Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 127

to define very precisely the method and
conditions of slaughter, etc. Although
“carrion” ( mayta ), an animal simply found
dead, remains completely forbidden except
in case of absolute necessity, attempts have
been made to mitigate a little the more
precise prohibition, given in urān, V,
4/3, of the flesh of animals found stran-
gled or gored, victims of a fall or killed by
a blunt instrument. If even a breath of life
remains in them they may still be ritually
slaughtered and thus rendered lawful to
eat. This is the “purification” mentioned
in the urān. It was necessary to define
in the greatest detail the signs by which
the presence of this flicker of life could be
recognized or presumed to exist. More
serious difficulties are caused by hunting.
In general it is necessary to perform the
ritual slaughter of the animal before its
death, if this is possible. But where this
is impossible, it is conceded that the fact
of having killed an animal while formulat-
ing the intention of slaughtering it ritu-
ally and pronouncing the tasmiya (“in the
name of God”) at the moment of send-
ing off the missile may take the place of
this ritual slaughter. Naturally the pilgrim
who has entered the state of ritual purity
( murim ) may not take advantage of these
privileges (in view of the urānic prohi-
bition mentioned above). However some
traditions authorize him to eat a wild ass
which has been hunted down or, in return
for compensation, a hyena. On the other
hand, efforts were made to specify how far
the unlawfulness of the mayta extends to
its skin, its milk, its eggs or to any foe-
tus which it might contain. An exception
from the prohibition of blood is gener-
ally made for the liver and the spleen,
which are considered as a solid form of
blood. Ritual slaughter is not necessary
for fish (or any marine animals), nor for
locusts. For amr , the same processes of
interpretation are applied to the urānic

prohibition. We shall limit ourselves here
to mentioning that, on the one hand, the
idea of amr is defined by the intoxicat-
ing power of the liquor concerned (tak-
ing advantage of the meaning of āmara
“to be mixed together”), and that on the
other hand the prohibition makes it, in
accordance with the logic of the system, a
drink impure in itself, even in a quantity
too small to produce drunkenness. The
result is a logical contradiction, which
is illustrated when azālī contrasts the
Muslim law with the supposed prohibi-
tion of wine by Jesus, based solely on its
ability to intoxicate. azālī gets over the
difficulty by asserting that the drinking
of small quantities leads to that of large
quantities and drunkenness, which is the
line taken in the modern interpretation,
which emphasizes the moral, hygienic and
social justifications for this prohibition.
Food can sometimes be affected by
impurities which have nothing to do
with the food itself. Thus the impurity of
menstruation (urān, II, 222, and much
developed later) leads to the conclusion
that the meat of menstruating female ani-
mals is impure ( e.g. , the hare), just as the
impurity of women in this state can be
transmitted to the food which they pre-
pare. The same applies to food prepared
by infidels (including the ahl al-imma ,
according to certain authors), perhaps
even to that eaten in their company or, in
practice, that prepared in utensils which
they have used.
The Mālikī school endeavoured to limit
the prohibitions to foods declared impure
by urānic prescription, with only those
restrictions set out above: that the food
eaten should be neither harmful nor the
property of others. But in general the idea
of uncleanliness was extended, as we have
seen, to other foods. It concerns always
animal food, except where it relates to
edible earth, which was sometimes dis-