ANCIENT ARABIANS WERE CANNIBALISTIC—DAUGHTERS TOO
EXPENSIVE TO REAR—CONDITIONS BEFORE THE COMING OF THE
PROPHET—THE INJUNCTIONS OF MOHAMMED—HIS LAW AS FOUND IN
“AL HIDAYA.”
Of the one remaining tribe of the Semites, a name that has meant so
much to the civilization of the world, it is hardly necessary to offer
a prelude. Coming, however, in the mouth of the defenders of the latest
religion and as the youngest of the Semitic languages, it is necessary
to say of the Arabic language that it is nearer akin than any of the
others to the original archetype, the _Ursemitisch_, from which they
are all derived; “just as the Arabs, by reason of their geographical
situation and the monotonous uniformity of the desert life, have,
in some respects, preserved the Semitic character more purely and
exhibited it more distinctly than any people of the same family.”[252]
Arabic history divides itself into three periods, first the Sabean
and Himyarite period, from 800 B. C., the date of the oldest south
Arabic inscription; second, the Pre-Islamic period, 500 to 622 A.D.;
and third, the Mohammedan period, beginning with the Flight, or Hijra
(or Hegira). Of the first periods the little that we know except the
inscriptions coming to us by tradition is preserved in the Pre-Islamic
poems and the Koran.[253]
The second period is known as the Jahiliyya, or Age of Ignorance or
Barbarism, and, in the ample remnant of the poetry of that day, we are
enabled “to picture the life of those wild days in its larger aspects,
accurately enough.”[254]
The pagan Arabs had long been in the habit of burying their infant
daughters alive, the excuse offered being that it cost too much to
marry them and that their lives were too closely attended with the
possibility of disgrace “if they should happen to be made captives or
to become scandalous by their behaviour.”[255] For these reasons there
was never any disguising the fact that the birth of a daughter was
considered a great misfortune and the death of one a great happiness.
According to one authority, the method employed by the Arabs to get
rid of the female infant was to have the mother who was about to give
birth to a child lie down by a pit when she was about to deliver the
child, and if it was a daughter, it was thrown into the pit without any
more ado.[256]
Another version is that when a daughter was born the father, if he
intended to keep her, would have her clothed in a garment of wool or
hair as an indication that later he intended to have her keep camels or
sheep in the desert. If, on the other hand, he intended to do away with
her, he would allow her to live until she was six years of age, and
then said to her mother:
“Perfume her and adorn her, that I may carry her to her mothers.”
This being done, he led her to a well or pit that had previously been
dug for that purpose, pushed her into it, and then, filling the pit,
levelled it with the rest of the ground. It does not seem that the
latter practice could have been other than rare.
Al Mostatraf is quoted by Sale as saying that these practices were
common throughout Arabia, and that the tribes of Koreish and Kendah
were particularly notorious in this respect. The members of the former
tribe were in the habit of burying their daughters alive in Mount Abu
Dalama, near Mecca.
Among the Pre-Islamitic Arabians, the people of Tamim were noted for
their addiction to this practice and claimed, in after years, that
it was brought about by the action of their chief, Qays, who was a
contemporary of the Prophet. According to this story, Moshamraj the
Yashkorite descended on the camp of Qays and carried off, among other
women, the daughter of the sister of Qays. This captive was assigned to
the son of Moshamraj, and when her uncle appeared to ransom her, she
declined to leave her new-found husband. Qays was so incensed over this
action that, on returning home, he is said to have killed all of his
daughters by burying them alive, and never thereafter allowed another
daughter to live.
During his absence some time later, his wife gave birth to a daughter,
and knowing the feeling of the father she sent the infant to some
relatives to have the child raised in secrecy. When Qays returned home
she told him that she had given birth to a dead child.
Years after, when the child had grown up, she came to visit her mother
and while the two were together they were discovered by Qays.
“I came in,” related Qays himself to Mohammed, “and saw the girl; her
mother had plaited her hair, and put rings in the side locks and strung
them with sea shells and put on a chain of cowries, and given her a
necklace of dried dates. I said:
“‘Who is this pretty girl?’ and her mother wept and said:
“‘She is your daughter’; and told me how she had saved her alive.
“So I waited until the mother ceased to be anxious about her; then I
led her out one day, dug a pit and laid her in it, she crying:
“‘Father, what are you doing with me?’
“Then I covered her up with the earth and still she cried:
“‘Father, are you going to bury me? Are you going to leave me alone
and go away?’ But I went on filling in the earth till I could hear her
cries no longer, and that is the only time that I felt any pity when I
buried a daughter.”[257]
There were others however before Qays who did not take this attitude
toward children. Sa’sa’a, the grandfather of the poet Al-Farazdac,
frequently redeemed female children that were about to be buried alive.
Inasmuch as he too was of the tribe of Tamim his action would indicate
that Qays was not an innovator. In order to save them he was obliged to
buy them off and the price he paid every time was two she-camels, big
with young, and one he-camel.[258]
Boasting of this humane action on the part of his ancestor (who was the
François Villon of his day) Al-Farazdac vauntingly declared one day
before the Khalifs of the family of Omayya:
“I am the son of the giver of life to the dead.”
When he was reproved for this boasting he justified it by quoting the
Koran:
“He who saveth a soul alive shall be as if he had saved the souls of
all mankind.”[259]
The Aghani explains the practice on the ground of poverty and credits
Sa’sa’a with being the first one to attempt to put an end to the
practice. Thereafter this humane grandparent of a vagabond poet was
known as Muhiyyu’l-Maw’udat, or “He who brings buried girls to life.”
According to the Kamil he saved as many as one hundred and eighty
daughters.[260]
That infanticide was rare in the desert is the claim made by defenders
of the faith. The following verses are quoted by Lane as going to show
that the Arabs really had a tender feeling toward their women and
their children; and that infanticide, which is commonly attributed
to the whole Arab nation of every age before Islam, was in reality
exceedingly rare in the desert, and after almost dying out only revived
about the time of Mohammed. It was probably adopted by poor and weak
clans, either from inability to support their children, or in order to
protect themselves from the stain of having their children dishonoured
by stronger tribes, and the occasional practice of this barbarous and
suicidal custom affords no ground for assuming an unnatural hatred and
contempt for girls among the ancient Arabs. These verses of a father
to his daughter tell a different story:
If no Umaymah were there, no want would trouble my soul, no labour call
me to toil for bread through pitchiest night;
What moves my longing to live is but that well do I know how low the
fatherless lies, how hard the kindness of kin.
I quake before loss of wealth lest lacking fall upon her, and leave her
shieldless and bare as flesh set forth on a board.
My life she prays for, and I from mere love pray for her death—yea,
death, the gentlest and kindest guest to visit a maid.
I fear an uncle’s rebuke, a brother’s harshness for her; my chiefest
end was to spare her heart the grief of a word.
Once more, the following lines do not breathe the spirit of infanticide:
Fortune has brought me down (her wonted way) from station great and
high to low estate;
Fortune has rent away my plenteous store: of all my wealth, honour
alone is left.
Fortune has turned my joy to tears: how oft did Fortune make me laugh
with what she gave!
But for these girls, the Kata’s downy brood, unkindly thrust from door
to door as hard,
Far would I roam and wide to seek my bread in earth that has no lack
of breadth and length;
Nay, but our children in our midst, what else but our hearts are they
walking on the ground?
If but the wind blow harsh on one of them, mine eye says no to slumber
all night long.[261]
That the custom was deep-rooted when Mohammed arrived on the scene is
evident from the fact that Ozaim the Fazarite, according to Abu Tamman,
when he decided to save his daughter Lacita, had to conceal that fact
from his people, although she was his only child.[262]
Hunger and famine were undoubtedly the main causes of the practice of
getting rid of the female children, although according to Porphyry a
boy was sacrificed at Dumat-al Jandal[263] and other Arabs sacrificed a
virgin annually.
The cannibalistic strain is re-occurring. In the year 378 A.D. a body
of Saracens attacking the Goths before Constantinople gave an example
of this side of the Arabs.
“Both the Goths and the Saracens were parting on equal terms,” says
Ammianus Marcellinus, when “a strange and unprecedented incident gave
the final advantage to the eastern warriors; for one of them with long
hair, naked—with the exception of a covering around his waist,—shouting
a hoarse and melancholy cry, drew his dagger and plunged into the
middle of the Gothic host, and after he had slain an enemy, put his
lips to his throat and sucked his blood. The barbarians [the Goths]
were terrified at this marvellous prodigy and from that time forth when
they proceeded on any enterprise, displayed none of their former and
usual ferocity, but advanced with hesitating steps.”[264]
The last line almost leads one to believe that the wily Arab might have
been impelled not so much by the cannibalistic strain as by cunning and
generalship.
Procopius, in his account of the wars of Justinian, speaks of the
far-off Saracens as anthropophagous,[265] and according to one
Arabian authority at Medina they licked the blood of the man who had
been killed in blood revenge. Another custom coming undoubtedly from
cannibalistic times is the vow of the mother to drink wine from the
skull of the slayer of her son.[266]
These were the conditions that Mohammed undoubtedly ended by his
preaching.
“Come, I will rehearse that which your Lord hath forbidden ye; that
is to say that ye be not guilty of idolatry and that ye show kindness
to your parents and that ye murder not your children for fear lest ye
be reduced to poverty: we will provide for you and them; and draw not
near unto heinous crimes, neither openly nor in secret slay the soul
which God hath forbidden you to slay unless for a just cause.”[267]
This, Jalal-ad-din says, was revealed at Medina:
“By God, ye shall surely be called to account for that which ye have
falsely devised. They attributed daughters unto God but unto themselves
children of the sex which they desire. And when any of them is told
the news of the birth of a female, his face becometh black, and he is
deeply afflicted: he hideth himself from the people, because of the ill
tidings which have been told him; considering within himself whether
he shall keep it with disgrace, or whether he shall bury it in the
dust.”[268]
And again he says: “Kill not your children for fear of being brought
to want: we will provide for them and for you: verily, killing them is
a great sin.” And finally he says: “When the sun shall be folded up;
and when the stars shall fall; and when the mountains shall be made
to pass away; and when the camels ten months gone with young shall be
neglected; and when the wild beasts shall be gathered together; and
when the seas shall boil; and when the souls shall be joined again to
their bodies; and when the girl who hath been buried alive shall be
asked for what crime she was put to death.”[269]
Wherever the Arab went, he carried his religion and his law. And,
bloodthirsty as he was in war, it is to his credit that much was
done to check infanticide wherever the Mussulman reigned. The extent
to which the law on children was regulated by the Arabs at a time
when Europe was in darkness may be seen in “Al Hidaya,” by Shaykh
Burhan-ad-din Ali, who died A.H. 591 and was, according to his
contemporaries, a distinguished author on jurisprudence.
The Hidaya consists of extracts from a number of the great works
on Mussulman jurisprudence in which the authorities on different
opinions are set forth together with reasons for preferring any one
adjudication.[270] In this work an entire book is devoted to the
_Laqeets_, which, it is explained, signified, in the primitive sense,
anything lifted from the ground, but later came to mean an abandoned
child, and, in the law of the Arab, had come to mean a child that had
been cast out from fear of poverty or for other reasons.[271]
Here it is stated that, when the finder sees a _Laqeet_ under
circumstances which suppose that if it is not taken up it may perish,
it is not only praiseworthy to adopt a child, but it is incumbent.
Coming centuries after Christ, it is noteworthy to observe that
Mohammed was able to instil into his followers such humane doctrines as
the freedom of the foundling and its maintenance from the funds drawn
from the public treasury at a time when the Christians of Europe were
groping vainly as to the proper treatment of infants.
“A foundling is free,” says the Shaykh Burhan-ad-din Ali, “because
freedom is a quality originally inherent in man; and the Mussulman
territory in which the infant is found is a territory of freemen,
whence it is also free: moreover, freemen, in a Mussulman territory,
abound more than slaves, whence the foundling is free, as the smaller
number is dependent to the greater.”[272]
Christian philosophy offers few more striking mixtures of humanity and
democracy. It was also the law when the foundling was to be maintained,
the expense of bringing up the child was to be paid out of the public
treasury, and in favor of this law the opinion of Omar was cited. A
very good reason given for this was that “where the foundling dies
without heirs, his estate goes to the public treasury.”
The person who took up the foundling was known as a _Multaqit_ and it
was the law of that day that the _Multaqit_ could not exact any return
from the foundling on account of maintenance except where he had been
ordered by the magistrate to bring up the foundling at its own expense,
in which case the maintenance “is a debt upon the foundling, because,
the magistrate’s authority being absolute, he is empowered to exact the
return from the foundling.”[273]
According to Al-Quduri,[274] this was the proper thing to do as the
letting out was regarded as conducive to the education of the _Laqeet_.
In the Jami Saghir the hiring out of the foundling was opposed on the
ground that the _Multaqit_ had no right to turn the faculties of his
foundling to his own advantage. The opinion of Shaykh Burhan-ad-din Ali
was that Al-Quduri was right and that the child did gain by being let
out.
In Al-Siyar there is given a specific injunction that children must not
be slain:
“It does not become Mussulmans to slay women or children or men that
are aged, bed-ridden, or blind, because opposition and fighting are
the only occasions which make slaughter allowable (according to our
doctors), and such persons are incapable of these.”[275]
In the minute instructions in regard to divorce, much care is given as
to the disposition of a child. Where the husband and wife separate, the
law was that the child went with the mother, and this was based on a
decision of the Prophet.
“It is recorded that a woman once applied to the prophet, saying ‘O,
prophet of God! this is my son, the fruit of my womb, cherished in my
bosom and suckled at my breast, and his father is desirous of taking
him away from me into his own care’; to which the prophet replied,
‘Thou hast a right in the child prior to that of thy husband, so long
as thou dost not marry with a stranger.’”[276]
If the mother of an infant died, the right of _Hidana_, or infant
education, rested with the maternal grandmother. So deeply was this
idea imbued that even if the mother were a hated _Zimmi_ or female
infidel subject, married to a Mussulman, she was still entitled to the
_Hidana_ of her child until the time when the child was capable of
forming a judgment with respect to religion. When such a time arrived
the child was generally taken from the mother if she continued to be
an infidel, in order that no injury might come to it from imbibing the
doctrines of a _Zimmi._