Al-Wishah fi Fawa'id al-Nikah

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Al-Wishah fi Fawa’id al-Nikah (The Sash on the Merits of Wedlock) is a late-15th-century Arabic book on sexology and sex education written by the Egyptian Islamic scholar Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti. It sits within a long tradition of Islamic manuals about marriage and sexuality, and it aims to reconcile older erotic literature with Islamic law and ethics.

What the book does
Al-Suyuti gathered and organized a wide range of materials from earlier works to create a comprehensive guide for Muslim readers. The book is often described as a synthesis that brings together traditional Islamic views on marriage and sexuality with earlier, more voyeuristic or secular erotic traditions. It treats sex as a natural, divinely given part of human life and discusses it within the boundaries of Islamic law and conduct.

Contents and themes
The work is structured into seven parts, covering: hadiths and legal reports; sexual vocabulary; anecdotes and historical notes; anatomy; medicine; and the act of coitus itself. It emphasizes that sex should occur within the rights and duties of marriage and under permissible boundaries. The text places a strong focus on moral and religious considerations, not on pleasure alone.

Key ideas about people and relationships
Al-Wishāḥ discusses ideal masculinity as a man with great potency and ideal femininity as a woman who is both chaste and capable of desire. It presents a nuanced view of women that blends traditional views from Islamic sources with elements from earlier erotic literature. The book largely functions as a compilation that aims to harmonize erotic tradition with Islamic science and ethics. It does not address homosexuality or other acts considered illicit in its era.

Etymology and scope
The title translates roughly as “The Sash on the Merits of Wedlock.” In Arabic, nikāḥ refers to Islamic marriage bound by a formal contract, while wishāḥ (the sash or belt) is used metaphorically about ties, bonds, and relationships. The work is part of a broader genre of Islamic marriage and sexuality manuals that flourished from the 10th century onward.

Editions and manuscripts
Some of the oldest known copies include the Lala Ismail 577 manuscript (dated 1565–1566), and two copies in the French National Library (Arabe 3066 and 3067). King Saud University in Riyadh also holds a copy (KSU 797). A modern Arabic edition appeared in 2001 from Dar al-Kitab al-ʻArabī in Damascus, as part of a series on Arabic erotology, though the exact manuscript basis for that edition is not clearly stated.

Legacy
Scholars view Al-Wishāḥ as a significant, modernized contribution to Islamic sex literature. It is often regarded as the apex of Islamically grounded sex and marriage manuals in Arabic, notable for its attempt to reconcile religious ethics with a broad tradition of erotic and medical knowledge.

In summary, Al-Wishāḥ fī Fawāʾid al-Nikāḥ is a late medieval Arabic handbook that compiles and systematizes earlier sexual knowledge within an Islamic framework, presenting sex as a sacred, lawful aspect of marriage and offering guidance on the bodies, acts, and ethics of conjugal life.