Reading 16th-century travelogue written by the ex-Ottoman slave (13 years of captivity), that allegedly traveled through almost all of the Ottoman Empire, I came across this passage:
... When going to wash themselves, women grease themselves with a kind of unguent which makes their hair fall off after half an hour. Men shave their penises too, and do not let their hairs to grow at all, but both men and women do that for two or three times each month... (Bartol Đurđević, De Turcarum moribus epitome, Cap. I., De iustitia apud cives).
So my question is how common was genital shaving? Since Đurđević is describing this as some kind of "extreme hygienic habits" , does that mean it was uncommon/weird in Europe? How common was it for Ottomans? And lastly, he is talking about some kind of "unguent" that makes hair fall of - I was under impression that "self-removing hair creams" were relatively recent inventions - what do we know of this early waxing creams?
Đurđević was from present-day Croatia, then region on the border of Ottoman and Habsburg empire, but as far as I know he was well-educated on-par with other learned men of that period. He learned Turkish and Arabic, translated Christian works to those languages, and his Latin books were soon translated to French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Czech, and English, totaling to around 77 editions (a bit of digression, but just to give some "legitimacy" to his report).
It is considered sunnah (a kind of authoritative custom based on example) of the Prophet Muhammad to shave pubic hair, pluck armpit hair, and trim one’s nails — practices which many Muslim societies considered important as well as hygienic. This is attested to in the Hadith literature (in Sahih al-Bukhari). As for how widespread the practice was among different levels of society, I am not sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a common practice. The different ways Muslim-majority societies interacted with and emulated the Prophetic example is immense, so it’s important not to assume just because there is textual support for the practice that Muslims necessarily did it for that reason and for that reason alone; however, there is textual-historical precedent which is considered authoritative by many Muslims.