Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 89

logical point of view, is moreover applied
to other foods and allows all prohibitions
to be canonized. This is particularly true
for the a ª arāt al-ar , (sometimes ¶ a ª ā ª ),
a term which embraces in a variable and
inconsequential way the small animals
which live on the ground, and are in gen-
eral forbidden or reprehensible, in spite of
a adī º . They include scorpions, all kinds
of insects, and worms. Concerning the lat-
ter there is much disagreement, for it is
difficult not to eat them accidentally with
other foods. Some schools make efforts to
distinguish those which have been engen-
dered by the food itself from those which
have not, those which are alive or dead,
those which have rū or not.
In general birds without talons are per-
mitted, but certain of them are the sub-
jects of discussion, and receive different
classifications according to the schools;
this is the case notably with the parrot
and the owl.
It goes without saying that a certain
number of animals have not received any
classification, because it has not occurred
to anyone to eat their flesh. Similarly for
very rare species the question has not
been solved because it has not arisen; thus
al-Damīrī mentions that nobody has been
concerned with the rhinoceros, which he
himself considers at first sight to be alāl ;
the case of the giraffe is disputed; and
finally the monkey is regarded as arām
except by the Mālikīs; here there inter-
venes, as in the case of the nisnās the new
idea of a resemblance between animals
and humans, which, by a kind of natural
law, prevents people eating these crea-
tures without a formal prohibition being
necessary.
Among domestic animals, while the
camel, the ox, the sheep etc. present no
problem, the equidae give rise to dis-
agreements; the horse is lawful for the
· āfiīs and the anbalīs, while the other

schools consider it makrūh ; the domestic
ass is arām , except for the anbalīs who
regard it as makrūh , while the wild ass is
alāl for all schools except the anafīs.
The mule, arising from a crossing of two
differently classified species, is prohibited,
except that, at least for those who regard
the horse as alāl , the offspring of a horse
and a wild she-ass is permitted.
In contrast to the other schools, the
āhirīs, and particularly Ibn azm, re-
main faithful to their fundamentalist crite-
rion and base themselves on urān, VI,
119 “. . . seeing that He has distinguished
for you that He has forbidden you”, to
reject prohibitions which are not found in
the urān.
The · īīs do not differ radically from the
Sunnīs; although they differ from them
on points of detail, they nevertheless base
their decisions on identical criteria. Thus
the āī al-Numān, who sets forth the
doctrine of the Ismāīlīs, points out that
God has forbidden the eating of carrion,
spilt blood and pork (urān, V, 4/3) and
that the Prophet declared unlawful carni-
vores with fangs and birds with talons; he
adds that the hyena and the fox are for-
bidden, and that the eating of the lizard,
the hedgehog, insects ( a ª arāt ), snakes and
all the small reptiles or insects included
under the name of ¶ a ª ā ª is to be dis-
couraged; only locusts caught alive while
in flight are permitted. However, the · īīs
include among the flesh which is forbid-
den or reprehensible that of several par-
ticular birds (the lark etc.) and that of two
new categories: birds which hover more
than they fly, and birds which lack both
a gizzard and other organs. The Ismāīlīs
authorize the eating of horse-meat only
in the case of an animal useless for any
work, and they forbid absolutely the flesh
of mules and domestic donkeys; also arām
are animals which habitually eat excre-
ment ( ¡ allāla ), unless they have been fed