It gives lists of names for the penis and vulva, has a section on the interpretation of dreams, and briefly describes sex among animals.

Sheikh Nefzawi, full name Abu Abdullah Muhammad ben Umar Nafzawi, was born in the south of present-day Tunisia.

He compiled the present work at the request of the Hafsid ruler of Tunis, Abū Fāris ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mutawakkil.

According to Nefzawi and the quoted poem, a man of high sexual quality has a large and vigorous shaft, possesses thick thighs and is not big bellied.

He tells the story of a scurrilous man called Musaylima and his seduction of Sajah, two figures who are despised in Islamic history as false prophets.

Musaylima attempted to fashion scriptures that might resemble the Qur'an and imitate the miracles of healing that occurred at the hands of the Prophet Muhammad, but woefully failed on both counts.

Musaylima is said to have panicked, until he was advised by an old man of his tribe, who suggested that Musaylima set up "a vaulted tent of coloured brocade" in which silks and perfumed waters of "lily, rose, carnation, violet" were spread out, along with censers of "Khymer aloes, ambergris and musk".

To illustrate all this, the author tells the story of Bahloul, a buffoon who managed to make love to Hamdonna, the daughter of the King and the wife of the Grand Vizir.

At this point, the author tells the story of Dorerame, a slave who enjoyed making love with the most beautiful and well-born young women of his time, even if they belonged to other men.

We also learn that women can be very dangerous: he concludes this second chapter by saying that the moral of this tale is that "a man who falls in love with a woman imperils himself, and exposes himself to the greatest troubles."

Also listed as disagreeable traits are revealing their husband's secrets, delighting in other's misfortune, pointing out other's shortcomings, busy-bodies, shrews, talkers, gossips, the lazy, harridans, the hysteric, the nag and the pilfering slag.

Concerning sexual positions it is said that all are permissible (but Khawam's translation adds the words "except in her rear end," i.e., anal sex).

Eleven positions are then listed, six with the woman on her back, one from behind, two with one or both on their sides, one over furniture and one hanging from a tree.

Four stories are presented, each with a woman who lies and tricks a man in some way, each ending with a warning to men about women.

It features a woman thought to be a lesbian (because she had not been interested in one of the men) and ends with a set of sexual challenges – one man must deflower eighty virgins without ejaculating, one must have sex with a woman for fifty days, without going limp, another must stand in front of the women and maintain an erection for thirty days and nights.

The Perfumed Garden first became widely known in the English-speaking world through a translation from the French in 1886 by Sir Richard Francis Burton.

Burton mentions that he considers that the work can be compared to those of Aretin and Rabelais, and the French book Conjugal Love by Nicolas Venette but what Burton believes makes The Perfumed Garden unique in the genre is "the seriousness with which the most lascivious and obscene matters are presented."

Burton points out that not all of the ideas in The Perfumed Garden are original: "For instance, all the record of Moçama and of Chedja is taken from the work of Mohammed ben Djerir el Taberi; the description of the different positions for coition, as well as the movements applicable to them, are borrowed from Indian works; finally, the book Birds and Flowers by Azeddine el Mocadecci (Izz al-Din al-Mosadeqi) seems to have been consulted with respect to the interpretation of dreams."

The revised translation, due to be retitled The Scented Garden, was never published as Burton's wife Isabel burned the manuscript soon after his death.

Of the Burton translation, he says, "details were expanded, episodes introduced and whole sections incorporated from other, non-Arabic, sources.

The text is dressed up in a florid prose alien to the style of the original and many of the notes are sheer speculation.

Burton's translation is perhaps 25 pages long, lists 39 sex positions as well as 6 types of sexual movement, and gives creative names to many of these.

In 1923 the English composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wrote Le jardin parfumé: Poem for Piano Solo.

Omnium Gatherum, a Finnish melodic death metal band, also wrote a song called "The Perfumed Garden", released on their "Spirits and August Light" album in 2003.

Ray Manzarek, inspired by this, recorded a track called "Perfumed Garden" for his solo album The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll, Now It's Out Of Control.