Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 91

the Holy Book of Islam had no reason to
be so severe, but the scruples of the fuahā
led them to adopt a more rigorous posi-
tion and to restrict the alleviations from
which Muslims could benefit. In certain
cases custom supersedes a legal ruling
which is considered to be too liberal: thus,
the coney ( wabr ) is in general considered
lawful, in contrast to the Biblical regula-
tion, but it is the object of prohibitions
based on custom, for example among the
Egyptian Bedouin, or among the settled
communities of Southern Arabia.

explained in view of the whole trend of
the passage, if there were an earlier pas-
sage, namely XVI, 116, in which it was
given full justification); VI, 140, 146:
“They have said: 'What is in the womb
of this cattle belongs to the males, and is
forbidden to our females'; but if it is mayta
(stillborn), all have a share in it . . . Say: I
find in what is revealed to me nothing for-
bidden, which must not be eaten, except
it be mayta or congealed blood or pork—
for this is filth—or a slaughter at which
another than Allāh is invoked, but if any-
one is forced [to eat it] without wishing to
commit a transgression or sin, thy heart
is merciful and indulgent” (of the third
Meccan period); II, 168: “He has for-
bidden you mayta , blood, pork and that
over which another than Allāh is invoked
but if anyone is forced [to eat it] without
wishing to commit a sin or transgression,
it is not reckoned as a sin against him;
Allāh is merciful and indulgent” (from the
year 2 of the hi ¡ ra , before the battle of
Badr): V, 3: “Forbidden to you is mayta ,
blood, pork, that over which another than
Allāh is invoked, and that which has been
strangled, killed by a blow or a fall, or by
the horns [of another beast], that which
has been eaten by wild beasts—with the
exception of what is made pure—and that
which has been sacrified to idols . . . But if
anyone in [his] hunger is forced to eat of
them without wishing to commit a sin,
Allāh is merciful and indulgent” (in all
probability revealed after the valedictory
pilgrimage of the year 10).
It is quite evident from sūra, XI, 140,
that the mayta was of some significance for
the Meccans in the many laws about food
with which Arab paganism was acquainted.
Although it is no longer possible to define
exactly the part it played (even the state-
ments recorded by al-abarī from the
earliest interpreters of this passage, which
moreover only refers to a detail, reveal

(Ch. Pellat)

Carrion

The Arabic word mayta , feminine of
mayt , means dead (used of irrational
beings); as a substantive it means an ani-
mal that has died in any way other than
by slaughter. In later terminology, the
word means firstly an animal that has not
been slain in the ritually prescribed fash-
ion, the flesh of which therefore cannot be
eaten, and secondly all parts of animals
whose flesh cannot be eaten, whether
because not properly slaughtered or as a
result of a general prohibition against eat-
ing them.
In addition to sūra XXXVI, 33, where
mayta appears as an adjective, the word
occurs in the following passages in the
urān in the first of these meanings:
XXI, 116: “He has forbidden you mayta ,
blood, pork and that over which another
than Allāh has been invoked; if however
anyone is forced [to eat these] with-
out wishing to transgress or sin, Allāh is
merciful and indulgent” (from the third
Meccan period, since VI, 119 may refer
to this context and the appearance of
the same exception for cases of coercion
in VI, 146 (cf. below) is then only easily