18 For all this passage, cf. Fatāwā, vol. I, pp. 36–40: Zayla’i, vol. I, pp. 54–69.
19 Ghazali, Iḥyā, vol. I, p. 117ff.
20 Quran, V, ‘The Table’, p. 101.
21 Ghazali, Iḥyā, p. 117.
22 Ibid., p. 118.
23 Ibid., pp. 118–19.
24 Cf. for example Muhammad Arkoun, ‘Lexique de l’éthique musulmane’, in Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales, vol. XXII, 1969.
25 A. Souques, ‘Mahomet, les parfums et les cosmétiques colorants’, Presse médicale, 1940, no. 25–6, pp. 301–2. Cf. also A. Souques, ‘Mahomet et l’hygiène’, Presse médicale, 1940, no. 47–8, pp. 545–7. Cf. El-Akrout, Les Pratiques de la Prière et de l’hygiène chez les musulmans, thèse doct. méd., Paris, 1936. Cf. A. Bouseen, Contribution à l’étude du jeune dans l’islam, thèse doct. méd., Paris, 1942.
26 Cf. Iḥyā, pp. 122–9, where the word waswās occurs twelve times.
27 G. Bataille, L’Érotisme, p. 96; Eroticism, p. 96.
Chapter 6 Commerce with the invisible
1 Cf. Quran, ‘The Believers’, XXIII, 72, p. 348 and Qortobi, vol. XIV, p. 254ff.
2 Razi, II, p. 304, ‘al-makhlūqātu al-mukallafatu afḍalu min ghayril mukallafati; wahya al malā-ikatu wal insu wal jānnu wal shayāṭīnu’. ‘Responsible creatures are better than non-responsible ones, and these are the angels, men, djinns and devils.’
3 ‘Idha inṭafati al unūthatu, inṭafa al-tawāludu’, Razi, vol. I, p. 298.
4 Razi, vol. II, p. 302: ‘lā shahwata lahum ilā alakli wa ilā-mubāsharati’.
5 Cf. ‘Abbās Maḥmūd al-aqqad, Iblis, pp. 138 and 146.
6 Qortobi, vol. X, p. 23.
7 Qortobi, vol. XIV. p. 254: (awwalu mā khalaq-allāhu ta ‘ālā minal insāni farjahū; wa ālā hādhihi amānatun astawda‘tukaha . . . fal farju amānatun.)
8 Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, p. 317.
9 Maryse Choisy, ‘L’archétype des trois S: Satan, serpent, scorpion’, in Etudes carmélitaines, ‘Satan’, 1948.
10 Cf. Aqqad’s good comment in Iblis, p. 214ff.
11 L. Massignon, La Passion d’al-Hallaj, p. 869ff.
12 I have translated the texts quoted above from the edition given at Cairo by Muhammad Efendi Mustapha in 1310h., pp. 27–32.
13 Cf. in particular Bokhāri, vol. I, p. 105; vol. IV, p. 110; vol. VI, p. 209; vol. VII, p. 129: Moslem, vol. I, p. 234ff; vol. II, p. 243ff; vol. VI, p. 6ff; vol. VII, p. 301ff; Qastallāni, vol. V, p. 290ff; Abu Ḥayān, vol. IV, p. 206ff; vol. V, p. 418ff. Cf. also ‘Ainī, vol. III, pp. 614–18 and vol. V, pp. 270–95; Razi, vol. II, p. 80ff; Qortobi, vol. X, p. 23ff.
14 Ibid., p. 27.
15 Ibn Manḍhūr, Lisan al-‘Arab, vol. III, p. 176.
16 Ibid., p. 27.
17 Ibid., pp. 30–1.
18 Razi, vol. II, p. 80ff.
19 Ibid., p. 31.
20 Roland Villeneuve, Le Diable, érotologie de Satan, p. 16.
21 Cf. Rosette Dubal, La Psychoanalyse du diable, Paris, 1962. And, of course, Roland Villeneuve, op. cit.
22 Jules Michelet, La Sorcière, ed. Viallaneix, Paris, 1966, pp. 116–17.
23 Cf. Razi, Mafātīḥ al ghaib, chap. LXXII; Al-Absh-hi, al-mustaṭraf, vol. II, p. 159ff., trans. Rat, vol. II, p. 325; ‘Ainī, vol. VII, p. 285ff; Qastallāni, vol. VI, p. 303ff; Abu Ḥayān, vol. II, p. 206ff and vol. V, p. 418ff; Rāghib, Safīna, pp. 266–75; Al-Shiblī, Akām al-marjān fi an’kām al jān.
24 Razi, vol. I, p. 297.
25 Ibn Najīm, Kitāb, al ashbāḥ wal anādhdhur, p. 131. Cf. also the commentary Ghamr ‘uyūn al baṣa-ir by al-Hamwi, vol. II, pp. 183–7, Istanbul 1257 h.
26 Muhammad Yussef al-Kāfi, Al Masā-il al-Kāfiyya, Cairo, 1934, p. 7ff.
27 Ibid., p. 8.
28 Dāud al Antāqi, Tazyīn, p. 181.
29 C. G. Jung, ‘Introduction à la psychologie analytique’, sixth lecture, delivered at Basle to the Société de psychologie, 1934. This passage is to be found in a collection of Jung’s writings published in French under the title L’homme à la découverte de son âme, p. 327. These lectures do not appear in the English version of Jung’s Collected Works, presumably because much of the material was reworked and delivered in another form.
30 (In kāna li-nnāsi waswāsun yuwasisuhum, fa anta, wallāhi, waswāsī khannāsī.)
Chapter 7 The infinite orgasm
1 Cf. in particular Quran, ‘The Pilgrimage’, XXII, 20ff., p. 335ff.; ‘Prostration’, XXII, 12–22, pp. 424–5; ‘Muhammad’, XLVII, 13–18, p. 527; ‘The All-Meaningful’, 33ff., pp. 558ff.; ‘The Terror’, LVI the entire Sura, pp. 560–3; ‘The Resurrection’, LXXV, 22ff., pp. 619–20; ‘Man’, LXXVI, 12ff., pp. 621–2; ‘The Tiding’, LXVIII, 17ff., pp. 262–7; ‘The Stinters’, LXXXIII, 18ff., p. 635ff.; ‘The Enveloper’, LXXVIII, 1–16, p. 642. Cf. also Razi, vol. IV, p. 139; vol VII, p. 44ff; vol. VIII; ‘Ainī, vol. IV, p. 220ff.
2 Cf in particular Bokhāri, vol. II, 105ff.; vol. IV, 110ff.; vol. X, 96ff. and 133ff.; Qastallāni, vol. V, p. 279ff.; Moslem, vol. VII, p. 209ff.; ‘Ainī, vol. IX, 165ff; vol. X, 676ff.; vol. XI, 522ff.
3 Louis Gardet, L’islam, religion et communauté, p. 95; Cf. also the excellent article by the same author in L’Encyclopédie de l’Islam, vol. II, p. 459ff.
4 Published at Tunis, undated. Cf. also al-Ghazali, ‘Al durrat al-fākhira fi kashfi’ulūm al-ākhira, trans. L. Gauthier, Geneva, 1878.
5 Basmālah: inscription, ‘In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.’
6 Daqa-iq, p. 42.
7 Ibid., pp. 42 and 43.
8 Suyūti, ibid., p. 26: ‘lā ghā-ita fil jannati’.
9 Ibid., p. 43.
10 Ibid., p. 43.
11 Ibid., p. 31.
12 Ibid., p. 27; cf; Qastallāni, vol. V, pp. 281–2; Moslem, vol. VII, p. 213.
13 Ibid., p. 28.
14 Ibid., p. 29. Cf. also Bokhāri, vol. V, p. 279.
15 Ibid., p. 36.
16 Quran, ‘Ta Ha’, XX, p. 311.
17 Quran, ‘Ya Sin’, XXXVI, p. 450. This Sura is very highly regarded. It is considered to be the pivot of the Revelation. Its reading constitutes an essential stage in the Muslim funeral service.
18 Quran, ‘The All-Merciful’, LV, p. 557.
19 Quran, ‘Cattle’, VI, p. 121.
20 Kurūb: an angel entrusted with protocol in paradise.
21 Suyūti, pp. 36–8.
22 Tor Andrae, Mahomet, sa vie et sa doctrine, trans. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Paris, 1945, p. 160. Tor Andrae, Les Origines de l’islam et le christianisme. trans, p. 62ff; H. Grimme, Mohammed Munster, 1892–5; Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, p. 434ff.
23 Gaudefroy-Demombynes, ibid., pp. 435–6.
24 Revelation, 20, 11 and 12.
25 In Maryse Choisy, La Survie après la mort, prefaced by R. P. Daniélou p. 20ff.
26 Matthew, 22.23–30.
27 R. P. Daniélou, ‘La survie dans la perspective catholique’, intervention au colloque de l’Alliance mondiale des Religions des 7 et 8 juin 1967, in Maryse Choisy, La Survie après la mort, pp. 33–4.
28 Rabbi J. Eisenberg, La Survie selon le judaïsme, in Maryse Choisy, loc. cit., pp. 14
9–50.
29 Loc. cit., p. 434.
30 Loc. cit., p. 438.
31 Loc. cit., p. 439.
32 L. Gardet, L’Islam, religion et communauté, p. 106.
33 Quran, ‘The Resurrection’, LXXV, 22, p. 619. ‘Upon that day faces shall be radiant, gazing upon their Lord.’ (‘Wujūhun yowma idhin nādhiratun ilā rabbihā nādhirat.’) Cf. Razi, vol. VIII, p. 266. For Muslim orthodoxy the vision of God is proved by this verse.
34 Loc. cit., p. 107.
35 Razi, vol. VIII, p. 281.
36 Al-Abshīhi, al-Mostatraf, trans. Rat, vol. II, p. 315.
37 Cf. Souque, Mahomet et les parfums, op. cit.
38 Ghāliya: mixture in equal parts of musk, amber, camphor and myrtle wood.
39 Al-Mostatraf, vol. II, p. 78.
40 G. Bachelard, La Terre et les rêveries du repos, p. 51.
41 Al Mostatraf, trans. Rat, vol. II, p. 366.
42 Moslem, vol. VII, p. 212.
43 Suyūti, loc. cit., pp. 39–40.
44 ‘īdh ḥadd al jannati anna fīha li kullī insānin mā yashtahī’, Raghib Safīna, p. 115.
45 Quran, XLI, 31, p. 494 (‘wa lakum fiha mā tashtahi anfusukum wa lakum fīha mā tad‘ūn’.
46 Raghib Safīna, p. 114.
47 Ibid., p. 115.
Chapter 8 The sexual and the sacral
1 Quran, ‘The House of Imrān’, III, 14, p. 46.
2 Cf. the fine commentary by Razi, vol. II, p. 430ff. One should note the first place occupied by women ‘whose pleasure is the greatest and whose company is the most complete’: (‘li anna al iltidhādha bihinna akthara, wal isti-nāssu bihinna atammu’). Woman is a completion of man – and conversely.
3 Quran, ‘Ornaments’, XLIII, 17, p. 506 (‘man unashsha-u fil ḥilyati wahwa fil khiṣam ghayru mubīn’). (I have amended Arberry’s version of the second part of this quotation – ‘and, when the time of altercation comes, is not to be seen’ – in line with the author’s own version and argument – tr.)
4 Moslem, vol. IV, p. 99.
5 Quoted by Qanāwi, Sharḥ lāmiyyat ibn al-wardī, p. 14.
6 Moslem, IV, p. 98; Bokhāri, VII, p. 2; ‘Ainī, IX, p. 354; Nawawī, p. 96.
7 Bokhāri, vol. V, II, p. 4; Moslem, vol. IV, p. 9; ‘Ainī, vol. IV, p. 361; Fatāwā, vol. V, p. 356.
8 ‘Ainī, IX, 362.
9 Ibid., IX, 484.
10 Ibid., IX, 483.
11 ‘Wa in kānat ‘alā ḍhahri qaṭabin’: ‘Ainī, IX, p. 484.
12 ‘Wa in kānat ‘ala ra-si tannūrin’; ‘Ainī, IX, p. 484.
13 ‘Inna abghaḍha al ḥalāli ‘inda allāhi al ṭalāqu’.
14 Jassas, vol. II, p. 110.
15 Quran, ‘Light’, XXIV, 32, p. 356. Cf. also ‘Ainī, IX, p. 414.
16 Qastallāni, vol. VIII, p. 8.
17 Ibid.
18 Qastallāni, vol. VII, p. 3.
19 Cf. Ahmed al-Fashnī, Al-mājalis al-sanya’, p. 95.
20 I have taken this very well known hadith from Shihabaldīn al-Khafāgi’s Turāz al majālis, p. 50, which gives the most profound commentary, p. 157ff.
21 ‘Wa fi buḍ‘i aḥādīkum ṣadāqa’. Literally: ‘and in your sexes, too, there is alms.’
22 Cf. Sā’adaldīn Taftazāni, Sharḥ al-arb‘īn alnawāwiyya, Tunis, 1295h., p. 115ff. Cf. Ahmed al-Fashnī, Al-majālis al sānya fi lkalām ‘ala al araba’īn al-nawawiyya, Cairo, 1299 h., p. 929ff. Ibrahim al-Shibrikhāiy, al futūḥāt al wahbiyya, Cairo, 1318, p. 214ff.
23 Muḥallil: that which makes lawful what was not so previously.
24 Bokhāri, vol. III, pp. 178 and 184; Moslem, vol. IV, pp. 56 and 58; ‘Ainī, vol. IX, pp. 539 and 546.
25 Moslem, vol. IV, p. 12. On Muhammad’s erotic behaviour, cf. Ibn al-Quayyim al-Jawzia, al ṭibb al-nabawi, pp. 98 and 116.
26 I Corinthians, 7, 1ff.
27 Galatians, 5, 16–26.
28 Otto Piper, L’Evangile et la vie sexuelle, Delachaux and Niestlé, 1955, p. 25.
29 Seward Hiltner, Sexuality and the Christian Life, New York, 1959.
30 M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 183; Phenomenology of Perception, tr. Colin Smith, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962, p. 157.
31 Cf. ‘Ainī, vol. V, p. 597 and vol. IX, p. 494.
32 Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 195; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 167.
33 Quran, ‘Apartments’, XLIX, 13, p. 538.
34 Quran, ‘The Greeks’, XXX, 21, pp. 412–13.
35 Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 195; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 167.
36 Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 199; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 171.
Part II Sexual practice in Islam
Chapter 9 Sexuality and sociality
1 Quran, ‘Apartments’, XLIX, 13, p. 538.
2 A. Bouhdiba, A la recherche des normes perdues, p. 93.
3 In becoming umm-walad, a co-owned female slave becomes ipso facto the property of the father who has claimed paternity. The other co-owners lose their share in the enjoyment of their concubine. The father of the walad must therefore pay them an indemnity on account of ‘uqr (sterility) or sexual usurpation. The same applies when a non-co-owner claims paternity of a child born to a concubine of a third party. The estimated value is that of the concubine qua slave with a market value. The ‘uqr is an indemnity affecting loss of sexual enjoyment with a particular concubine to whom one must have been emotionally and sensually attached.
4 Al-Qudūri, Le Statut personnel en droit musulman, trans. G.-H. Bousquet and L. Bercher, p. 180ff.
5 Fatāwā Hindiyya, vol. I, p. 568: ‘wa yazīdu al jāriyata allatī lil istimtā’i fil kiswati lil’urfi.’
6 Aboul Faraj al-Açfahni, Le Livre des chansons, Beirut 1962 ed. in 24 vols. Cf. the fine chapter by Aḥmad Amīn in Dhuḥ āl-lslam, vol. I, p. 79ff.
7 P. Hitti, Précis d’histoire des Arabes, p. 109.
8 Ibid.
9 I subscribe entirely to Sharāra’s declaration: ‘The victory of woman was won only thanks to the jawāri and qiyan’ (in Falsafa al ḥubbi ’indal Arab, p. 112).
10 Aḥmad Amin, D’huḥ’al-Islam, vol. I, pp. 98–9.
11 Bedouin: rural. Beldi: urban. I have devoted an article to this theme, ‘Bedouinisme et beldisme dans la Tunisie actuelle’, in A la recherche des normes perdues, p. 20.
12 Abdellatif Sharāra, Falsafat al-ḥubbi ’inda al ‘Arab, p. 105.
13 Gaston Wiet, Introduction à la littérature arabe, p. 50.
14 Cf. Régis Blachère’s comments in the article ‘Ghazal’, in Encyclopédie de l’Islam, vol. II, pp. 1051–7.
15 H. Pérès, La Poésie andalouse en arabe classique au XIe siècle, p. 423ff.
16 Ibid., p. 425:
17 Dāwūd al-Antāki, Tazyīn al-aswāq, p. 3.
18 Germaine Tillion, Le Harem et les cousins, Paris, 1966. Cf. in particular pp. 81–7 and 168–79.
19 Cf. Recueil de notions de droit musulman by Ettouati, trans. Abribat, Tunis, 1896, p. 63.
20 Cf. Ettouad, p. 70. Cf., on this question, Fatāwā Hindiyya, vol. II, pp. 350–491, which contains a clear and exhaustive discussion of the question.
21 Jean Cuisenier, L’Ansarine, p. 127.
22 Ibid. I have benefited here by observations by R. Radcliffe-Brown, African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, London, 1950; J. Berque, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas; T. Azhkenazi, La tribu arabe, ses éléments, Anthropos, vol. XLI-XLIV, 1946–49; K. Daghestani, La Famille musulmane contemporaine, Syria, 1931; J. Cuisenier, ‘Endogamie et exogamie dans le mariage arabe’, L’Homme, mai-avril 1962, p. 80.
23 Jean Cuisenier, L’Ansarine, p. 130.
24 Cf. Abbas Al-‘Azzawi, ‘Ashā-ir al-‘lrāq, vol. I, p. 414ff.
25 J. Berque, Les Arabes d’hier à demain, p. 156.
Chapter 10 Variations on eroticism: misogyny, mysticism and ‘mujūn’
1 Bokhāri, vol. IV, p. 91.
2 Razi, vol. I, p. 297. Cf. also Qastallān
i, vol. I, pp. 339–40.
3 Razi, vol. VI, p. 218.
4 ‘Ainī, vol. X, p. 478. Cf. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, p. 231.
5 Quoted by Sharāra, Falsaft al ḥ’ubbi ’indal Arab, p. 59.
6 A poem rhyming in 1 by Ibn el Wardi, who lived in the fourteenth century. My translation is taken from the Arabic text, published in Tunis, 1342h. Cf. also Commentary of El Qanāwi, Cairo, 1310h.
7 Mas’ud al-Qanawi, Kitāb fatḥ al-raḥmān, p. 4.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 14.
10 Ibid., p. 16.
11 Ibid., pp. 18–20.
12 Ibid., p. 20.
13 Cf. my ‘Essai d’une typologie de l’islam maghrébin’, in A la Recherche des normes perdues, p. 96.
14 Cf. the fine book by Emile Dermenghem, Au Pays d’Abel.
15 Mas’ud al-Qanāwi, Kitāb fatḥ al-raḥmān, p. 21.
16 H. Renault, Les Survivances du culte de Cybèle, Vénus, Bacchus. Cf. C. Lecoeur, Le Rite et l’outil, p. 121ff.
17 Quoted by Sharāra, ibid., p. 180.
18 Al-futūḥāt al-makkiyya, Bulāq, 1270h (1854), in 2 vols.
19 Diwān Ibn ‘Arabi, Bulāq, 1271h (1855).
20 Sharh, Diwān, Ibn El Fāridh by Hassan al-Būrini and Abdelghani al-Nābulssi, Cairo, 1269h, in 2 vols.
21 Le Diwān d’Al Hallaj, ed. Massignon. p. 14.
22 Anders Nygren, Agapé and Eros, 3 vols, trans. A. G. Herbert, London, 1932–9.
23 Article ‘Burda’, Encyclopédie de l’Islam, vol. I, pp. 815–16. Note that the phrase ‘one can see no trace of Sufism in it and that is not the least of its merits’ has disappeared in the new edition.
24 Verse no. 10: ‘You who reproach me for my ‘udhrite love, I excuse you. If you knew what it is, you would not reproach me.’ Cf. Ed. Zāwaq, Tunis, 1959.
25 Quran, ‘The Constellations’, LXXXV, 14, p. 638.
26 Quran, ‘The Cow’, II, 147, p. 19.
27 Quran, ‘Imran’s House’, III, 29. p. 49. Cf. also ‘The Table’, 59, p. 109, where God speaks of the people whom he loves and who love him.
28 Quran, ‘The Dawn’, LXXXIX, 27–30, p. 644. For the exegesis of these verses I refer to: Razi, vol. II, p. 75ff and Abu Ḥayan, vol. I, p. 470.
Sexuality in Islam Page 32