Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 86

3. Forbidden Flesh:
The Animal Kingdom and
the Religious Law

( aaba , dial. bū farda ), pulmonary strongy-
losis provoking sneezing ( kudās, na º īr ) and
mucus or glanders ( mu ¶ āt, zi ¶ rī, ru ∞ ām ),
attested by the Prophetic tradition cited
above. Finally, cases of cenurosis or
turnsick ( º awal , dial. bū n ª īnī ª ) were
frequent, as were swellings ( ubā ) and
convulvus of the oesophagus (dial. farrās )
due to dehydration. Against this cohort
of invisible enemies constituted by the
microbes, the shepherd would find him-
self totally unarmed, attempting, despite
everything, some empirical treatments
for the external infections. Purulent sores
were cauterised with a red-hot iron ( kayy ),
and mange ( ¡ arab ) and ringworm ( arā )
are, even nowadays, treated by the appli-
cation of tar ( arān, īr ). It is with tar also
that the waters of the brackish or magne-
sian watering place are purified ( ma ª a ¡ )
and, in Syria, a billy-goat or ram carries
around his neck a cow-horn ( baāl ) full of
this substance to provide for the hour of
watering. Many other therapeutics, some-
times extravagant, mixed with conjuratory
magical practices take place everywhere
in Islam, as in Christendom, and the
list would be very long. Meanwhile, in
modern times, veterinary science is prop-
agated under the auspices of the authori-
ties of each state, and competent services
periodically bring effective prophylactic
measures, to the countryside by means of
vaccination ( talī ), disinfection ( tahīr ) of
contaminated sites and by injection ( an )
of powerful medications absorbed into
the body of the sick patients; it can also
be confirmed that at present the flocks of
sheep and goats of the Muslim countries
are almost freed from the scourge of the
great epidemics.

Animals and Muslim law

Islam concerns itself with animals in
many other connexions, and there is
hardly a chapter of Muslim law which does
not deal with them. Domestic animals are
subject to the zakāt ; the sale of animals is
bound by restrictions in connexion with
the legality of the consumption of their
flesh ( e.g. , it is forbidden to sell pigs; how-
ever it is permitted to sell leeches, though
it is forbidden to eat them); the question
of their barter against other animals or of
a contract for delivery with prepayment is
also debated; ritual sacrifices are the sub-
ject of precise instructions as is the kill-
ing of animals intended for eating; to this
chapter is connected that of hunting and
game [see ayd] and, secondarily, of furs;
the prohibitions imposed on pilgrims in a
state of irām form another legal question,
while some traditions of the Prophet lead
to the posing of the question whether,
outside the state of irām , it is legal to kill
certain animals and, on occasion, to eat
their flesh. Thus the fundamental prob-
lem is reached, which concerns on the
one hand food, and on the other the use
for other purposes of one or another por-
tion of a forbidden animal. In what fol-
lows we shall concern ourselves with the
juridical status ( ukm ) of the various spe-
cies of animals.
The urān enumerates on several
occasions the prohibitions concerning the
eating of the flesh of an animal which
has not been ritually slaughtered, con-
cerning the spilt blood, and the pig (V,
4/3; see also II, 168/173, VI, 146/145,
XVI, 116/115), but in the last verse it

(F. Viré)