Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 90

a certain time on herbage. It is also arām
to consume the milk or the eggs of forbid-
den animals, but abstention from eating
certain parts of permitted animals—the
glands, the spleen, the genitals etc.—is
also recommended. Among aquatic
animals those which have no i ª r, i.e. ,
scales (cf. Leviticus, XI, 9, Deut. XIV, 9)
are forbidden, as are those which are
not alive when caught. In cases of neces-
sity, however, all these prohibitions are
waived.
These general considerations leave
the way open for argument, especially in
the case of animals which are difficult to
classify; an example is the cat-fish ( ¡ irrī ).
Divergences appear as well among the
· īī sects; thus Ibn Baūa relates that for
the anafī inhabitants of Sinope (anūb)
the best way of assuring themselves that a
traveller and his companions adhered to
Sunnism was to offer them a hare, for the
Rāfiīs do not eat the flesh of this animal
(though the Ismāīlīs do).
To the question of the legality of killing
certain animals is added the forbidding of
pilgrims in the state of irām to shed blood,
from which arises the problem of how one
is to deal with vermin; the question arises
also in connexion with prayer.
At another level arises the question
of the way in which animals are to be
treated; for example it is permitted to kill
a cock, but the Prophet forbade reviling it
because it performs the religious function
of awakening the Faithful at the time of
prayer; the same rule applies to fleas “who
awakened a prophet”. In general Muslims
are counselled to treat animals, and par-
ticularly their mounts, well, for they will
have to give account in the next world of
any cruelty which they have inflicted on
them in this.
The problem presented by the use of
the parts of animals regarded as arām is a
complex one which cannot be given here

the full treatment which it deserves. By
way of example, among the Mālikīs, the
Muslim who has had of necessity to eat
the flesh of an animal not ritually slaugh-
tered may not use its skin as a prayer rug,
nor may he sell it. Similarly, before the
skins of wild beasts ( sibā ) may be used
as prayer rugs, or sold, it is necessary
for them to have been ritually slaugh-
tered. Although pigs are forbidden in the
urān, the Mālikīs allow the use of hogs'
bristles.
It is hardly possible within the limits of
this article to enlarge on the subject of the
lawfulness of animals, the complexity of
which in Islamic law is due to what the
doctors consider to be the insufficiency
of the urānic regulations. Prohibi-
tions concerning food being considered
necessary—as is proved by the fact that
later “prophets” hastened to enact more
of them—the schools, in order to develop
the system outlined in the verses at the
beginning of this section, applied various
criteria (on which they are not always
unanimous), so that in order to present this
intricate subject more completely, it would
be necessary to list all the animals and to
indicate for each one the ukm adopted by
each of the different schools. It would also
be instructive to compare these classifica-
tions with the Biblical regulations (Leviti-
cus, XI, 1-47; Deuteronomy, XIV, 4-21;
see also Isaiah, LXV, 4, LXVI, 3, 17) and
with the criteria laid down: it is lawful to
eat ruminant quadrupeds with cloven
hoofs (this excludes the horse, the donkey,
the camel, the rabbit, the hare and the
pig), also aquatic animals equipped with
fins and scales; birds which are held in
abomination and reptiles which are lawful
are listed separately. The prohibitions set
forth in the Old Testament are regarded
in the urān (IV, 158/160) as a punish-
ment inflicted on the Jews for their iniq-
uity and their disobedience to God, and