MAS'UDI

KITAB MURUJ ADH-DHAHAB [Meadows of Gold]

Excerpt from Chapter 123.
 
 
 

... Mas'udi said: In the year 282 Abu-l-Jeish Khumarawaih bin Ahmad bin Tulun had his throat cut in Damascus during Dhul-Qa'da and he had just built a palace at the foot of a mountain range below Dair Murran, and he was drinking in the palace that night and Tughh was with him. And it was some of his eunuchs who did it, and they caught up with them miles away, and they killed them, and they crucified them, and they shot some of them with arrows, and they cut the flesh from the thighs and buttocks of some of them, and the black slaves of Abu-l-Jeish ate it.

I have spoken in my Histories [Akhbar] about the eunuchs from the Sudan, from the Slavic lands, from Byzantium, and from China, and of the fact that the people of China eunuchize many of their children and so do the Byzantines, and in my book Akhbar az-Zaman about the opposites that are joined together in the eunuchs, and this when their member is cut, and what natural disposition brings forth in them with that, such as people speak about them and mention of their attributes.

And al-Mada'ina mentioned that Mu'awiya bin Abi Sufyan one day entered the apartments of his wife Fakhita, and she was very intelligent and assertive, and he had a eunuch with him, and she was bare-headed and when she saw the eunuch with him she covered her head, and Mu'awiya said to her: "Surely he is a eunuch!" and she said "O Commander of the Believers, does his maiming make permissible to him what God has forbidden him?", and Mu'awiya exclaimed "We belong to God and to Him we return!" and he knew that what she said was right, and no eunuch entered his harem after that unless he was adult and mature.

And people have spoken of them and mentioned the difference between the castrated and the deprived, and that they are men among women and women among men, and this follows from their false theories and doctrines, and instead they are men, and the loss of one member of the body does not suffice to cause the effect in them that is mentioned, and the lack of growth of the beard does not change their character and does not make them similar to women in appearance. For this would mean changing the work of the Mighty and Exalted Creator in them.

And I spoke before in my books about the lack of armpit odor in eunuchs and about what the philosophers said about that, in that eunuchs are slow to develop what is necessary for armpit smell, and this is one of the advantages of eunuchs...