When Hind Bint al-Khuss al-Iyadiyyah died, her faithful lover "cropped her hair, wore black clothes, rejected worldly pleasures, vowed to God that she would lead an ascetic life until she passed away…" She even built a monastery to commemorate her love for al-Zarqa'.
Ghada Amer was fascinated with the fact that the Encyclopedia of Pleasure was widely accepted at the time it was written but was later forbidden in the Arab world.
She has noted that although the book was written as a moral guide and combined the "literary, philosophical and medical knowledge" of the Islamic Golden Age was later "suppressed by conservative society".
She used an English translation of the book to place the text from the chapters that deal with female pleasure and beauty "On praiseworthy aesthetic qualities of women" and "On the advantages of a non-virgin over a virgin" on "57 canvas boxes, covered with Roman script embroidered in gold thread and stacked in various arrangements.
She intentionally did this because she believes that "the text of these passages is not important per se but acts merely as the visual framework for larger investigations of sexuality and spirituality and the role of the word within them.
"[5] In her work Amer quoted several sexually explicit texts: A woman's orgasm comes down from her head whereas a man's comes down from his back.
[3] On 23 March 2007, it was used as a part of Global Feminism exhibit at the Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.