Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 87

provides for the lifting of the prohibitions
in a case of absolute necessity (for the
spilt blood, we remember that the early
Arabs, when they were dying of thirst in
the desert, sometimes resigned themselves
to slaughtering a camel and drinking its
blood). Traditions of the Prophet and
Islamic jurisprudence concede this arūra ,
but in general they are much stricter, for
they impose prohibitions upon species of
which nothing is said in the urān, but
without, it seems, restoring pre-Islamic
practices (on which at present we possess
only inadequate data). In fact the juridi-
cal schools have endeavoured, in a com-
pletely empirical way, to put an end to
the uncertainty which existed in the early
period of Islam and to draw up lists of
animals the consumption of which is law-
ful ( alāl ), prohibited ( arām ) or reprehen-
sible ( makrūh ), without reaching absolute
agreement.
In order to arrive at the ukm , several
general criteria, urānic or based on tra-
dition, have been applied by all the schools.
Thus, by virtue of V, 97/96 “Permitted to
you is the game of the sea and the food
of it”, all fish are lawful and their flesh
may be eaten without ritual slaughter;
however, some marine or aquatic animals
are declared arām or makrūh , or are still
the subject of discussions, for they come
within the sphere in which other criteria
are applied; thus the frog, which would
normally be alāl , is regarded as arām
because the Prophet forbade the killing of
it. Moreover, some fuahā zealots, in their
meticulous search for anything impure,
condemn the eating of those aquatic ani-
mals which have names resembling those
of unlawful land animals (“dog of the
sea”, “pig of the sea”, “ass of the sea”;
their zeal leads them to prohibit an ani-
mal which has the same name as a forbid-
den animal even in a language other than

Arabic, as with the ass, which in West
Africa has the same name as the pig), or
those which have the same shape (espe-
cially the eel, which is the same shape as
the serpent). They go so far as to declare
unlawful all marine creatures which have
not got the shape of fishes (anafīs), with
the explanation that the urānic text
authorizes fishing, but not necessarily the
eating of everything caught. Special cases
are the scatophagous fishes, fishes found
inside the belly of another fish, and above
all the āfī , dead fish floating in the water,
which is lawful only for the Mālikīs and
the · āfiīs, though the anafīs permit
the āfī if it has been killed by an accident
and has not died a natural death, which
leads to a discussion of whether death
from heat or cold is to be considered as
natural. The crustaceans are often unlaw-
ful or reprehensible, as is the whole class
of animals with shells.
By virtue of the verses (V, 6-7/4-5)
“The good things ( ayyibāt ) are permitted
you”, we find included in the chapter of
what is alāl those animals whose flesh is
esteemed for its flavour (chickens, sheep,
etc.); conversely, the peacock and other
animals are declared arām because of the
bad quality of their flesh. By the same
token isti £ ār or isti ¶ bā º , i.e. , the habit
of consuming unpleasant food, causes
animals possessing it to be classed among
those which are arām: e.g. , scarab beetles.
In this field there is a certain amount of
indecision and not a little subtlety: the
stork for example, which would be alāl , is
regarded as arām because it eats snakes.
Snakes themselves are alāl , but eating
them classes the stork among the carni-
vores. Indeed, among the Traditions of the
Prophet which are also invoked, there is
one, which was to serve also as the basis for
a division into bahāim and sibā (see below),
and according to which all carnivores are