Darío Fernández-Morera
A
Meta-Critical Examination of Scholarship in English on the Otherness of al-Andalus [published in eHumanista 37 (2017) (U. of California Santa Barbara): 268-281]
Darío Fernández-Morera
(Northwestern
University)
Continental scholars have
noted the persistence among academics in the English-speaking world of a
particular set of views on Islamic Spain.[1]
Perhaps the most common view
is that Christians were treated generally well, except for a few unfortunate
occasions, so there was no reason for them to feel too bad under Islamic
rule. Related to this view are the
beliefs that basically good relations between Christians and Muslims existed
(especially under the tolerant Umayyads, with some exceptions of course), that
both sides learned a great deal from each other, and that we should learn today
from this successful experiment in diversity.
This paper will not examine
this view, since both Medievalist and Islamic Studies academics in the English-speaking
world may vigorously protest that they, too, believe, after all, that there was
no convivencia, so attacking the
concept of convivencia, they might insist,
is creating “a straw man.”
Instead, this paper will list
and briefly discuss just a few among the other propositions that comprise much academic
teaching and publishing in English on Islamic Spain. Then it will explore a particular example,
the practice of female circumcision, which illustrates the otherness of this civilization—an otherness pointed out by José
Ortega y Gasset, among others, but dismissed by a large number of today’s scholars
in the English-speaking world in favor of such edifying phrases as “internalization
of the other,” “cultural congruence,”
“creative interaction,” “complex social
dynamic,” and so forth. In this discussion of female circumcision,
this paper will present the first translation from Arabic of a passage in one
of the most instructive works by Ibn Rushd.
1. There
was no Islamic conquest as a result of a jihad, and perhaps there was not even
a conquest, but rather a migration, analogous to that of, say, the Visigoths,
or perhaps even some sort of willing conversion of the people to Islam, which somehow
turned Hispania into “al-Andalus” (this also supports the teaching according to
which the “change” from Hispania to “Al-Andalus” was not a catastrophe for the
Christians):
This view originated in the
work of Ignacio Olagüe and has continued to be proposed, with some modifications, by
Emilio González Ferrín, a creative professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at
the University of Seville. Although
largely discredited among historians and Arabists in Spain, it has developed a surprising
following in the English-speaking academic world.
Thus a professor affirms, “We should think of the Muslims, in some way, as a
migratory wave, just like the Visigoths, except two hundred [sic] years
later.”[2] While reviewing a recent book by the historian
and Arabist Alejandro García Sanjuán, a book which once more discredits these
views, another professor defends ingeniously the plausibility of the “there was
no conquest” thesis, since after all, the sources are few, we cannot trust the
sources completely anyway, and besides, history is as much about convincing
with a good narrative rather than about establishing the truth—history is a
form of “rhetoric” (perhaps the professor might have used here the French bon
mot and write, history “n’est que littérature”):
[N]egationism is not simply
a figment of Olagüe’s or González Ferrín’s imagination; it is— despite its
obvious shortcomings—an interpretation of the past that, like all
interpretations of the past, attempts to account for the evidence. In the case
of early medieval Spanish history, the evidentiary record is a spotty one, to
say the least. Hence every modern historian of Spain is forced to confront not
only the paucity of sources from the early eighth century, but the tendency of
ninth-century (and later) historians to “retroject” (that is, to project
backwards) their political agendas onto the events of that era. One could
certainly argue…that the negationist point of departure—with its radically
skeptical approach to the sources—is too “pessimistic;” that it throws out the
baby with the bathwater. But one should not do so without acknowledging that
the opposite tendency—that is, taking medieval historians at their word—has had
a much more negative effect on Spanish historical scholarship for a much longer
time. Regardless of whether any given historian of medieval Spain believes
there was a conquest or not, he must come up with a convincing explanation for
the suddenness with which the Visigothic kingdom disappeared, the speed with
which Arabs and Berbers established their authority over much of the peninsula,
the willingness with which Iberian [sic] Christians accepted the terms of
capitulation offered to them, the tardiness with which Christians responded to
the religious identity of the new regime, and the astonishing fact that
al-Andalus came to be Islamized and Arabized despite the fact that the Muslims
and Arabs were so vastly outnumbered by the native population….In this sense
history remains true to its roots; the Romans considered it a subfield of
rhetoric, useful primarily for providing examples to strengthen a rhetorician’s
argument.[3]
Yet another influential professor
assures us that the conquest had nothing to do with religion:
The
traditional interpretation has been that the invasion was impelled by belief in
the notion of jihād in the sense of Holy War. When writing history in
certain epochs, particularly in the nineteenth century, it was natural to
ascribe the growth of Islam to the ardour of the faith of the early Muslims. .
. . The pursuit of jihād as Holy War is not . . . a motivating factor
relevant to the clashes between Muslims and the people they vanquished in the
first century of Islam, at least not as far as the conquest and subsequent
occupation of the Iberian peninsula is concerned.[4]
These views of the Islamic
conquest have been, of course, debunked by leading Spanish historians and
Arabists, from Felipe Maillo Salgado to Serafin
Fanjul to Alejandro Garcia Sanjuán to Luis A. García Moreno to Francisco García Fitz, to Manuel González
Jiménez, to Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, to Rafael Sánchez Saus, to José
Enrique Ruiz-Domenèc y Antonio Domínguez Ortiz among many others--as well as by
expert French Arabists such as Dominique Urvoy and Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq.[5] Betraying
his exasperation at the continuing life of these views, and their curious
imperviousness to scholarly refutation, historian Francisco García Fitz laments
in his review of the book by Alejandro García Sanjuán:
It is rather perplexing to
see how, already in the second decade of the XXI century, it is still necessary
to demonstrate, in a rigorous and well-documented work, that the conquest of
711 was carried out by armed Berber and Arab contingents, acting under the
orders of the authorities of the Islamic State, whose ideology was based on
faith in a One God, and in his prophet Muhammad, and that there are sufficient
sources to ascertain it.[6]
These views of the conquest are
not supported by the Christian Chronica
mozarabica of 754, written only a few decades after the invasion, or by the
Visigoth hymn Tempore belli, also
written shortly after the conquest. And they are not supported by archeology—numismatics—either,
because we have Muslim coins dated from 711 in North Africa that call for the
Islamic warriors to carry out a jihad—jihad as Holy War, not as some peaceful
“self-improvement” effort. Moreover,
later Muslim chronicles, which claim to use earlier sources, affirm that jihad
was the motivation for the conquest. And
as Arabists such as Felipe Maíllo Salgado explain, whenever the Muslim texts of
al-Andalus talk about war against the Christians, they are talking about a
jihad--as a religiously motivated war, not as an “effort to try to be the best
we can be” (as many experts in academia in the English-speaking world now
portray the principal meaning of “jihad”).
3. Islam,
if it conquered anything, conquered a dismal and ignorant and retrograde Christian
kingdom, much inferior to the civilized conquerors (this also supports,
indirectly, the widespread teaching according to which the conquest was not a
catastrophe for the Christians but in fact beneficial, since it got rid of a
terrible kingdom and replaced it with the tolerant “al-Andalus”):
Typical of this dismissive
view are the words of a prominent professor, who, in his animosity against the
Christian Visigoths, calls them "men
of the woods" who never quite left those woods:
The failure of
the Visigothic state . . . was also reflected in its technological atony,
which was at the core of the elite’s inability to adapt to any ecology other
than that with which it was originally familiar: the men of the woods never
strayed too far from there.[7]
This curious animosity
against the Christian Visigoths (Visigodophobia or Christianophobia?) is also
reflected in the sarcasm of another professor:
For all the
glorification of the ‘Great Christian monarchy’ of legendary Visigothic Spain
that one encounters in chronicles, etc., the fact is that the Visigoths had fled
Spain and abandoned it to the invading Muslims. The Christians of the
Reconquest . . . learned well the lesson . . . of convivencia. That was only one of the
many things that made Spain great, and which the rest of Europe could have
learned from it to its profit.[8]
Other professors display a similar dismissiveness towards
(or perhaps ignorance of) the culture of the Christian Visigoth kingdom, one of
them stating that “very little evidence survives from the
short-lived Visigoth kingdom” and that a “treasure hoard” does not prove that
it was “magnificent.”[9]
However, the available
evidence, which is, in fact, considerable and growing, shows the opposite of
what these and other professors write and presumably teach at their
universities. In fact, the Muslim
conquerors were largely Berbers, with a cultural level far inferior to that of the
population of the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths, and, as the Muslim
chronicles state, these invaders were quite impressed by the culture they found.[10]
Well-known archeological
evidence indicates the continuity between the Roman imperial world of Spain and
the Visigoth kingdom. We have remains of
aqueducts, of baths, of coinage printing.
We have evidence of even an artistic center in Merida.
In addition, archeological
research in the great Visigoth ruins of Recópolis shows a vibrant city, again
with aqueducts, plazas, great stone buildings, baths, and even a city plan that
tried to imitate that of the great city of Constantinople, or New Rome, the
most extraordinary city of the early Middle Ages (yes, the most extraordinary
city of the early Middle Ages was not Baghdad or Damascus or Cordoba or Rome,
but Constantinople, the capital of the Christian Greek Roman Empire). So does the archeological evidence in the
Visigoth capital of Toledo.
We know, of course, of several
Visigoth intellectuals, among them the great Saint Isidore of Seville, the most
frequently cited scholar during the High Middle Ages; Theodulf, a Visigoth who became
one of the pillars of the Carolingian Renaissance and bishop of Orleans; and the
bishop and historian Julian of Toledo (who, coming from a family regarded as sincere
Jewish conversos, was named by the Catholic
Church Primate of the entire Visigoth kingdom).
We also know that the Visigoth
educational system preserved the Roman system of education. In addition, French scholars have pointed out
the beneficial and fundamental influence of Visigoth culture in the creation of
Christian Medieval Europe.
And we have the Visigoth
Code of Law, which, “barbaric” as some of its provisions may seem to us today,
was nonetheless far closer to our present day notions of Western jurisprudence
than either medieval Jewish or Islamic law.
At one point it even states the need to restrain the power of government
(“the king”) in a section reminiscent of the much later and famous Magna Carta
and, even later and most famous, the Constitution of the United States. This Visigoth Code is of course a combination
of Roman law and some remaining Germanic customs, all of it influenced by
Christian principles.
It
should be emphasized that the Visigoths' assimilation of the Christian
Greco-Roman heritage--of this romanitas
which informs the nations of the West and indeed Western Civilization, and which Arabist, Hellenist, Hebraist and Philosopher Rémi Brague has profoundly examined in his Europe, la voie romaine (1992)-- differs
qualitatively from the way in which Islam used the civilizations that it
conquered.
The
Visigoths, which were already quite Romanized by the time they entered Spain in
415 to help the Christian Latin Roman Empire against other Germanic nations (such
as the Vandals and the Suevi), assimilated themselves to the civilization they
found in the land—in their language, in their religion, in their laws, in their
literature, in their philosophy, in their cultural practices and in their
science and technology.
The
Muslim conquerors, however,
neither assimilated themselves to— nor even integrated themselves with— the
preceding civilizations. Instead,
they took advantage of the practical knowledge they found in those
civilizations, and then proceeded to replace
them, using a number of marvelously designed laws and social and family
practices, all of which had a religious grounding and force, and which
inexorably changed the culture and the demographics of the conquered lands,
eventually wiping out their civilizations—among them, Zoroastrian Persia, the
Christian Greek Roman Empire in the Middle East and North Africa, the
Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Sind, and the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain. As several Spanish historians and Arabists have
pointed out while discussing the presumed “cultural cooperation” between Christian
and Muslims, this “cultural cooperation”
Was,
in the words of Garcia Fitz, largely a practical utilization of the knowledge
of those who had submitted, a utilization which not at all implies a
recognition of their religious or moral values, that is to say, an acceptation
of the Other in positive terms.[11]
The achievements of the
Visigoth kingdom evidenced by the archeological findings are echoed in the
Muslim chronicles, and not just in the Christian ones: these textual sources
even speak of magnificent palaces which the Umayyad rulers chose for their
residence, and of libraries, and of wonderful metallurgy, this last cultural
feature corroborated by archeological findings as well.
We may ask ourselves, what
happened to all this Hispano-Roman-Visigoth civilization? To understand what happened we have two
sources. One is the evidence from
archeology: the constructions of the Visigoth kingdom were crushed for their
superior materials for the building of Muslim constructions, as art historian
Basilio Pavón Maldonado, among others, has shown.[12] We also have the evidence from both Christian
and Muslim chronicles of the practice of the early Islamic conquests: this
practice included the destruction or transformation of monuments from the
conquered civilizations, including their houses of worship, which might obscure
or rival or offend Islam and its material achievements.
Ignorance of the
achievements of the Visigoth kingdom may be the result of an inability to read
the work of Spanish and French scholars, who have published the best studies of
the cultural importance of the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths for the
creation of the European medieval identity. But since work on the Visigoths is
also available in English, written by scholars such as Alberto Ferreiro,[13] this
ignorance may be the result of what we in Spanish call, in its most polite
formulation, mala fe, as indicated by
the words of many professors in the English-speaking world.
4. Islam, if it conquered Spain at all, did
not conquer it by force but through peaceful pacts (this also supports the
teaching according to which the change from Hispania to “al-Andalus” was not a
catastrophe for the Christians):
This is a half-truth. There were peaceful pacts, of course, but
Christians accepted them because they had seen what had happened to those who
did not accept the pacts and resisted.
And what were these pacts? The
pacts were one version or another of the dhimma,
the ingenious system developed by Islamic law to control and exploit Christians
and Jews.[14]
Under the dhimma, the Christian lords and the
bishops and their people, called dhimmis
(not “mozarabs”), were allowed to continue living and practicing their
religion-- as long as they accepted their juridical status as subalterns to the
Muslim population, their restrictions on the practice of their faith, and their
payment to the Islamic authorities of a tribute, a so-called “protection” tax,
the jizya—a tribute which was
intended, according to Islamic jurists, not only as a steady source of revenue
but as a reminder to the dhimmis of
their humiliated status. The second Caliph,
Umar, one of the Companions of Muhammad and his father-in-law, had explained to
Muslims the reason to keep Christians and Jews as dhimmis rather than turn them into outright slaves: they were far
more profitable as dhimmis than as
slaves.
Moreover, as the scholar of
Islamic law Majid Khadduri has observed, Islamic jurisprudence reserved for
Muslims the right to abrogate any pact if the abrogation was in the interest of
Islam[15] (as it
reserved for Muslims the related right to lie to the infidels about their real
views, even if apostasy was necessary—the taqiyya
system, most famously illustrated by the mass “conversions” of the moriscos, a system employed by most of
the moriscos to be able to remain in
Spain while practicing Islam in secret).
These and other such juridical prescriptions were part of the
marvelously designed Islamic approach to hegemony. Indeed, both the Chronica mozarabica and Muslim chroniclers like al Hakam point out
the often deceitful nature of the pacts.
We have evidence that the palace of Theodomir, one of those lords who
signed a pact, was eventually destroyed.
We have a text from the pact with Theodomir that shows the considerable tribute
that this Visigoth lord had to pay to the Islamic authorities to be allowed to
live and enjoy his land and his servants and his wealth.
So we have both the evidence
from the Christian and Muslim chronicles and other texts, and the evidence from
Islamic legal teachings and practice, to counter the academic idea of a
peaceful conquest by means of pacts. And,
of course, people enter into pacts where they have to pay for “protection” only
when they fear for their lives. This ingenious system, the dhimma, has facilitated the scholarly and popular interpretation of
Christian submission to Islam as some sort of tolerance, even down to our days
in the Middle East.[16]
5.
Islam conquered a place called “Iberia”, not Spain, so in our scholarly
writings we should use the name medieval “Iberia” rather than Medieval Spain:
In fact, both Muslim and
Christian medieval texts referred to the land as Spania, and to its inhabitants as Spani, that is, Spaniards. Even
early Islamic coins in Spain have on one side the word “Alandalus” in Arabic,
and on the other side SPAN, that is Spania.
Christian kingdoms such as León,
Asturias, and Portugal, were kingdoms within Spain, not within “Iberia.”[17]
Neither Christian nor Muslim
medieval texts refer to the land as “Iberia.”
This term was used only by Greek geographers, and then only before the
conquest of the land by the Romans, who called it Hispania (possibly borrowing the word from the Carthaginians, who
had even earlier occupied part of the land).
Neither Christian nor Muslim
medieval texts refer to Spain as the “Iberian Peninsula” either. However, both terms—“Medieval Iberia” and
“Iberian Peninsula”—have been adopted by scholars, largely in the
English-Speaking world, for unhistorical reasons--beginning about twenty some
years ago (before then, scholars consistently used “Medieval Spain”).
6. The
Essential Otherness of al-Andalus--The Example of Female Circumcision:
Elsewhere I have cited many religious and, therefore cultural practices
in al-Andalus that made the side-by-side living of Muslims and Christians
difficult, at best: among them, considering the dog— an animal that both pagans and
Christians in the West have regarded as their closest companion for thousands
of years (one of the most moving scenes in Western literature involves
Odysseus and his dog Argos)--a religiously polluting animal unfit to share a
home with human beings; or stoning an adulterous muhsana (a free Muslim woman of sound mind in a properly
consummated marriage); or regarding as polluted the utensils or water touched
by a Christian; or regarding the life of a Christian man (as well as that of a
Muslim woman) as juridically worth only half that of a Muslim man (thus a
Christian must be punished with death if he killed a Muslim, even if in
self-defense, whereas a Muslim man must
not be punished with death if he killed a Christian, even if he killed him intentionally);
or considering Christians, as eaters of pork and drinkers or wine, polluters
who could not be allowed to walk among the tombs of a cemetery in Umayyad
Cordoba); or turning war into a religious obligation.[18]
But perhaps it is the juridical
and biographical Islamic primary sources on female circumcision that offer the
most instructive examples of the otherness of the civilization of
al-Andalus. Most scholars insist that
there was no female circumcision in al-Andalus, and that, in fact, it was not
practiced in the “Islamic West.” This
Islamic West presumably covered North Africa West of Egypt (where it continues
to be widely practiced today) and, of course al-Andalus. So it would not have been practiced in the
areas of what are today’s Morocco, Algeria, and Libya either. Yet the
documentary evidence indicates otherwise, at least in the case of al-Andalus.[19]
In the book mentioned above
I have cited several passages in a number of Maliki juridical texts used in
al-Andalus, including the foundational Muwatta
by Malik Ibn Anas, which take for granted female circumcision and even
recommend it as honorable or noble, such as the influential Risala by al-Qayrawani, the al-Tafri by Ibn al-Gallab and the Leyes de Moros--these last two so widely
used that they were still being used by Muslims to rule themselves according to
their own law when already under Christian domination.
But the most impressive
documentary evidence of the practice may be that of the great sharia judge Ibn
Rushd (known in the West only as “the philosopher Averroes”). The passage cited and discussed below from
Ibn Rushd has never before been even mentioned by scholars.
It should be understood that
Ibn Rushd (who like most intellectuals in al-Andalus had a Christian ancestry) reached
the highest possible juridical post in the land: sharia judge in Cordoba. In his famous manual of instruction for
Islamic judges, the Bidayat, this
great Islamic thinker tells them that, according to the majority of the Maliki
juridical authorities in al-Andalus (Malikism was the school of sharia prevalent
in al-Andalus for most of its history), if the
two circumcised parts touch, the Hajj (the obligation to travel to Mecca at
least once in a life time) becomes invalid.
Ibn Rushd’s relevant words deserve citation:
Abu Hanifa said: The
majority of people and the notables believe that the touching of the two circumcised parts [emphasis added] invalidates
the major pilgrimage (Hajj). And whoever
wants to obtain purification for ejaculating between the two circumcised parts [emphasis added], must keep in mind this
condition for the Hajj. And the
authorities disagree about the matter when the semen drops in some other place
that is not the vulva. (trans. from the Spanish of Felipe Maíllo Salgado) [20]
In view of the generalized and prudent insistence among
researchers on “doubting” the practice of female circumcision in the “Golden
Age” of Islam—al-Andalus—, it is not surprising that the English translation of
the Bidayat omits this and other
similarly delicate passages, effectively censoring Ibn Rushd.
Thus Ibn
Rushd, writing in the twelfth century, after generations of mixed marriages (an
argument against the practice of female circumcision could be that Christian
women would successfully refuse to circumcise their daughters--against the
wishes of their Muslim husbands, who might insist, like good fathers, in having
their daughters grow up to be considered honorable by the Islamic law and by
their future Muslim husbands…), in the
course of instructing judges on cases of ritual purity, also takes for granted the existence of female
circumcision.
Now, it would be difficult
to imagine Western philosophers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, or Plato, or even
Aristotle (wo did not hesitate to tackle biological matters in a naturalistic
manner) writing a discussion of the views of erudite Christian thinkers or even
pagan Greek thinkers on the subject of washing oneself, for religious reasons, if
the two circumcised human genitals touch--as it would be difficult to imagine
them discussing the views of erudite Christian thinkers or even pagan Greek
thinkers on the subject of what is the most appropriate way that religious law
dictates for the stoning of an adulterous woman, as also does Ibn Rushd in his Bidayat (he writes that most juridical authorities
agree, with the exception of al-Shafii, that the woman need not be placed in a
hole in the ground for her stoning).
The Spanish Arabist Manuela
Marin gives some “real life” biographical cases from al-Andalus which confirm
the practice.[21] One is a biography of a judge who is consulted
about whether one needs to practice an ablution to purify oneself after the two circumcised parts have touched. So here we have a real life consultation that
makes reference to the existence of female circumcision, a reference repeatedly
found in the juridical texts.
Another real life case is yet
another biography, where a learned man complains that his “twelve women” refuse
to undergo circumcision. This case indicates
that female circumcision was practiced--hence the man’s complaint that these
twelve women of his do not want to have it done to them. And the case also indicates that these “twelve
women” who refuse circumcision could not be the man’s proper Muslim wives (muhsanas)--because Islamic law allowed
only four wives, not “twelve.” They must therefore be sexual slaves (yawari l’muta)--of which a Muslim man in al-Andalus could have as
many as he could afford to buy and maintain--not muhsanas (free Muslim women of sane mind in a marriage properly
consummated). And if they resisted
circumcision, these female sexual slaves would originate in lands where female
circumcision was not practiced, more likely the Christian lands to the North
(moreover, since these were “women,” therefore they could not be Muslim women,
because Muslim women would have been circumcised not when they were already women,
but when they were still girls, as indicated in Ibn Rushd al-Yadd’s
recommendation—see next-- to circumcise one’s “daughters”).
Indeed, Marín cites the testimony
of the famous Cordoban judge Ibn Rushd
al-Yadd (the grandfather of Ibn Rushd), which also confirms that, as Malik Ibn
Anas taught, circumcision is recommended
and honorable for both Muslim “daughters” and for female slaves that their master
wants to keep.
It should be also of
interest to researchers to see other testimonies about the practice of female
circumcision in Islam in general as a possible result of the teachings of
Muhammad.
One such testimony is that
of Aisha—Muhammad’s youngest wife, whom, according to al-Bukhari and other
authoritative sources, he married when she was six and with whom he consummated
the marriage when she was nine. In one
of the six most authoritative collections of
ahadith, the Sunan Ibn Majah, we
are informed by Aisha herself that, after her
circumcised genitals and the circumcised genitals of Muhammad had been in
contact, both had to take a purification bath; and that, therefore,
purification is always necessary after the
two circumcised parts have touched.
Another testimony is that of
one of the earliest sources we have on Islam: the Christian scholar Saint John of
Damascus—who possibly was, like his father before him, a dhimm serving the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus as a bureaucrat towards
the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eight century. The Damascene points
out in one of his writings that “He [Muhammad] legislated that they should be
circumcised, including their women.”[22]
We also learn in al-Bukhari,
author of one of the two or three most respected collections of ahadith among the Sunnis, that
purification is necessary if the two
circumcised parts touch.
The non-Maliki Sahih Muslim also takes for granted female
circumcision in the course of discussing ablution.[23] And for the Risala of the great non-Maliki authority al-Shafii, who belonged to
the same tribe as Muhammad (the Quraysh), female circumcision is not only
honorable, but indeed obligatory.[24] Other Islamic sources also refer to the “two
circumcised parts” in the course of discussing ablution.[25]
Therefore the academic
discussions on whether female circumcision is “really” prescribed by Islam; or
if it is a “pre-Islamic Arabic practice that Islam kept” but that Muhammad
would not have approved, but that later clerics, for some reason, adopted; or
the affirmation that it was “not practiced in al-Andalus because “Islam adapts
to all different conditions,” must face and deal with all this documentary biographical
and juridical evidence showing that it was legal, that it was practiced, and
that it was even recommended as “honorable” or “noble” for proper Muslim women in
al-Andalus. But merely continuing to repeat
that it is “doubtful,” or that it is not “clear,” that it existed will not do:
it will be necessary to present documentary biographical and juridical evidence
to demonstrate that it was not practiced among free Muslim women, and that way
counter the documentary biographical and juridical evidence showing that it did.
On
the other hand, it must be pointed out that perhaps the reluctance of many
academics to accept the practice of female circumcision in al-Andalus arises
from an unjustified dislike or even fear of the practice. A modern translator of the religious texts of
the Maliki School of jurisprudence observes: “The
traditional circumcision of the Muslims must not be confused with that
practiced today, widespread in parts of Sudan and Africa, known as Pharaonic
circumcision. The former is a very minor operation involving no damage to the
woman, when carried out by suitably qualified practitioners. The latter is a
particularly abhorrent mutilation.”[26]
It
is probably following this line of thought that in 2009
the Fatwa Committee of the National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs of Malaysia
decreed that female circumcision is in fact “obligatory for all Muslim women”.
[1] Bruna Soravia. Al-Andalus au miroir du multiculturalisme : Le mythe de la convivencia dans quelques essais nord-américains
récents In : Manuela Marín, ed. Al-Andalus/España.
Historiografías en contraste : Siglos xvii-xxi [en ligne]. Madrid : Casa de Velázquez, 2009. This gem is representative of the position of
many academics in the English-speaking world: “Modern
historians seem to agree that the invasion was not particularly cruel, or destructive
and it is certain that Muslims,
already familiar with both religions in the Middle East, were taught to respect Christians and Jews as ´People of the
Book´; moreover, a large Christian population lived on for centuries in al-Andalus
with legal rights and relative freedom of worship.” Colin Smith
(Professor of Medieval Spanish Literature at Cambridge University, President of the Modern Humanities
Research Association, Editor of the Modern Language Review, and Commander in
the Order of Isabel La Católica) Christians and Moors in Spain
(Warminster: Aris &
Phillips, Ltd., 1988) 1:10.
[2]
David Nirenberg, Deborah
R. and Edgar D. Janotta Professor of Medieval History and Social Thought at the
University of Chicago, in the PBS film Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of
Islamic Spain (2007). Elsewhere, this academic has done excellent
work on the religious conflicts in medieval Spain.
[3] Kenneth Baxter Wolf, “Negating
Negationism,” (2014) Pomona Faculty
Publications and Research, 394, a review of Alejandro García Sanjuán’s La
conquista islámica de la península ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado: Del
catastrofismo al negacionismo
(Marcial Pons, 2013).
[4] Richard Hitchcock, Professor
Emeritus of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, Mozarabs in
Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Identities and Influences (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2008), 7–8.
[5]
For a full discussion of the work of Spanish and French scholars as well as my
own examination of the primary sources, see Darío Fernández-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims,
Christians and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain (Wilmington: ISI
Books, 2016), chapter 1.
[6] “Reseña
de la obra La conquista islámica de la
Península Ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado. Del catastrofismo al
negacionismo, de Alejandro García Sanjuán,” Anuario de estudios medievales
44/1 enero-junio 2014, 562.
[7] Thomas F. Glick, Professor of
Medieval History and Director of the Institute for Medieval History at Boston
University, Islamic and Christian
Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979; rpt. New York: Brill, 2005), 31.
[8]
Norman Roth, Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, Jews, Visigoths, and Muslims in
Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1994), 38.
[9] Thomas
Madden, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University, “Acts of Faith,” The New Criterion, September 2016, 16.
[10]
For the work of archeologists, the textual evidence, and my examination of the
Visigoth Code see Fernández-Morera, op.
cit., chapter 2.
[11] Felipe Maíllo Salgado, Acerca de la conquista árabe de Hispania:
Imprecisiones, equívocos y patrañas (Madrid: Abada, 2016), 182. This entirely practical utilization is not unlike the use of
some aspects of Western civilization—basically technology and science--by Islamic
nations such as Saudi Arabia, or by the Caliphate of al-Baghdadi, or even by
many Muslims living in Western nations.
[12] Tratado de arquitectura hispano musulmana (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 2009), 3 vols.
[13]
Among many works by Ferreiro see The
Visigoths. Studies in Culture and
Society, ed. Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
[14]
For a full examination of the primary sources and a presentation and discussion
of the secondary sources from Spanish and French historians and Arabists, see
Fernández-Morera, op. cit. chapters
1, 3, and 7.
[15]
Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the
Law of Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955), vii, 202.
[16]
It is fascinating to see how the dhimma system
continues to work in favor of Islamic hegemony even today. Thus we find that the United Nations declines
to name the destruction of Christians in the Middle East by the Islamic State a
genocide because, after all, the use by the Islamic State of the dhimma system and its accompanying tax,
the jizya, does allow the Christians
to live and practice their religion: see Ronald J. Rychlak and Jane F. Adolphe,
eds. The Persecution and Genocide of Christians in theMiddle
East: Prevention, Prohibition, & Prosecution (Kettering, OH: Angelico
Press, 2017).
[17]
For the primary and secondary evidence, see Fernandez-Mrera, op. cit. Introduction and chap. 1.
[18] Fernández-Morera,
op cit., chap. 5.
[19] That
today it seems not to be practiced in Morocco, Algeria, or Libya is a different,
although one may suspect that it ended there under the influence of European
colonialism (as was the case with slavery of white Europeans captured at sea or
from coastal towns, which ended only with the European colonization of the Barbary
Coast). Or perhaps, because it is
outlawed, as a result it has simply gone underground and remained unobserved
even by expert Arabists travelling there and of course by international health
agencies: in the news one still sees the case, in Europe, of an “immigrant”
Moroccan father (Morocco being the example usually presented to show that it
does not happen in those places) discovered having had a daughter circumcised “Moroccan
Dad Arrested in Holland for Genital Mutilation of Girl,” Digital Journal (February 7, 2009).
This Moroccan father did not seem to realize that female circumcision is
not practiced in Morocco.
[20] Bidyat al-Mujtahid (Comparative Fiqh book): Arabic E-text
(unedited) Source: Muhadith.org (Zipped)
en Islamic Philosophy Online, “El Libro del Hayy” (Peregrinaje a la Meca):
وقال أبو حنيفة: لا يحل
إلا بعد الحلاق، وإن جامع قبله فسدت عمرته. واختلفوا في صفة الجماع الذي يفسد الحج
وفي مقدماته، فالجمهور على أن التقاء الختانين يفسد الحج، ويحتمل من يشترط في وجوب
الطهر الإنزال مع التقاء الختانين أن يشترطه في الحج. واختلفوا في إنزال الماء فيما
دون الفرج، فقال أبو حنيفة: لا يفسد الحج إلا الإنزال في الفرج. وقال الشافعي: ما يوجب
الحد يفسد الحج. وقال مالك: الإنزال نفسه يفسد الحج، وكذلك مقدماته من المباشرة والقبلة.
This is the translation into Spanish of the entire passage,
never before translated into any language from the original Arabic:
“Dijo Abū Ḥanīfa: No está permitido sino después de la circuncisión, y
si cohabita antes de ello se invalida la peregrinación menor (‘umra).
Discrepan acerca de la calificación del coito que invalide (=hace fāsid)
la peregrinación mayor (ḥaŷŷ) y lo anterior. La mayoría de la gente y
notables (ŷumhūr) consideran que el encuentro de las dos partes circuncidadas [énfasis
añadido] invalida (=hace fāsid) la peregrinación mayor (ḥaŷŷ).
Y quien quiera buscar la purificación eyaculando entre las dos partes circuncidadas (los
dos circuncidados) [énfasis añadido], debe tener en cuenta esta condición
para el ḥaŷŷ. Y discrepan si cuando escurre el líquido en otro
sitio que no sea la vulva.
Dijo Abū Ḥanīfa: No hace nulo (fāsid) el ḥaŷŷ sino
la eyaculación en la vulva.
Y Šafi‘ī: Lo que hace obligatorio el ḥadd (los
castigos “límite”) hace nulo (fāsid) el ḥaŷŷ.
Y Mālik dijo: La eyaculación de por sí anula el ḥaŷŷ, y
así mismo los preliminares de la cohabitación y la dirección [en que se
efectúa].”
(properly translated into Spanish very
kindly at my request by Arabist Felipe Maíllo Salgado)
[21] Mujeres en al-Andalus (Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000), 157-160.
[22]
For the testimony of Saint John Damascene and Aisha (as far as I know, neither
one mentioned before by any scholar examining the issue of female circumcision
in Islam) and the others see: John of
Damascus. First Apologist to the Muslims,
trad. Daniel J. Janosik (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 268 (I thank
Professor Anne Gardiner for calling my attention to this important source); Sunah.com: Sunan
Ibn Majah: “The Book of Dry Ablution”, vol. 1 Book 1 Hadith 608 (English
etext), Book 1, Hadith 651 (Arabic etext); Bukhari Book 5, Hadith 42:
باب إِذَا الْتَقَى الْخِتَانَانِ
The Arabist Felipe Maíllo Salgado notes the
mention of the “two circumcised parts” in the following Islamic sources as
well: : “Nāsa’ī, en su obra al-Sunan
al-kubrà, en el Kitāb al-Ṭahāra, cap. 121 dice: ‘el gusl es
obligatorio cuando se tocan las dos circuncisiones (ẖitānān) [i.e. los
dos lugares circuncidados]’;los diccionarios Lisān al-‘Arab y
el Tāŷ al-‘Arūs, en la entrada ẖatana: iḏā
iltaqà l-ẖitānānī faqad waŷaba l-gusl, ‘cuando se ponen en contacto los dos
lugares circuncidados es obligatorio el gusl (baño o ablución
mayor)’”.
[23] Sahih Muslim, Book 3, no. 684.
[24] In fact, the legal scholar Lyda Favali points out that a
majority of early fuqaha agreed with Malik’s teaching that female circumcision was a
sunnah—a proper religious practice derived from the actions and sayings of the
Prophet handed down through the traditions or the ahadith—though the
extent of the circumcision would vary: “Differences among various schools of
Islam exist on the nature of the obligation (mandatory, advisable), and on its
purport (does it refer to all of the clitoris, or only the hood etc.). . . . it
is a sunna according to the majority [of early fuqaha], and
according to Malik. Moreover, according to al-Shafii, it will be compulsory for
men and women. For women, circumcision will involve only the excision of the
hood of the clitoris.” See Lyda Favali, “What Is Missing? (Female Genital
Surgeries—Infibulation, Excision, Clitoridectomy—in Eritrea),” Global
Jurists Frontiers, 1, 2 (2001): 42. As of 2002, female circumcision is
Egypt was still widely practiced though forbidden by the legal code: see
Baudouin Dupret, “Sexual Morality at the Egyptian Bar: Female Circumcision, Sex
Change Operations, and Motives for Suing,” Islamic Law and Society, 9,
no. 1 (2002): 42–69. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, conflicting fatwas
have been issued on the subject: on
May 28, 1949, Egyptian fuqaha decided that it is not a
sin to reject female circumcision; on June 23, 1951, they stated that female
circumcision is desirable because it curbs “nature” (i.e. sexual drive among
women), and that medical concerns over the practice are irrelevant; on January
29, 1981, the Great Sheikh of AlAzhar (probably the most famous university of
the Islamic world) stated that parents must follow the lessons of Muhammad and
not listen to medical authorities, because the latter often change their minds,
and that parents must do their duty and have their daughters circumcised; on
June 24, 2007, the Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum, announced that the custom was now prohibited. However, in 2009 The Fatwa Committee of the
National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs of Malaysia decreed that female
circumcision is in fact obligatory for all Muslim women: “Female circumcision on
the rise in Malaysia”, The Express
Tribune, (febrero 20, 2015). “Female circumcision on the rise in Malaysia”,
The Express Tribune, (February 20,
2015).
[25] The Arabist EFelipe Maillo Salgado notices that the “two circumcised parts” are
also mentioned in the following sources: “Nāsa’ī, en su obra al-Sunan
al-kubrà, en el Kitāb al-Ṭahāra, cap. 121 dice: ‘el gusl es
obligatorio cuando se tocan las dos circuncisiones (ẖitānān) [i.e. los
dos lugares circuncidados]’;los diccionarios Lisān al-‘Arab y
el Tāŷ al-‘Arūs, en la entrada ẖatana: iḏā
iltaqà l-ẖitānānī faqad waŷaba l-gusl, ‘cuando se ponen en contacto los dos
lugares circuncidados es obligatorio el gusl (baño o ablución
mayor)’”.
[26] Abdassamad Clarke
en A Madinan View on the Sunnah, 96.
