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 prelude1. Coming, however, in the mouth of the defenders2 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 akin3 than any of the others to the original archetype, the Ursemitisch, from which they are all derived5; “just as the Arabs, by reason of their geographical6 situation and the monotonous7 uniformity of the desert life, have, in some respects, preserved the Semitic character more purely8 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;170 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 inscriptions9 coming to us by tradition is preserved in the Pre-Islamic poems and the Koran.253
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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, accurately10 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 em172ployed 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:
This being done, he led her to a well or pit that had previously12 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 people173 of Tamim were noted13 for their addiction14 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 descended15 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 ransom16 her, she declined to leave her new-found husband. Qays was so incensed17 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 secrecy18. 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:
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“‘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 redeemed19 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 innovator20. 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 humane21 action on the part of his ancestor (who was the Fran?ois 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.”
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“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 clans23, either from inability to support their children, or in order to protect themselves from the stain of having their children dishonoured24 by stronger tribes, and the occasional practice of this barbarous and suicidal custom affords no ground for assuming an unnatural25 hatred26 and contempt for176 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 toil27 for bread through pitchiest night;
What moves my longing28 to live is but that well do I know how low the fatherless lies, how hard the kindness of kin4.
I quake before loss of wealth lest lacking fall upon her, and leave her shieldless and bare as flesh set forth29 on a board.
My life she prays for, and I from mere30 love pray for her death—yea, death, the gentlest and kindest guest to visit a maid.
I fear an uncle’s rebuke31, 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;
177Nay, but our children in our midst, what else but our hearts are they walking on the ground?
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 decided33 to save his daughter Lacita, had to conceal34 that fact from his people, although she was his only child.262
Hunger and famine were undoubtedly35 the main causes of the practice of getting rid of the female children, although according to Porphyry a boy was sacrificed at Dumat-al Jandal263 and other Arabs sacrificed a virgin36 annually37.
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 unprecedented38 incident gave the final advantage to the eastern warriors39; for one of them with long hair, naked—with the exception of a covering around his waist,—shouting a hoarse40 and melancholy41 cry, drew his178 dagger42 and plunged43 into the middle of the Gothic host, and after he had slain44 an enemy, put his lips to his throat and sucked his blood. The barbarians45 [the Goths] were terrified at this marvellous prodigy46 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 impelled47 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 vow48 of the mother to drink wine from the skull49 of the slayer51 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 near179 unto heinous52 crimes, neither openly nor in secret slay50 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 afflicted53: 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, killing54 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 religion180 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 reigned55. 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 distinguished56 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 devoted57 to the Laqeets, which, it is explained, signified, in the primitive58 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 incumbent59.
Coming centuries after Christ, it is noteworthy to observe that Mohammed was able to instil60 into his followers61 such humane doctrines62 as the freedom of the foundling and its maintenance from181 the funds drawn63 from the public treasury64 at a time when the Christians65 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, abound67 more than slaves, whence the foundling is free, as the smaller number is dependent to the greater.”272
Christian66 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 magistrate68 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
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According to Al-Quduri,274 this was the proper thing to do as the letting out was regarded as conducive69 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 faculties70 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 aged71, bed-ridden, or blind, because opposition72 and fighting are the only occasions which make slaughter73 allowable (according to our doctors), and such persons are incapable74 of these.”275
In the minute instructions in regard to divorce, much care is given as to the disposition75 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 applied76 to the prophet, saying ‘O, prophet of God! this is my son, the fruit of my womb, cherished in my bosom77 and suckled at my breast, and his father is desirous183 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 maternal78 grandmother. So deeply was this idea imbued79 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 judgment80 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 imbibing81 the doctrines of a Zimmi.
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1
prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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defenders
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| n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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inscriptions
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| （作者）题词( inscription的名词复数 )； 献词； 碑文； 证劵持有人的登记 | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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adorn
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| vt.使美化，装饰 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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addiction
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| n.上瘾入迷，嗜好 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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incensed
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| 盛怒的 | |
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secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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innovator
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| n.改革者；创新者 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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clans
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| 宗族( clan的名词复数 )； 氏族； 庞大的家族； 宗派 | |
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dishonoured
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| a.不光彩的，不名誉的 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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slay
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| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
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slayer
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| n. 杀人者，凶手 | |
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heinous
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| adj.可憎的，十恶不赦的 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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incumbent
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| adj.成为责任的，有义务的；现任的，在职的 | |
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instil
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| v.逐渐灌输 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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conducive
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| adj.有益的，有助的 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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imbued
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| v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的过去式和过去分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等） | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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imbibing
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| v.吸收( imbibe的现在分词 )；喝；吸取；吸气 | |
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