The Qurʾān and the Putative pre-Islamic Practice of Female Infanticide
-
Ilkka Lindstedt
Abstract
In this article, I take issue with one alleged characteristic of pre-Islamic Arabia: namely, the notion that the Arabians frequently, and disturbingly, practiced female infanticide by burying their daughters alive. This is what the Islamic-era religious scholars inferred on the basis of two qurʾānic passages (Q Naḥl 16:57–59 and al-Takwīr 81:8–9). However, I will argue that the classical Muslim scholars’ interpretation of these verses is highly tendentious. By analyzing the specific qurʾānic passages and comparing the crucial word al-mawʾūdah (Q 81:8), usually translated as “the daughter buried alive,” with early Arabic poetry, I conclude that the conventional understanding of it is unlikely.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Sean Anthony, Reyhan Durmaz, Thomas Eich, Andreas Görke, Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, David Kiltz, Michael Macdonald, Jerome Parker, Marijn van Putten, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Nicolai Sinai, Ville Vuolanto, and the two anonymous peer-reviews for important comments on earlier versions of this article.
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Obituary: Mahmoud Ayoub (1935–2021)
- The Qurʾān and the Putative pre-Islamic Practice of Female Infanticide
- Worship (dīn), Monotheism (islām), and the Qurʾān’s Cultic Decalogue
- The Shifting Ontology of the Qurʾān in Ḥanafism: Debates on Reciting the Qurʾān in Persian
- Are these Nothing but Sorcerers? – A linguistic analysis of Q Ṭā-Hā 20:63 using intra-Qurʾānic parallels
- Mubīn and Its Cognates in the Qurʾān
- The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment
- Review of Qur’anic Research
- Marijn van Putten. Quranic Arabic: From its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xiii + 351. Hardcover USD $149.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-50625-1
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Obituary: Mahmoud Ayoub (1935–2021)
- The Qurʾān and the Putative pre-Islamic Practice of Female Infanticide
- Worship (dīn), Monotheism (islām), and the Qurʾān’s Cultic Decalogue
- The Shifting Ontology of the Qurʾān in Ḥanafism: Debates on Reciting the Qurʾān in Persian
- Are these Nothing but Sorcerers? – A linguistic analysis of Q Ṭā-Hā 20:63 using intra-Qurʾānic parallels
- Mubīn and Its Cognates in the Qurʾān
- The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment
- Review of Qur’anic Research
- Marijn van Putten. Quranic Arabic: From its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xiii + 351. Hardcover USD $149.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-50625-1
