Note 62 — TALE OF KAMAR AL-ZAMAN.53

Note by Sir Richard Burton: The Koran says (chap. 2): “Your wives are your tillage: go in therefore unto your tillage in what manner soever you will.” Usually this is understood as meaning in any posture, standing or sitting, lying, backwards or forwards. Yet there is a popular saying about the man whom the woman rides (vulg. St. George; in France, le postillion): “Cursed be he who maketh woman Heaven and himself earth!” Some hold the Koranic passage to have been revealed in confutation of the Jews, who pretended that if a man lay with his wife backwards, he would beget a cleverer child. Others again understood it of preposterous venery; which is absurd: every ancient law-giver framed his code to increase the true wealth of the people—population—and severely punished all processes, like onanism, which impeded it. The Persians utilise the hatred of women for such misuse when they would force a wife to demand a divorce and thus forfeit her claim to dowry; they convert them into catamites till, after a month or so, they lose all patience and leave the house. We do not propose to add to Sir Richard’s note, reserving our remarks on the subject for their proper place in a subsequent volume.