''The Book of Exposition'' (Arabic: ''Kitab al-Izah Fi'ilm al-Nikah b-it-Tamam w-al-Kamal'') is a 15th-century work of
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros (passionate, romantic or sexual relationships) intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feelin ...
credited to the
Egyptian
Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
scholar
A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...
Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti
Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti ( ar, جلال الدين السيوطي, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī) ( 1445–1505 CE),; (Brill 2nd) or Al-Suyuti, was an Arab Egyptian polymath, Islamic scholar, historian, Sufi, and jurist. From a family of Persian o ...
. The work consists of two dozen short stories of varying length exploring "promiscuity and sexual taboos under the societal constraints of the Arab-Islamic world".
Contents
Among the feature tales is "The Strange Transformation that Befell a Certain Believer's Prickle", which tells of a man granted three divine wishes. On learning of the wishes, his wife urges him to use one to lengthen his "instrument", but upon the wish being granted his penis becomes as "as straight as a column", rigid and permanently erect, displeasing his wife. The man then wishes for his condition to be reversed and his penis all but disappears. He is forced to use his third and final wish to return himself to normal.
[
Others are "The Pious Woman and What Happened to Her From Behind",][ "The Lascivious Savant", "The Bath Keeper Who Lent His Wife", "The Lady and the Barber", and so on.]
Translations and editions
The work was first translated into English in 1886 by Charles Carrington
Charles Carrington (1857–1921) was a leading British publisher of erotica in late-19th- and early-20th-century Europe. Born ''Paul Harry Ferdinando'' in Bethnal Green, England on 11 November 1867, he moved in 1895 from London to Paris where he ...
a British publisher of erotica
Erotica is literature or art that deals substantively with subject matter that is erotic, sexually stimulating or sexually arousing. Some critics regard pornography as a type of erotica, but many consider it to be different. Erotic art may use a ...
, who titled it ''Marriage-Love and Woman amongst the Arabs''.[
The first effort to contextualise the work was the 1896 edition by Maison d’Editions Scientifiques, which included a foreword by a translator known only as "An English Bohemian".][
The 1896 edition also featured a section entitled "Excurses", including other short erotica and notes,][ including "Holes in Walls", "Forty-eight Erotic Postures", "The Man on His Back", "The Woman Riding" and "On the Legitimacy of Widow-Mounting".][ It also included the 1885 essay by ]Sir Richard Francis Burton
Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...
on pederasty
Pederasty or paederasty ( or ) is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a pubescent or adolescent boy. The term ''pederasty'' is primarily used to refer to historical practices of certain cultures, particularly ancient Greece and anc ...
from his Arabian Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
translation.[
]
References
{{reflist
Arabic erotic literature
Medieval Arabic literature
Books by al-Suyuti