Selections from Ahmad al-Tifachi’s

The Delights of hearts or what one finds in no other book

Translated from René R. Khawam’s French trans. of the Arabic.

pp. 174-6

I was in the process of obtaining some servants at the market reserved for such activities. I had sold a few of them and I had just bought some others, quite graceful, with well formed breasts, with wide, open eyes. Certain of the women were black. So, I addressed Abu Nuwas who was near us: “O Abu Ali, may I be your salvation (price, ransom)! How can you leave women such as these in favor of young men?

He contented himself with responding with these verses:

There are men whom women please

And who please women.

As for me, it is the young male

Who ravishes me!

When, barely past his fifteenth year

A light down

He begins to grow:

Tender sproutings of fur

From which youthful passion (vigor)

Refuses to hide the skin

The boy this age no longer fears

The enormity of the things one dreams of making him undergo

And his childish soul is no longer there

Who brought him to neglect them for a little while.

And these verses from another person from the same society:

O you, [who are] in love with women

Who by ignorant complacence

Allows yourself to be treated by your [lady]

In a way that to her lovers earns you

The title “father of husbands”,

How can you accommodate

The desire of a female who does not agree

To limit herself to two thousand young men

Although the passion

Is exclusively for her?

……

Again from him (Abu Nuwas):

A woman came to blame me

For the desire that I have

For a beardless one who strides

[Like] a young, wild buffalo

But why journey on the sea

When one can follow so conveniently

The paths of firm land?

Why would I go concern myself with fish

When so many so many gazelles are waiting

In liberty?

Leave me: Why blame me

Under the pretext that I have chosen

This way that you abhor

- And this until my death?

Do you not know this recommendation

Which is in the Book of God:

“Make the young men pass

Before the young women?”

…..

p. 181.

From Muhammad, son Hani the Maghribi:

Censor, do not blame me

Neither Hind nor Zaynab

Touch me

But I love with too much ardor

The fawn of a female gazelle

Who possesses three interesting qualities:

He does not fear

Having his period

[He] does not complain of any pregnancy

And he does not appear veiled

To my gaze.

….p. 262 -3 in the chapter “The rules of massage”

I discovered two women, one perched upon the other. She who was underneath, a Turk, was of such bodily perfection that the moon herself was jealous of her, a harmony of proportions so perfect that the leafy sprig from a young tree was crushed from love. White of skin, she radiated with freshness and to the eyes offered round, firm breasts. A more corpulent woman sat astride her, also very beautiful, clean, flirtatious, of a completely different type. She worked at massaging her companion very thoroughly, and it was she who uttered all the lascivious words that I had heard. The other one limited herself to replying laconically, like a schoolmaster who addressed one of his students.

At this spectacle, my virtue obliged me to engage them with great exclamations:

“Get up, both of you, immediately: And may God curse you!”

I could do no less than get down from my post, to close the door of the closet where they were hiding themselves, and to go request the assistance of some passerby, in order to administer to them a proper correction [punishment?] before a witness. But as I arrived at the door, the one who sat astride the pretty one lying down, got up. The other one wanted to follow suit, but her companion stopped her:

“Stay where you are. Keep your position.”

The pretty one remained where she was, lying on her back, whereas her partner completely unveiled to her the stomach, the navel, the neck. A surface as polished as marble appeared: two breasts currently without a veil, like two fruits of a pomegranate, a belly similar to a golden sand dune where the jewel of the navel shone, a flagon of pure crystal. Lower, the warm part, white, but spiked with rose-color, was a true marvel; I had never seen anything so beautiful, either of proportions or of fairness.

“Curse you, brute beast!” the one who was standing cried at me. “You, guilty one, have you ever contemplated a marvel comparable to this one?”

“By God, no,” I was obliged to swear.

“Well then, come take this prey that you don’t even have to pursue.”

At these words and before this spectacle, I believed [I] had lost my reason. I forgot my religious principles. I sensed that my desire was going to be the stronger. . . .

p. 267

Let us now pass on to verses that have been composed on the subject…..

One on one, I (feminine) stretch myself out

Quite close to my love

And I have surpassed men

By my skill

If my massage affects her

With sufficient persuasion, no doubt she will adopt

Definitively these frivolous games

Renouncing forever the exercises of males!

And again:

That the massages that we have conducted

O my sister,

Taking for that

Seventy pretexts.

I disappointed my (male) lovers

In disrobing to their caresses

Until I sensed

The head of their instrument approaching

Certainly I feared to be pregnant

And to allow a pregnancy to show

Which would not fail to rejoice the enemy

But above all I feared to be the brunt

Of blame of the censors, punishment,

Which is indeed the worst that I know.

Whereas us, nothing like that threatens us

When we caress one another

The reverse of adulteresses

And even if their appetite

Is better satisfied by it

[If one is to] believe the wise women about it.