'I know it when I see it': Dis/similarity in Medieval Muslim Determinations of Paternity
Kathryn Kueny (Draft)
Before blood tests, DNA testing, and close record keeping, resemblance was often
utilized as the means through which paternity was secured. However, on what
basis does a child look like his father? The answer to this question is dependent
upon an ever-shifting set of criteria and authoritative voice, all of which affect the
child's physical appearance. This paper explores the rich rhetorical strategies
medieval Muslim physicians and scholars adopt to establish paternity through the
generation and determination of like features between fathers and children. I
argue such strategies are informed by broader assumptions about male/female
anatomy, wayward parental behavior, notions of piety, and the inherent fragility
of masculinity and the patriarchal household. Observations for this discussion are
drawn from a variety of medieval Muslim medical texts, bestiaries, ḥadith
collections, and other legal and theological treatises.
In 1964, a U.S. Supreme Court decision came down involving the showing of the French
film, The Lovers, which the state declared obscene. Jacobellis v. Ohio became famous for an
opinion put forth by Justice Potter Stewart, who claimed the Constitution protected all obscenity
except for “hard-core” pornography. In trying to delimit what hard-core pornography might be,
Stewart wrote, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be
embraced within that short-hand description . . . but I know it when I see it.”1
The subjective nature of Justice Stewart’s criteria applies to medieval Muslim
standards for identifying paternity. While maternity is rarely disputed (as even midwives
may validate a child’s exit from his mother’s body before a judge), a father’s relationship
to his son or daughter remains tenuous. Telemachus in the Odyssey illustrates this point
quite poignantly when he says, “My mother says that I am his. But I don’t know. Does
anyone really know his father?”. 2Clearly, in this example, the mother’s word is
dismissed as less than trustworthy and that leaves no surefire way to prove paternal
lineage.
Before the onset of blood tests, DNA testing, and close record keeping,
resemblance was most frequently utilized as the means through which paternity was
secured. However, the determination of resemblance is slippery business. Just as beauty
is in the eye of the beholder, so too is paternal resemblance. After all, on what basis does
a child look like his father? By what features might he be compared? What happens when
a child looks nothing like his father, or, more disturbingly, exactly like the neighbor?
And, of course, who sets the criteria and makes the final evaluation of who belongs to
whom? The answers to these questions are highly dependent upon an ever-shifting set of
criteria and authoritative voice.
This paper explores the rich rhetorical strategies a cross section of medieval Muslim
scholars and physicians adopt to establish paternity through the generation and determination of
1
David Andrew Schultz, Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009),
390.
2
The Odyssey, trans. by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Classics, 1997): I.215-20.
like features between fathers and children. An exploration into the ways in which these medieval
voices reinforce, but also, when necessary, deconstruct, paternal resemblance reveals a profound
desire to mask the inherent fragility of male control over unbridled female sexuality and
deadbeat dads, to question the moral behaviors and intentions of the mother (and, to some extent,
the father) when the reproductive process strays from normative expectations, and to assert the
centrality of the patriarchal family over rival permutations in medieval Muslim society.
The Role of Female Desire in Assuaging Paternal Anxieties
Concerns about the tenuous nature of paternity due to a lack of congruity between
children and their fathers are rooted in a common trope that appears in Greek, Roman, Christian,
Jewish, and Muslim literatures.3 The trope in question provides a face-saving way for fathers to
accept offspring who look nothing like them. As a result, women are protected from accusations
of adultery and children are given a legitimate identity. The basic structure of the tale, which
subsequently fans out in a variety of forms, extends as far back as the fifth century BCE, when
Empedocles (d. 430 BCE), a pre-Socratic poet, is quoted as asking, “How do offspring come to
resemble others rather than their parents?” Empedocles answered this question by suggesting that
fetuses are shaped by the imagination of the woman around the time of conception. He mused
that often women fall in love with statues of men or with images right before the sexual act, and
3
Aristotle, Historia animalium, trans. by A. L. Peck, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1965-): 7.6.586(a); Generation of Animals, trans. by A. L. Peck 1.18.722; Plutarch,
Moralia, trans. by Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928): 563a. In the Christian
context, see Jerome, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions Genesis, Oxford Early Christian Studies, trans. C.T.R.
Hayward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 67. In this example, Quintilian exonerates a white woman
who gave birth to a black child by referring to the same theory of maternal impressions. For Jewish references, see
discussion of Maimonides, below.
produce offspring that resemble those objects or visions.4 These statements assume the desirous
female eye fastens upon an image, and then that image works its way down through her body
until it is stamped upon the embryo. In Empedocles’s example, the child, at least in theory,
would have resembled the father had not the wife’s desire become the more powerful force in
shaping the form and features of the child produced.
Soranus (d. 138 CE), a Greek physician from Ephesus who practiced medicine in
Alexandria and Rome during the first and second centuries CE, drew upon the same narrative
structure as Empedocles—with slight shifts in emphasis—to argue how misshapen men may
ensure they engender perfected children by compelling their wives to look at beautiful statues
during intercourse.5 In this version, men—at least in theory—consciously choose not to resemble
their children because they wish to engender more perfected progeny. In sharp contrast with
Empedocles, Soranus maintained men will determine whom or what their offspring ultimately
resemble by insuring the woman’s wandering eye focuses solely on those images they alone
select and approve. Here, the object the wife gazes upon still affects the form of the child;
however, the husband ultimately determines what form may grace her vision, and thus how the
child will appear.
Many medieval Jewish versions take a similar tack by giving even more authority and
power to the father to assert control over a woman’s unbridled desire and wandering eye to
4
Empedocles, cited by Aetius in Doxographi Graeci 5.12.2., ed. Herman Diels (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965),
432, as noted by Wendy Doniger and Gregory Spinner, “Misconceptions: Female Imagination and Male Fantasies in
Parental Imprinting, Daedalus 127, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 97–129, 100. See also Marie Hélène Huet, Monstrous
Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 4, for the same Empedocles reference. Such
accounts of premodern genetic engineering also appear in Genesis 30:37–43 in a discussion of animals, which
suggests such theories were most likely derived from practices of animal husbandry (Doniger and Spinner,
“Misconceptions,” 99; see also Jan Bondeson, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1997), 145.
5
Soranus’ Gynaecology, trans. Oswei Temkin (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 37–38.
ensure paternal resemblance. For example, in the medical writings of Jewish scholar Moses
Maimonides (d. 1204 CE), the famous twelfth-century rabbi, physician, and philosopher who
was born in Córdoba, Spain, and flourished in Morocco and Egypt, the husband contracts a
painter to create a stunning image of a boy. The husband places the portrait in front of his wife
during foreplay, and then instructs her to gaze upon it without blinking or moving her eyes to the
left or right. Lo and behold, she conceives a handsome son who resembles the boy in the painting
rather than the husband.6 Here, a father’s success in producing such a perfected child who,
incidentally, looks nothing like him, ironically proves his ultimate authority over his wife and the
family as a whole rather than exposes to ridicule his inability to master, tame, and channel her
lustful desires, which may threaten the integrity of the patriarchal family.
Other Jewish examples use this same narrative trope more explicitly to exonerate women
from accusations of adultery. A midrashic version relays how the king of Arabia exclaims, “I am
black and my wife is black, yet she gave birth to a white son. Shall I kill her for having played
the harlot?” To this Rabbi Akiba retorted: “Are the statues in your house black or white?” The
king answered, “white.” Then Rabbi Akiba assured him by saying, “When you had intercourse
with her, she fixed her eyes upon the white figures and bore a child like them.”7 Clearly, the poor
man is shown to be totally ineffectual when it comes to controlling his wife’s sexual desires.
Spinner and Doniger, “Misconceptions,” 105. Quotation from Moses Maimonides, The Medical Aphorisms of
Moses Maimonides, trans. Fred Rosner (Haifa: Maimonides Research Institute, 1989), 388, citing De Theriaco ad
Pisonem VI.
7
Midrash Rabbah, Numbers IX, 34, trans. Judah J. Slotki (London: Soncino Press, 1983). For the same story as it
appears in the Muslim context, see Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, vol. 1 (Qum:
Manshūrāt al-Raḍī, 1985), 60. Other Jewish examples abound. In approximately the fifth or sixth century CE, the
Jewish exegetical Genesis Rabbah calls upon this same narrative to exonerate a woman from accusations of
adultery, but replaces the statue with a handsome man (Julius Preuss, Biblisch-Talmudische Medezin [1911],
translated as Biblical and Talmudic Medicine by Fred Rosner [Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1993], 392, quoting
Genesis Rabbah 26:7). For an exhaustive study of these narratives as they appear in a wide variety of traditions, see
Wendy Doniger, “The Symbolism of Black and White Babies in the Myth of Parental Impression,” Social Research
70, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 1–44.
6
Despite this rather obvious defect, however, he can still be assured that the white-skinned child is
his.8
Each of these versions of the basic narrative, extending over a period of a millennium,
provides alternative sets of venues for asserting paternity when a child emerges from his
mother’s womb not as a “chip off the ole block” but rather taking after someone other than the
presumed father.9 In these examples, obvious incongruities between father and child, and the
almost tortured authoritative efforts to dismiss them, reveal hidden doubts about the extent of
male control over the reproductive process, a lack of knowledge about genetics and reproduction,
and perpetual anxieties about female sexuality, desire, and morality that may be revealed through
the features of child. In each of these cases, male elites mask doubts, anxieties, and uncertainties
about children who bear no resemblance to them with bald assertions of paternal authority and
control over the household despite nagging evidence to the contrary.
8
Margrit Shildrick, Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self (New York: Sage, 2002), notes
that as late as the sixteenth century, Ambroise Paré, a well-known French physician, makes a similar point in a tale
he claims to have taken from Hippocrates, the Greek physician who flourished in the fifth to fourth century BCE. A
child, Paré notes, that is “black as a Moor,” is born to a white-skinned royal couple. Not surprisingly, as these stories
go, the mother of the child is accused of adultery. Hippocrates, however, saves her by pointing out the imaginative
effect of the portrait of a Moor that was hung over her bed. The mother must have gazed upon it lovingly but
clandestinely while coupling with her husband (34). Shildrick also mentions a child born resembling Saint Pious
after his mother had gazed too closely on a portrait of the saint. She suggests the ability to impress such imagery
upon a fetus does not suggest female power; rather the process underscores the notion that women are irrational and
unable to maintain a proper distance between subject and object. In other words, they are not fully agents of their
own will (36).
9
R. J. Lee, for example, discusses “maternal impressions” in the context of other medical ailments. He attributes
maternal impressioning to “disturbances of the minds of women which occur at a period when they are naturally
more susceptible than at other times to the influence of mental trouble, or to causes which excite, depress, or in any
other manner produce serious impressions on their nervous systems” (“Maternal Impressions,” British Medical
Journal [February 6, 1875], 167). Lee goes on to note several examples of perceived maternal impressions upon the
body of the child. For instance, he relays tales of “a child having a mark on his face resembling a spider, or that of
one born with one leg, in consequence of the fright sustained by the mother from the sight of a spider or a cripple”
(167). For further examples, see Cristina Mazzoni, Maternal Impressions: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Literature
and Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).
Assuaging Paternal Anxieties through Appeals to Heredity
Medieval Muslim scholars also provided their own variants of the basic narrative, which,
unlike the Greek, Roman, and Jewish examples noted above, privilege the role heredity plays in
determining the features of the child. As in the examples of the mother’s desirous gaze,
arguments from heredity also attempt to assuage the uncertainties that plague fathers whose
children look nothing like them by limiting the vagaries of maternal impressions. For example,
ninth-century Persian physician ‘Alī ibn Sahl Rabbān al-Ṭabarī (d. 870 CE) in his Firdaws alḥikma (Paradise of Wisdom), related a story of a woman who bore a girl from an Ethiopian
man.10 When his daughter reached puberty, she was married to a white man and she bore him a
black child. Rather than referring to a mother’s wayward gaze upon an image, Rabbān al-Ṭabarī
reported the child has taken on the color of the grandfather. Here, even though the child looks
nothing like the father, he still falls safely under the patriarchal, familial umbrella due to
ancestral reference. In this example, there is no need for the husband to question the behaviors or
to control the desirous gaze of his wife--the dissonance is simply attributed to fluctuations in
inherited features.
The ninth-century Persian collector of ḥadith, Abū `Abdallāh Muḥammad Yazīd alQazwīnī ibn Māja (d. 887 or 889 CE), in his Sunan, also related information similar to Rabbi
Akiba’s midrashic advice to a white woman who gave birth to a black child. In this example, the
prophet Muḥammad explains this rather unusual phenomenon through appeals to heredity.11 The
fourteenth-century Egyptian scholar Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Damīrī (d. 1405 CE), in his Ḥayāt
al-ḥayawān al-kubrā (Great Book of Animals), likewise recorded a number of tales where white
10
11
Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma fī al-ṭibb (Beirut: s.n., 1970), 35.
Kitāb al-sunan (Cairo: Dār iḥyā al-kutub al-`arabīya, 1953), no. 2003.
women give birth to black sons, even though their husbands are also white.12 Like Rabbān alṬabarī, Damīrī surmised that the sons must take after a distant grandfather. This grandfather does
not appear proximate and is never named, but rather resides more abstractly in the recesses of
communal memory. To further emphasize this point about inherited traits, Damīrī related how a
wife gives birth to a son who is both black and white. Astoundingly, he is white just from his
head to his belly button, and black down the rest of the body. A Turk cries out, “Hey, my own
grandfather looked exactly like that!”13
In these medieval Muslim examples, there is no mention whatsoever of a woman’s lustful
gaze upon statues, portraits, or other men to explain such reproductive anomalies, as imagination
would too closely border on idolatry. In addition, since Islamic law prohibits the display of
statues or pictures in the home, no such references to any type of image is given as they would
cast a dark shadow over the pious integrity of the entire household. Based on the fact that their
children look nothing like their lawful husbands the women in these examples are simply
accused of having committed adultery without mention of their inner desires latching onto an
external image. Fortunately, at least for these women, the rational voice of science in the form of
inherited traits exonerates them, and the child is awarded a paternal identity.
What is unique to the Muslim versions is a fairly developed understanding of heredity,
which refers to the argument that traits from distant relatives may skip generations and then
suddenly appear in subsequent offspring. A child, therefore, may look nothing like her dad but
rather her distant Uncle Harry, an observation that may never be proven one way or another
Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 24–28. See also al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws, 35, who relates the story of a woman
who bore a girl from an Ethiopian man, and when this daughter reached puberty she was married to a white man and
she bore a black child, for the child took on the color of the grandfather.
13
Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 50.
12
since Uncle Harry—quite conveniently, perhaps—has long been dead. And certainly, we find no
photographs on the mantle that can be used to resolve the issue one way or another. Here,
arguments from heredity, like those of the gaze, are the community’s attempt to assuage a
father’s suspicions that he might not have sired the child that exits his wife’s womb.
The desire to avoid frequent and overt accusations of adultery and to protect the integrity
of the child as well as the authority of the father, here secured through arguments from heredity,
underscore a number of Qur’anic passages that also serve to protect the private sexual affairs of
both men and women, and to promote equal gender responsibility for the child. For example,
while the Qur’an condemns both adultery and fornication and calls for one hundred lashings as
punishment for sex outside the confines of marriage, it stipulates that four witnesses must be
supplied to prove them (Sūra 4:15–16). To further shore up the sexual rights of men and women
against public gossip and wrongful accusation, Muslim jurists have concluded likewise that the
four witnesses must be upstanding individuals, that they must have viewed the precise moment
of penile penetration, and that they must have captured that image not by design but by chance. 14
Falsely accusing a woman of sexual misconduct also carries with it a harsh penalty,
which most likely curbed a man’s impulse to deny paternity out of a jealous rage or fear of
economic hardship.15 The protective arguments from heredity, which suggest an offspring does
not have to look like its biological father or even its parents, therefore reflect the Qur’anic
position that men should always err on the side of accepting paternal responsibilities even when
they may have doubts or suspicions about their wives’ fidelity. In other words, the Qur’an
14
Shahid M. Shahidullah, Comparative Criminal Justice Systems: Global and Local Perspectives (Burlington, MA:
Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2014), 378.
15
Sūra 24:5 notes that those who accuse women without providing four witnesses will be flogged eighty times.
emphasizes that the integrity of the family unit should be preserved if at all possible and that the
child should be granted firm paternal identity, care, and protection except under the most
egregious of circumstances. In other words, denying the responsibility of having fathered a child
should be the exception not the rule.
The Qur’an, however, still provides an outlet for those who truly believe they are not the
fathers of their wives’ children, without laying the blame on women. This practice—referred to
as li`ān—allows for marriages to be dissolved quickly and quietly within the confines of the
home, and without legal consequence for either the accused or the accuser.16 According to Sūra
24:6–9, if a man is completely convinced his wife has been impregnated by another man, he can
testify to this fact before God four times. On the fifth statement, he calls the curse of God upon
himself if he is a liar. That said, however, the wife has an equal opportunity to protect her own
virtue and honor by testifying four times that her husband is falsely accusing her. She, too, calls
upon the wrath of God on the fifth claim that if what she utters is not true. After both parties
have borne witness, they are separated forever without punishment or culpability.
Interestingly, this practice would not only provide a convenient way for fathers to shirk
paternal ties and responsibilities without consequences but also for mothers who, for a variety of
reasons, may have wished to defeat their husbands’ presumption of paternity, that is, that the
child of the marriage is legally presumed to be the child of the husband.17 Whatever the case, at
least ideally, in situations where the husband is convinced of his wife’s infidelity but cannot
prove it without a doubt, the Qur’an provides both spouses a fair and equal opportunity to
When li`ān is utilized, all criminal consequences for adultery or for accusing someone of adultery are
circumvented. A husband using the oath cannot be charged with false accusations of adultery, and the wife cannot
be charged with adultery. For more on this discussion, see E. Ann Black, Hossein Esmaeili, and Iadirsyah Hosen,
Modern Perspectives on Islamic Law (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013), 138.
17
Ibid.
16
maintain their virtue and status in the public eye; after all, only God knows the truth of who is
right and who is wrong.
However, given the acceptance that inherited traits are inherently volatile, the seemingly
high tolerance for dissonance among offspring, and the many Qur’anic passages that promote the
welfare of the child and the rights of all parties involved to claim or deny parental heritage, it is
perhaps surprising that an abundance of medieval Muslim sources insisted how paternal
resemblance should still serve as the primary criterion used to determine the rightful heritage of
the child. However, as the examples below show, the issue of who belongs to whom becomes
more complicated when no such direct resemblance exists between the child and the husband of
the mother. In these cases, dissonance is either explained through reproductive deviations that
may be readily supported through scientific fact or through a woman’s adulterous or other
wayward sexual acts and desires. Strikingly, whether appeals are made to scientific fact or acts
of adultery seem to depend solely on a woman’s perceived moral character. Good women bear
different-looking children who take after the distant and long-dead Uncle Harry. Bad women are
more likely to deliver children in the exact likeness of the neighbor down the street, or in the
exact likeness of a particular iniquity. Clearly, the “objective” criteria used to establish paternal
resemblance are fashioned by more nebulous, subjective assumptions about male and female
anatomies, a woman’s sexual indiscretions, and the strength of a man’s masculinity and ability to
control his household.
Resemblance Negotiated through Descriptions of Reproductive Processes
The penchant to accept volatile inherited traits is rooted in the very anatomical paradigms
many Muslim scholars privileged to explain how reproduction takes place. In general, most
medieval Muslim medical scholars embrace the Hippocratic two-seed theory, which argued that
semen comes from all parts of the body of each parent and goes to all parts of the body of the
child. In other words, both male and female partners contribute similar reproductive material to
the formation of the fetus. According to Hippocrates, semen is formed as a result of sexual
excitation, when the heat sparked by lust causes all the bodily fluids and organs of the body to
release particles from their essence that may duplicate their own likeness in the child. To account
for why the child resembles one parent or another or both, Hippocrates stated, “the child will
resemble in the majority of its characteristics that parent who has contributed a greater quantity
of sperm to the resemblance, and from a greater number of body parts.”18 Either the male or the
female may contribute greater quantities of sperm to the process. Practically speaking, the more
female sperm that is derived from the particles of a woman’s nose, for example, as opposed to
the male sperm that is drawn from the father’s, will give the offspring its mother’s nose.
However, the child’s eyes may still look like her father’s if the male sperm dominates in that
regard.
Hippocratic reproductive theories contrast sharply with those held by Aristotle, who
supported the view that males alone provide the fetal “form” and “principle of movement” while
females supply only the matter that contributes to the body of the fetus. However, in terms of
explaining resemblance, there is not much difference between the Hippocratic and Aristotelian
models. For Aristotle, when the form completely mastered the matter, the child would be male
18
Hippocrates, The Seed, trans. I. M. Lonie, in Hippocratic Writings, ed. G. E. R. Lloyd (New York: Penguin,
1978), 322. For a summary of both the Hippocratic and Aristotelian arguments, see B. F. Musallam, Sex and Society
in Islam: Birth Control before the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 43–46.
and look like his father. Males who look like their mothers, females who look like their fathers,
and females who look like their mothers, distant ancestors, or appear as monstrosities (which can
be defined as anything that looks like something other than its parents), all reflect the relative
failure of the male form to master stubborn and defiant female matter.19 Practically speaking, if
the child does have its mother’s nose, the male sperm must have failed to overcome the mother’s
matter in that particular area. What differed in the Aristotelian model was the overriding belief
that the child should have its father’s nose, at least in an ideal world.
The Hippocratic paradigm, as opposed to the Aristotelian model, was most likely more
popular among medieval Muslim scholars because it reflects Qur’anic statements on
reproduction, which emphasize the role of both male and female in the generation of life. For
example, Sūra 92:3 asserts the “male and the female” (al-dhakara wa al-unthā) together serve as
signs of God’s creative power. In similar fashion, Sūra 42:11 notes how God “has made pairs
(azwājan) for you among yourselves, and of the cattle pairs (azwājan), multiplying you thereby.”
In addition, Sūra 86:6–7 refers to God creating the human being (al-insān) from a sperm drop
(mā’in dāfiqin) going out from between the backbone (al-ṣulbi) and the ribs (al-tarā’ibi). Sūra
76:2 refers to the role of mingled sperm (nuṭfatin amshājin) in the creation of life, an idea that
again underscores both the belief that semen generated from both male and female sources mixes
together in the womb to reproduce life. The Qur’an, however, is silent on the issue of how
children may or may not come to resemble their parents; its ultimate position is that God creates
whatever he pleases in the womb, which may either conform to, or go against human desire,
action, or intent. If a child looks nothing like its parents, it is because God caused it to be.
19
Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam, 45.
Following Qur’anic and Hippocratic thought when it comes to reproductive theories, the
majority of medieval Muslim traditionalists asserted males and females both emit seeds that
carry traits inherited by offspring. For example, in the Muwaṭṭa’ of eighth-century Medinan
scholar Mālik ibn Anas (d. 795 CE), Umm Sulaym, one of the earliest female converts to Islam,
asked the prophet Muḥammad if a woman should take a bath after an erotic dream. `Ā’isha, the
prophet’s youngest wife, said to her, “Silly, does a woman also have an emission?” However, the
prophet retorted, “May your right hand be dust-laden! From where, then, comes the similarity of
features?”20
As late as the fifteenth-century CE, Egyptian scholar Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505 CE)
also emphasized the necessity for male and female contributions to the reproductive process. In
his Ṭibb al-nabawī (Medicine of the Prophet), Suyūṭī argued resemblance will depend on the
quality of the sperm emitted. He notes how “Ibn `Abbās related the hadith that the fluid of a man
is white and thick, and that the fluid of a woman is thin and yellow. The family resemblance of a
child depends on whichever of these two fluids is more subtle or more fine.”21 In these
traditional statements that defy Aristotelian views about the limited reproductive role of women
and confirm the Qur’anic position, both seeds, the male’s and the female’s, carry the traits that
shape a child’s features in often random ways.
Despite such persistent (and revelatory) views about the equal role of men and women in
the reproductive process, and the randomness of inherited traits, many Muslim scholars and
physicians still posit the male has a more naturally dominant role in determining inherited traits
Muwaṭṭa’ (Beirut: Dār al-gharb al-islāmī), “Kitāb al-ṭahara,” 2.21.86.
Ṭibb al-nabawī, translated as As-Suyuti’s Medicine of the Prophet, ed. Ahmad Thomson (London: Ta-Ha, 1994),
185.
20
21
than does the female. Simply put, children should look like their fathers on some fundamental
level, despite the fact that God may or may not cause such a resemblance to be. For example,
Abū Zayd Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-`Ibādī (d. 872 CE), an Assyrian Nestorian Christian who was the
personal physician of the ‘Abbasid caliph Mutawakkil in the ninth-century CE, and was, most
likely, very much influenced by Aristotle, declared what is in the womb must fully reach the
shape and form of the father in order to be called offspring.22 Like Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, many
Muslim scholars similarly rejected Hippocrates’s two-seed theory to suggest that males alone
produce the life-form of the child. Mālik ibn Anas (d. 795 CE), for example, relates how
`Abdallāh ibn `Umar disapproved of castration because “the completeness of the created form is
in the testicles.”23 These examples illustrate, perhaps, the continued competition between the
Aristotelian privilege of male dominance during the reproductive process, and the more
egalitarian view espoused by both the Qur’an and the Hippocratics that suggests males and
females contribute equally to the production of life.
The idea that the father alone imparts hereditary traits, or that his traits necessarily
dominate the mother’s, is likewise conferred through depictions of animal husbandry practices.
For example, tenth-century Baghdadi intellectual Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 1023 CE), in the
zoological section of his Kitāb al-imtā` wa al-mu’ānsa (Book of Enjoyment and Conviviality),
noted that if the veins under the tongue of a male ram are white, the ewes will give birth to white
lambs; if the veins are black, the females will drop black lambs.24 Here, the male’s traits are
always dominant; it is his characteristics that determine the features of the offspring.
L. S. Filius, ed., The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle: The Arabic Version of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and the
Hebrew Version of Moses ibn Tibbon (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 275.
23
Muwaṭṭa’, 51.1.4.
24
Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, Kitāb al-imtā` wa al-mu’ānsa, translated by L. Kopf as The Zoological Chapter of the
Kitāb al-imtā` wa al-mu’ānsa al-Tawḥīdī (10th Century), Osiris 12 (1956): 408–9.
22
Analogously to the animal world, while both men and women may produce the sperm that
mingles together to generate life, it is still the father’s that naturally reigns over the mother’s to
dictate the child’s appearance.
In order to explain how children come to look like their fathers, most medieval Muslim
physicians, like their ancient Greek counterparts,25 came to favor a biological model based on the
cultural practice of competition, which envisions a stronger, more potent sperm emerging to
assert control over a thinner, weaker sperm. For example, Persian physician Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d.
925 CE), in his tenth-century Kitāb al-dā’ al-khafī (Book on the Hidden Illness), proposed that
within the confines of the womb, one of the two sperms emitted by either the male or the female
eventually comes to dominate (muḥīl) the other (mustaḥīl), and then transform it according to its
own inherent characteristics.26 The idea that one sperm must come to dominate the other is
reinforced through medieval discussions of reproductive anomalies. For example, if one sperm
fails to overcome the other, scholars proposed a hermaphrodite (khunthā) results, which for them
is a form that deviates from the norm.27
In most cases, medieval doctors argued the more powerful sperm will depend on its
superior quantity and/or quality.28 Muslim physicians projected a variety of scripts to account for
25
Aristotle favored a model of competition between opposing influences, a view that is still, though greatly
modified, predominant today (A. H. Sturtevant, A History of Genetics [Woodbury, NY: Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory Press, 2001], 80). See also Leslie Dean-Jones, who notes how Aristotle assumed the two “seeds” from
the man and woman would mix in various combinations to produce either males or females. For example, two
strong seeds would generate a male, and two weak seeds would generate a female (Women’s Bodies in Classical
Greek Science [London: Oxford University Press, 1996], 167).
26
Franz Rosenthal, “Al-Rāzī on the Hidden Illness,” in Science and Medicine in Islam (London: Variorum: 1990),
52.
27
See below.
28
Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī, Jāmi` al-ṣaḥīḥ (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1995), “Kitāb al-ḥayd,” no. 608. Here
“Umm Sulaym asks about a woman who sees in a dream what a man sees. The prophet says to her, ‘In case a
woman sees that, she must take a bath.’ Umm Sulaym said, ‘I was bashful on account of that, does it happen?’ Upon
this the prophet said, ‘Yes, otherwise how can a child resemble her? Man’s sperm is thick and white and the
why one seed might be “superior” over another. One suggestion is that the child takes after the
first parent to reach orgasm.29 Here, the force of the orgasmic experience empowers and
strengthens the first sperm out of the gate, allowing it to dominate the weaker.30 In theory, the
male or the female could have more abundant or better quality sperm, and therefore the child
could resemble the mother or the father. However, encoded in these discussions lurks an
underlying Aristotelian belief that in an ideal world, male sperm should naturally dominate the
female sperm, essentially because in its optimal form, it is better, hotter, stronger, thicker, and
quicker. In an ideal world, then, children would always resemble their fathers.
However, medieval physicians understood that the world humans live in is far from ideal:
children exit the womb looking nothing like fathers, mothers, or even distant relatives.
Therefore, elite male scholars spend much time explaining why a man’s sperm deviates from its
optimal form, and how he may rectify the problem. For example, the tenth-century physician
from Spain, `Arīb ibn Sa`d (d. 980 CE), in his Kitāb khalq al-janīn (Creation of the Embryo),
emphasized the importance of foreplay before sex, as passion is key to abundant sperm
production. `Arīb ibn Sa`d explained—quite conveniently perhaps—that the more pleasure a
woman’s is thin and yellow, so resemblance comes from the one’s whose sperm dominates.’" Suyūṭī also notes the
differences in sperm color and consistency: “Ibn `Abbās related the ḥadīth that the fluid of a man is white and thick,
and that the fluid of a woman is thin and yellow. The family resemblance of a child depends on whichever of these
two fluids is more subtle or more fine” (Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī [London: Ta-ha, 1994], 185).
29
`Arīb ibn Sa`d, Kitāb khalq al-janīn wa-tadbīr al-ḥabālā wa `l-mawlūdīn (al-Jazā’ir: Maktabat farrāris, 1956), 9.
See also Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīya, Al-Tibyān fī aqsām al-qur’ān (Beirut: Mu’assasat alrisāla, 1994): “If it is the man who overcomes the woman, his water will come before hers and the resemblance will
be to him. If she is dominant, the resemblance will be to her” (294). Here, sperm follows the same cultural practices
of human sexual intercourse, that is, one party must be dominant, and the other more passive and subordinate, or, the
receiver. Abū `Abdallāh Muḥammad ibn Ismā`īl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Bukhārī makes the same observation in Jāmi` alṣaḥīḥ (Al-Riyāḍ: Bayt al-afkār al-dawlīya li al-nashr, 1998): “As for the resemblance of the child to its parents, if a
man has sexual intercourse with his wife and gets discharge first, the child will resemble the father, and if the
woman discharges first, the child will resemble her” (“Kitāb al-anbiyā’,” no. 546; and “Kitāb al-anṣār,” no. 275).
30
Suyūṭī states that a man’s fluid is hot and strong, thick and white, and a woman’s fluid is thinner, weaker, and
yellow. Whether the child resembles one parent rather than the other depends on how much fluid is emitted, which
fluid exceeds the other fluid, and whose sexual appetite is stronger (Ṭibb, 185). Here, Suyūṭī links sexual desire with
the production of greater quantities of sperm.
man experiences, the more sperm will empty out of him, which, of course, increases his chances
of producing offspring that, in theory, would look more like him.31
In order to rectify the problem of thin, weak, or minuscule amounts of sperm, a man is
instructed to shower his wife with affectionate words, fondle her hand, lick her body, gaze upon
her, and refrain from any grievance he might have against her.32 He should even pursue peak
environmental conditions by making sure there is no southerly wind blowing during his act of
coitus, as it produces lazy souls, or it generates delicate, soft, unformed seed that lacks enough
maturity to mate.33 Men are encouraged to exercise caution in choosing a suitable partner for
sexual relations. They are taught never to have intercourse with a woman who has refrained from
sexual relations for a long period of time, nor with a sick woman, as her condition might impact
his ability to produce a sound child.34
In general, scholars asserted healthy men generate healthy seed; old, sick, lazy, or
diseased men put forth deficient or weak seed.35 Even one’s mood can affect the quality and
quantity of sperm produced. `Arīb ibn Sa`d, referring to Hippocrates, professed that men do not
ejaculate sperm in one state every time; rather, sperm changes with the conditions of both the
soul and the body. A happy soul strengthens the body, and a stronger body gives rise to more
robust sperm.36 Likewise, sad, sick souls only yield weak, thin sperm that will most likely be
`Arīb ibn Sa`d, Kitāb khalq, 10.
Abū Ja`far Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Khālid ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir wa qūt al-ḥāṣir, Book 6, trans. Gerrit
Bos (New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 249.
33
Ibid., 25. `Arīb ibn Sa`d also adds that a north wind prevents the heat from spreading and allows for the
completion of the maturity of the sperm. Herdsmen employ this knowledge as they stimulate their own flocks to
bear sheep (ibid., 25).
34
Suyūṭī, Ṭibb, 19.
35
Ibid., 10, 11, 19, and see also 186.
36
`Arīb ibn Sa`d claims that youths tend to bear more males, because of their strength, happiness of soul, and
gladness (Kitāb khalq, 25).
31
32
dominated by the mother’s.37 If men work to become happier, healthier sperm producers, they
will more likely than not replicate offspring in their own image. The potential is there; they just
need to realize it.
Medieval Muslim scholars asserted further how the most powerful of all sperm will even
impress the sex of the father upon the child, while weaker sperm spawns females that would take
after the mother. In this scheme, females who look like their mothers would be the product of
“sad,” old, or diseased male sperm, since it would inevitably be dominated by the female’s.38 In
order to determine what kind of child they would prefer their wives to bear, men can discipline
their minds and bodies in particular ways to produce the desired results. For example, `Arīb ibn
Sa`d, via Galen, argued that men can strengthen their bodies and ease their minds if they want to
fortify their sperm to replicate their own image, and weaken themselves (“by the strength of
God,” presumably because that act would defy their inherent, masculine natures) to produce
females that may or may not resemble them.39 In contrast to the Qur’an’s emphasis on equal
partnering in the generation of offspring, and its assertions that God creates in the womb what he
wills, medieval scholars assumed that men alone—with little help from women or even God—
become the primary manufacturers of both fetal sex formation and resemblance within the
womb.
In these examples, men can work on adjusting their diets, habits, or dispositions to ensure
their sperm will overpower their wives’. Tenth-century Muslim physician Abū Ja`far ibn Abī
Khālid Ibn al-Jazzār al-Qayrawānī (d. 979 CE), for example, identified a number of foods men
37
Ibid.
`Arīb ibn Sa`d notes how the elderly tend to produce females (Kitāb khalq, 25).
39
Ibid., 24. `Arīb ibn Sa`d suggests there may be some instances where men may want girls, in particular if they
have too many boys already. He also notes that good health before coitus leads to male offspring (ibid., 26).
38
can consume that are known for their abilities to yield larger, healthier quantities of sperm:
chickpeas, beans mixed with something that adds warmth, moist meat, egg yolks, pine nuts, and
peppercorns.40 The Ṭibb al-a’imma, a collection of medical hadith attributed to the Shī`ite
imams, recommended hot, tender endive, for it increases semen, improves the color, and
multiplies the number of males one can produce.41 The Shī`ite imams also proposed a meal of
parched barley (sawīq) for the begetting of strong, healthy children.42 Some scholars also
suggested men who excessively masturbate easily lose their erections when it comes time for
intercourse, or the semen they will emit when needed to reproduce will be less than potent.43 The
key here, of course, is for them to stop pleasuring themselves or at least aim for less frequency if
they wish for sperm that is thick, quick, abundant, and can easily impose itself upon the
women’s.
Medieval physicians also suggested men may fail to produce children that resemble them
because a mother’s womb may be corrupt and distort the father’s sperm. Ninth-century scholar
Abū `Uthmān `Amr ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868 CE), for example, noted that while most children
are born in perfected form,44 physical deformities may be caused by ailments in the womb or in
the tissues from which the fetus is composed, “just as an imperfection in the wool or in a tool
Zad al-musāfir wa qūt al-ḥāṣir , 243.
`Abdallāh ibn Busṭām al-Nīsābūrī, Islamic Medical Wisdom: The ṭibb al-a’imma, trans. Batool Ispahamy
(London: The Muhammadi Trust, 1991), 177.
42
Ibid, 111. This tradition is specifically attributed to Ja`far al-Sādiq.
43
Ibid., 15.
44
Abū `Uthmān `Amr ibn Baṛ al-Jāḥiẓ, "Chance or Creation”? God’s Design in the Universe, translated by M. A.
S. Abdel Haleem (Reading, Berkshire: Garnet Publishing Ltd, 1995), 113. Jāḥiẓ also advises, “Consider how a
child’s body grows in all its members while remaining constant in essence, form, and shape. Even more amazing is
the way it develops in the womb, where no eye can see and not hand can reach, yet the baby comes out well shaped
and complete with all the components it needs for its welfare: stomach, limbs and body fluids in addition to its truly
wisely designed and very finely structured bones, flesh, marrow, muscles, veins and cartilage” (Chance or Creation,
78).
40
41
prevents the craftsman from making something correctly, as he intends.”45 Often, medieval
physicians believed little can be done to correct the innate weaknesses of the womb, and are
satisfied simply to identify and catalog its flaws. `Arīb ibn Sa`d, for example, noted women most
capable of conceiving must be of normal weight and size; heavy woman will have a hard time
reproducing, as fat cuts off the mouth of the womb, which prevents male seed from entering.46
Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, citing Hippocrates, proposed very cold women do not get pregnant because
coldness solidifies the seed and the very hot also do not get pregnant because heat burns the seed.
Likewise very dry and wet women fail to reproduce because their dryness shrivels the seed and
their wetness causes it to slide out.47 Here, no diets or special recipes can counter such
detrimental bodily imbalances that freeze, burn, dry, or drown healthy male seed. In each case,
male scholars depict the female body as a hostile barrier to persistent, well-intentioned, and
optimal male efforts to replicate themselves in their own likeness.
These examples suggest that the most ardent, healthy, happy, and manly lovers who are
skilled at coitus will be more likely capable of producing robust seed that may completely
dominate the mother’s to reproduce male offspring that take after her husband. This, of course,
is in an ideal world. In the real world, there is no indictment against the father if his child looks
nothing like him because bodies often defy even the best of intentions, and God will create in the
womb what he desires. Embedded within these medical discussions is a recognition that the
45
Ibid.
`Arīb ibn Sa`d, noting Hippocrates (Kitāb khalq, 19). See also Hippocrates, Aphorisms, in Hippocratic Writings,
trans. by J Chadwick (New York: Penguin, 1978), 5.46. For ancient Greek medical depictions of what type of
woman is more likely to conceive, see Helen King, Hippocrates’ Women: Reading the Female Body in Ancient
Greece (New York: Routledge, 1998), who quotes Hippocrates’s Prorrhetic: “This is how you can tell which
women are more likely, and which are less likely to conceive. First their appearance. Small women are more likely
to conceive than large, thin more likely than fat, white than red, black than livid, those with prominent veins. You
should enquire about her menstrual periods, if they appear every month and if they are sufficiently heavy, a good
color and same amount on some days every month. Wombs should be healthy, dry and soft” (141).
47
al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws, 36. See also `Arīb ibn Sa`d, Kitāb khalq, 20; and Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 5.62.
46
vagaries of a man’s own thoughts, health, and well-being, or his choice in partner, will generate,
more likely than not, a child with a mixed assortment of qualities, characteristics, dispositions,
and features.
From these discussions, we can ascertain that scholars and physicians entertained a high
tolerance for variation in a child’s features. Such incongruities are easily rooted in the
capriciousness of male health, thought, and behavior, or in a woman’s inherent biological
weakness. However, in order to secure both the father’s and community’s acceptance of the
child’s paternity in the face of such glaring incongruities, a woman’s moral behavior can only be
stellar and beyond disrepute.
Bad Women and Their Maternal Impressions
When a woman’s moral behavior is suspect, scholars tended to suggest dissonance is not
due to her defective womb or a man’s lazy sperm; rather, her illicit desires and actions become
impressed upon the child’s external features so much so that the child will not resemble the
husband and may, in fact, indict the lover. Here, there is no tolerance for variation. As in the
examples of the gaze, which often exposes the woman’s hidden lusts, a child who is the product
of an immoral coupling or deviant sexual practice comes out of the womb resembling its parents’
basest iniquities. For example, Damīrī narrated the woeful tale of how a Jew fornicated with a
Christian woman, who then gave birth to an offspring with a human body and the face of an ox.48
The child in this case embodies the taboo of humans crossing faith boundaries during an act of
illicit sexual intercourse.
48
Damīrī, Ḥayawān al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 2:6. Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā.
Similarly, ninth-century Persian scholar Abū Muḥammad `Abdallāh ibn Muslim ibn
Qutayba (d. 885 CE), in his Kitāb `uyūn al-akhbār (Book of Choice Narratives), stated that the
child of a masculine female and effeminate man will be wicked and have a worse nature than
that of the mule.49 In this example, mothers whose copulation practices stray too far outside the
accepted taxonomic group produce offspring that reveal their transgressions. Similarly, in the
Tafsīr, attributed to Andalusian mystic Muḥyā al-Dīn ibn `Arabī (d. 1240 CE), we find that
parents who have consumed unlawful foods may produce children with souls that are dark,
filthy, and evil. Ibn `Arabi used a modified Hippocratic argument to speculate that the children’s
souls become corrupt because the sperm that generated them is formed out of unlawful
nourishment and nurtured by a tainted soul.50 Here again, the child’s natural composition reveals
the inherent iniquities of the parents.
In many instances, suspect conceptual circumstances impress themselves directly upon a
child’s features. For example, a child’s appearance inevitably points a finger at his biological
father, who may be someone different from his mother’s husband. In contrast with those children
with variegated traits born to upstanding parents, a bastard child will always look exactly like the
man who sired him, no matter what this man ate, drank, felt, or thought before intercourse, no
matter how infirm the woman’s womb.
Ibn Qutayba, for example, related a story where the second Muslim caliph `Umar ibn alKhattāb (d. 640 CE) must determine the paternity of a child whose mother had sex with two
different men. She was unclear about which of the men had fathered him. In order to resolve this
Abū Muḥammad `Abdallāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutayba, Kitāb `Uyūn al-akhbār (Cairo: al-Mu`assasa al-miṣrīya alāmma li al-ta’līf wa al-tarjama wa al-nashr, 1964), 65.
50
Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-`Arabī, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-karīm (Beirut: Dār al-thaqāfa al-`arabīya, 1968), commentary on
Sūra 3:35.
49
issue, `Umar calls upon two qā’ifs to ask their opinion, and they reply that both men shared in
begetting him. A qā’if appears to have been a professional who was capable of determining
resemblances between fathers and sons. `Umar was astounded at this answer; he could not
believe this situation to be possible at first. But then he exclaims, “It never occurred to me that
such a thing could happen, although I knew that if several dogs leg one bitch she brings forth
young resembling the various males who leaped her.”51
The comparison in this example between women and dogs underscores the heinous
nature of the mother’s wanton sexual behavior. According to Ibn Qutayba, dogs are well-known
for their hypersexuality and promiscuity; it is noted female dogs menstruate every seven days. 52
Dogs are also rendered impure to eat because, Abū Ḥayyān noted, they are known to lap blood
with their tongues.53 In this example, resemblances between women and dogs are carried out
further in the features of offspring that reveal without a doubt the face of each adulterer, as well
as the mother’s appetite for having sex with great numbers of men. In these examples, there are
not enough distant Uncle Harrys in the world to account for physical variance.
Other scholars confirmed that both the sexual iniquities of the mother and the identity of
the adulterer are always impressed upon the child produced. Revered ninth-century Persian
collector of canonical hadith, Muḥammad ibn Ismā`īl al-Bukhārī (d. 870 CE), suggested pointblank that one can prove adultery if the child does not look like the father.54 Muhammad ibn
Ibn Qutayba,`Uyūn al-akhbār, 69.
Ibid., 81.
53
Abū Ḥayyān, Kitāb al-imtā` wa al-mu’ānsa, 431. He notes lions and cats practice the same disgusting habit.
54
Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, “Kitāb tafsīr al-qur’ān,” nos. 269, 271; “Kitāb al-dīyāt,” no. 407. See also Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, “Kitāb
al-farā’iḍ,” no. 762, where resemblance is determined by an examination of the feet; and “Kitāb al-ḥudūd,” nos. 837
and 839: here resemblance is used to prove illicit sexual intercourse. In an example from Mālik’s, Muwaṭṭa’, a
“professional” scrutinizer of resemblance could not determine the child’s father. `Umar let the child decide which of
51
52
`Abdallāh Khaṭīb al-Tabrīzī’s fourteenth-century Mishkāt al-maṣābīḥ (A Niche for Lamps), a
handbook of authoritative Sunnī hadith, also recorded how the prophet Muḥammad uses paternal
resemblance to determine whether a woman committed adultery,55 a position that directly
counters the need for four witnesses mandated by the Qur’an to prove cases of illicit sexual
intercourse.56
A number of Shī`ite scholars also stressed the fact that the child conceived through an
adulterous affair takes on the traits of the adulterer. For example, eleventh-century theologian
Abū al-Qāsim `Alī ibn Ḥusayn al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 1044 CE) argued those created from
adulterous sperm will never choose a good and virtuous road.57 Likewise, eleventh-century
transmitter of Shī`ite hadith, Abū Ja`far al-Ṭūṣī (d. 1045 CE), asserted that marriage with a child
of an adulterer is not recommended, and if it does occur no children should be produced, in
theory so that despicable traits are no longer passed down through the generations.58 In these
examples, children bear the indelible marks of their parents’ trespass.
In other examples, if there is any sort of transgression to be found, it will certainly show
up in the child’s features just as, according to many old wives’ tales, a strawberry mark appears
on a child whose mother craved strawberries while pregnant. In yet another example from
Damīrī’s Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān, the prophet Muhammad tells the story of a white man who begets a
the two possible candidates he wanted to serve as his father (36.21.22). Presumably, that gentleman would have to
comply.
55
Muḥammad ibn `Abdallāh Khaṭīb al-Tabrīzī, Mishkāt al-maṣābīḥ (Dār ibn Ḥazm, 2003), 703–4. See also Ibn
Māja, Sunan, no. 2004. Nowhere is the significance of resemblance in determining paternity more clear than in the
following midrashic example. For example, Numbers Rabbah 9:1 states that one must not suppose the features of the
infant will necessarily resemble those of an adulterer; however, if a woman conceives from her husband but has had
sex with an adulterer, God will still transform the features of the child into those of the adulterer in order to reveal
her transgression.
56
Sūras 24:4; 24:13. See also Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, “Kitāb al-maghāzī,” no. 462.
57
Cited in Etan Kohlberg, “The Position of the 'walad zina,' in Imami Shi`ism,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies 48, no. 2 (1985): 237–66, esp. 259.
58
Ibid., 244–45.
black and reddish son. The man wonders why this could be, and the prophet notes it occurred
because the man’s own father was leprous, a secret the man had wished to conceal but was
revealed through the body of his own son.59 In another example, the prophet Muhammad
chastises a woman for trying to use nonresemblance to sever her husband from his children.
Bukhārī reported how Muhammad accuses the woman of lying when she states that her husband
is impotent based on the fact that her children look exactly like him. The prophet declares, “By
God, these boys resemble [their father] as a crow resembles a crow!”60 In this example,
resemblance is established by an outside party to protect a husband’s relationship with his sons,
and to guard against women denying their husbands’ paternal rights.
What all these examples show is that medieval Muslim scholars often take two very
different approaches to the problems presented by the birth of a child who looks nothing like his
legitimate father, that is, the husband of his mother. On the one hand, Muslim accounts stress the
need for men to accept the often-unexpected vagaries of inherited traits, since refusal to do so
could create an insurmountable social crisis—in other words, a plethora of fatherless children.
Such a perspective conforms to the Qur’anic position that accusations of adultery should not be
made without considerable proof. Clearly, such a phenomenon where children would be readily
Damīrī mentions that a man by the name of Zurāra b. `Amr al-Nakhā`ī went to the prophet and said to him, “Oh
prophet, I had a dream on the road that terrified me.” The prophet said, what was it about?” The man replied, “I saw
that a she-ass—that I had left with my people—gave birth to a kid of black color tinged with red. I saw them coming
out of the earth, which shifted about between myself and my son (whose name is `Amr), and they kept on saying,
‘Burn, burn, the seeing and blind.’ “The prophet asked him, “Have you left among your people a female slave
secretly pregnant?” And the man replied, “Yes.” The prophet said, “Then she has given birth to a boy who is your
son.” The man said, “But what about the black color tinged with red?” The prophet replied, “Come near me.” And
the man approached him. The prophet said, “Your father was leprous, which you conceal” (Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān alkubrā, 28–29). Here, one’s genetic past can never be hidden, but it is always exposed for public scrutiny and
evaluation.
60
Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, “Kitāb al-ṭibb,” no. 715.
59
abandoned by insecure men would undermine the cornerstones of the faith: the Muslim family
and the umma (community). Damīrī, for example, reported how the prophet Muhammad
explicitly advises fathers not to disown sons who look nothing like them, because children
frequently receive hereditary traits (naj`a `irq) from distant ancestors, just as red camels
oftentimes produce ashy colored offspring that resemble prior relatives.61 The concern here is for
fathers who were too quick to neglect their children because of deep insecurities about their own
paternity or an unwillingness to care for a child and her mother, financially, emotionally, or
otherwise.
In order to make their case for paternal ownership and responsibility, Muslim scholars
emphasized heredity and the unpredictable nature of inherited traits, and the many biological
explanations for why children often end up looking nothing like their presumed fathers. In each
case, men must assert socially their position as heads of household by accepting responsibility
for their children and the mothers who bore them. Here, paternity is conferred through the very
structure of the patriarchal family, which depends, in many ways, upon the impeccable piety of
both husband and wife.
On the other hand, Muslim scholars determined that when the patriarchal household does
breakdown as the result of a woman’s adultery or her participation in other sorts of disreputable
acts, the iniquities that caused such destruction become readily impressed upon the image of the
child for communal evaluation. Here, it is not enough for the couple to separate amicably, via
li`ān, with God serving as the ultimate judge over their actions. The child’s features serve as an
undeniable and open testimony to the hidden threat to the patriarchal family structure, a
Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 24–28. See also `Arīb ibn Sa`d, Kitāb khalq, 10; and Bukhārī, Ṣaḥịḥ, “Kitāb
al-ṣalāq,” no. 225.
61
phenomenon that allows for the household’s restoration only through communal recognition,
punishment, and sanction.
Despite the fact that medieval Muslim explanations drawn from biology and inherited
traits seem to represent a scientific advance over appeals to the desirous and sexual power of the
wayward maternal gaze to determine a child’s features so vividly underscored in Greek, Roman,
Christian, and Jewish traditions, such power refuses to be squelched as perceived male control
over the reproductive process is shown to come down to smoke and mirrors. The fact that male
scholars and physicians assert to know paternity “when they see it” reveals all too clearly the
shaky foundation upon which a man lays claim over his own household, in particular, his wife’s
sexuality and reproductive power, which inevitably results in more forceful efforts to conceal it.