Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Another question of importance arose,
in connection with spirits: Had they to be
considered as wine or not? All the mahab s,
except the anafīs, have answered the
question in the affirmative sense. They
have consequently extended the prohibi-
tion of wine, in accordance with the inten-
tion underlying it. Tradition, which is the
best source for the history of the origin of
several institutions, shows that the ques-
tion belongs to the much-debated ones.
The standard adī , which is found very
frequently in the classical collections, runs
as follows: “Some men of Abd al-ays
went to the Apostle of God and said to
him: O Prophet of God, we are a tribe
belonging to Rabīa; between us and your-
self dwell the infidels of Muar, so that we
can only reach you in the sacred month.
Tell us therefore what we have to tell our
tribespeople which will open Paradise for
us if we to cling to it. The Apostle of God
answered: I order four things and I forbid
four things. Serve God without associat-
ing anything with him. Perform the alāt ,
pay the zakāt , fast the month of Ramaān
and deliver the fifth part of booty. And I
forbid four things: dubbā, antam, muzaffat
and naīr . They asked: O Apostle of God,
how do you know what the naīr is? He
said: Well, it is a palmtrunk which you
hollow out; then you pour small dates into
it and upon them water. When the process
of fermentation has finished, you drink it
with the effect that a man hits his cousin
with the sword.—Now among these men
there was someone who had received a
blow of the sword in this way, but he had
concealed it out of shame before the
Apostle of God. So he said: But from what
vessels should we drink then, O Apostle of
God? He answered: From leather skins,
the mouthpieces of which are smeared
with pitch. They answered: O Prophet
of God, our country teems with mice so
that no single skin can be kept whole.
Then the Prophet of God answered:
Even though the mice should eat
them, even though the mice should
eat them, even though the mice should
eat them.
This tradition did not meet with gen-
eral approval. It is said that the Anār or
other people complained of their difficulty
in finding the skins necessary for preserv-
ing drinks without their becoming fer-
mented. Thereupon the Prophet is said to
have withdrawn his prohibition, wholly or
partly (Buārī, Muslim). In some versions
of this tradition there occurs the restriction
that all the fermented inebriating drinks
remain prohibited. Innumerable are the
traditions which only contain the rule
that all drinks which may cause drunken-
ness are prohibited in any quantity ( kull
muskir arām kaīruhu wa alīluhu ) and this
rule has passed into many topics of fih
(Buārī, Muslim, Amad b. anbal ). Of
special traditions prohibiting fermented
drinks, there may be mentioned the fol-
lowing. It is forbidden or disapproved of
to sell raisins if they are to be used for
preparing nabidh (Nasāī). It is prohibited
to mix together different kinds of fruits so
that the mixture should become intoxicat-
ing. This tradition occurs frequently; see
e.g. Buārī, Muslim, Nasāī, Ibn Sad,
Amad b. anbal. But each of these kinds
may be used separately for preparing a
non-fermented drink (Muslim, Nasāī).
It can easily be seen that the difficulty
in this matter was caused by two circum-
stances. People were accustomed to pre-
pare from all kinds of dates, from raisins
and other fruits, drinks which only became
inebriating if they were preserved a long
time, and probably also if they were pre-
pared after special methods. Where was
the line of demarcation between the
allowed and the prohibited kind to be
placed? Several collections of traditions
went so far as to mention nabī among
Search WWH ::




Custom Search