![]() 25, explains that “impregnable” translates the Arabic musaffahat. “Have you sprung up from the ground or dropped down from the sky? What is it that you want?” is my imagined spirit’s thoughts. ![]() “And who might these night intruders be?” signed Zahra. Zahra retained considerable wit despite the wine: Then armed and masked, the men stepped out from their hiding place and stood over the women reclining on cushions. The men waited for the women to get somewhat inebriated. After nightfall, the girls entered to enjoy the elegant furnishing, lavish food and wine, and wanton revelry. They hid themselves in the palace’s inner room until night. The men returned to Zahra’s palace and sneaked in through the back of the cave. Abu’l Hayloukh brought along his most trusted slave Fallah. Abu’l Hayloukh was a much-honored warrior. He returned home and secured the help of his best friend, the Grand Vizier’s son Abu’l Hayloukh. Abu’l Hayja then knew that he needed help. Peering through a crevice, Abu’l Hayja saw Zahra frolicking lewdly with one hundred nymphs. That night, they heard noise and saw a light in the back of the cave. Abu’l Hayja and Maymoun hid in a nearby cave. ![]() He armed himself with his sword and rode off with his trusted slave Maymoun on the long day’s ride to Zahra’s palace. Then they parted.Īfter returning home, Abu’l Hayja decided to assail Zahra’s fortress palace. Zahra refused Abu’l Hayja’s proposition for sexual union. However, gazing upon Zahra’s hands, eyes, and figure, Abu’l Hayja fell in love with her. He learned Zahra’s story from one of her slaves. Abu’l Hayja wasn’t sure if Zahra was a woman or a man. One day when Zahra was out hunting with her slaves, she crossed paths with a horseman, Abu’l Hayja. Together they promised a long reign of matriarchy. The daughters became renowned throughout the land. But Zahra, the youngest daughter, was the most clever. When the king died, the eldest daughter became ruler of the land. They dressed in men’s clothes and fought in battle against men. A powerful king had seven beautiful, charming daughters. If homosexuality is caused by unusual in-utero testosterone exposure (a plausible hypothesis), then the system that controls body odour may change in related and detectable ways.The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight, an early-fifteenth-century Arabic text from North Africa, tells the story of three great sexual heroes. It may be because the MHC is affected in the womb by exposure to testosterone. If the brains of gay men are attracted to other men through sight and sound, then why not through smell, too? But the idea that men can, in effect, smell gay is harder to explain. The second result is, perhaps, the less surprising. Meanwhile, Ivanka Savic of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and her colleagues reported in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the hypothalamuses of gay men in brain scanners respond to AND and EST in a similar way to those of straight women. Similar odours from gay men, however, were the least preferred by heterosexual men and women. A forthcoming paper in Psychological Science, by Charles Wysocki of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues, shows that gay men prefer the smell of sweat collected from the armpits of gay men and heterosexual women to that collected from heterosexual men. Two results that have emerged this week strengthen the idea that all these odours are indeed sexual-but with a novel twist because it comes from work that includes homosexuals as well as heterosexuals. EST is a cousin of oestrogen found in women's urine. AND is a derivative of testosterone that is found in men's sweat. In addition, studies using brain scanners have found that smelling a chemical called androstadienone ( AND) activates the hypothalamus in women, but not in men, whereas smelling estratetraenol ( EST) activates it in men, but not women. General body odour, which is controlled by part of the immune system called the major histocompatibility complex ( MHC), is known to be involved in sexual attractiveness in several species, and some research suggests mankind is one of them. Unfortunately, evidence for such brain-manipulating chemicals in humans is inconclusive. IT IS every perfume-maker's dream to find a spray that plugs straight into the hypothalamus-the part of the brain responsible for libido.
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