Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 128

couraged or forbidden, and, among the
īīs, to water from hot springs, which
was discouraged. Lists are given of the
impure parts of animals, generally faecal
matter and urine (the urine of the camel
is, however, permitted as a medicament);
to these are sometimes added the sexal
organs and other parts. Similarly, acts
of bestiality make unclean the meat of
the animal concerned, also the eating of
excrement. This leads to the case of the
allāla , “scatophagous animal”, men-
tioned in adī and developed in great
detail by the fih, which specifies in par-
ticular the length of time which the ani-
mal must be kept in supervised isolation
and fed with clean food in order to regain
its cleanliness and be eaten lawfully.
But, above all, a certain number of
animals are added to the pig, which is
the only one actually prohibited as such
by the urān. For some of these, such
as humans and dogs, it is obvious that all
that is being done is to make explicit pro-
hibitions which are implicit in the sayings
reported from the Prophet. In the case of
certain others, a thorough study would
be necessary to determine which are of
pre-Islamic Arab origin and which arise
from the customs already existing among
peoples who have become Islamicized. In
general, however, Islamic jurisprudence
has developed extensively the chapter
on the juridical classification of the vari-
ous animals, with perceptible divergences
among the schools.
Over and above the categories elabo-
rated by the schools, on the basis of the
urān and Tradition, of foods whose
consumption is forbidden or reprehensi-
ble, the zealous Muslim may wish to carry
the imitation of the Prophet so far as to
abstain from foods which, according to
Tradition, displeased him personally, but
which he did not forbid to others (at least
according to most of the texts), although

he forbade those smelling of them to
enter the mosque: garlic, onion and often
leeks, which is probably the reason why
according to the commentaries leeks are
excluded from the buūl laid out on the
“spread table” sent from Heaven to Jesus
and the apostles (urān, V, 111 ff.). Per-
haps the lizard should also be added to
this list.
In the course of the centuries there have
come to be added to this list of prohibited
goods new edible products; the fact that
they were bida reinforced their qualities
of being harmful, e.g. intoxicating etc., to
induce—but in vain—their prohibition.
This has been the case with coffee, āt ,
and tobacco.
Each Muslim sect, formulating for itself
a complete doctrine on all points of dogma
and practice, has had to make its decisions
on the problem of prohibitions concern-
ing food. In general the urānic prohi-
bitions have been adhered to, but some
have considered them to have only an
allegorical significance or that an era was
beginning in which there was no further
justification for them. The extra-urānic
prohibitions have been deliberately criti-
cized in some circles. The consumption of
dogs, habitual in the Saharan Marib,
was regarded with indulgence by some
jurists. The armaīs of Barayn allowed
the meat of cats, dogs, donkeys, etc. to be
sold, dogs to be fattened for the table and,
at one time at least, seem to have per-
mitted wine. But Ismāīlī dogma follows
the classical pattern of regulations con-
cerning food, forbidding the flesh of car-
nivorous animals and birds of prey, that
of the hyena and the fox, the mule and
the donkey, discouraging that of the lizard
and the hedgehog, authorizing that of the
hare and the horse (on condition that the
latter should not be ritually slaughtered
unless it is exhausted with fatigue) as well
as that of locusts and fish with scales,