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Circumcision Circumscribed: Female Excision and Cultural Accommodation in the Medieval Near East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Jonathan P. Berkey
Jonathan P. Berkey
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Davidson College, Davidson, N.C. 28036, U.S.A.
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Extract

In a famous passage in his Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, E. W. Lane described the ceremonies commonly held to celebrate the circumcision of a young boy in 19th-century Cairo. Family and friends of the boy, his schoolteacher, the barber who performed the operation and his assistant, musicians, and other retainers all participated in a celebration of an overtly public character. Dressed in fancy clothes and feted with song and dance, the boy, aged five or six or slightly older, was paraded through the streets of his neighborhood, often on horseback, to his parents' house, where the operation was performed. Cups of coffee might be distributed to passersby while guests and relations were, of course, treated to a celebratory feast. Modes of celebration may have changed, but festivities surrounding the circumcision of a young boy are still common in the Muslim countries of the Near East.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 1996 , pp. 19 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

NOTES

Author's note: Many individuals contributed to this article by reading and commenting on earlier drafts. In particular, I thank Peter Brown, Nina Dayton, Vivien Dietz, Andras Hamori, Bernard Lewis, Basim Musallam, Leslie Peirce, Everett Rowson, Paula Sanders, Amy Singer, Christopher Taylor, and, especially, Shaun Marmon.

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3 John G. Kennedy, “Circumcision and Excision Ceremonies,” in Nubian Ceremonial Life: Studies in Islamic Syncretism and Cultural Change, ed. idem (Berkeley, 1978), 157; Boddy, Janice, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zār Cult in Northern Sudan (Madison, 1989), 50Google Scholar, contains a description of a private ceremony of ritual excision among the women of a northern Sudanese village witnessed by the author.

4 al-Ḥājj, Ibn, Madkhal al-sharʿ al-sharīf, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1929), 3:296Google Scholar.

5 For recent anthropological discussions of female excision, see Boddy, , Wombs and Alien Spirits, 49–75Google Scholar, and the sources cited there; for a brief survey of historical and contemporary practice, see “KHAFD,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960–)Google Scholar, and Sanders, Paula, “Clitoridectomy,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. Esposito, John L. 4 vols. (New York, 1995), 1:298–99Google Scholar. Among the most important polemical tracts and studies of contemporary practice: Hansen, Henry Harald, “Clitoridectomy: Female Circumcision in Egypt,” Folk 14–15 (1972–1973): 15–26Google ScholarPubMed; McLean, Scilla, ed., Female Circumcision, Excision and Infibulation: The Facts and Proposals for Change, Minority Rights Group Report No. 47 (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Abdalla, Raqiya Haji, Sisters in Affliction: Circumcision and Infibulation of Women in Africa (London, 1982) (on Somalia)Google Scholar; El Dareer, Asma, Woman, Why Do You Weep? Circumcision and Its Consequences (London, 1982) (on Sudan)Google Scholar; Koso-Thomas, Olayinka, The Circumcision of Women: A Strategy for Eradication (London, 1987) (on Sierra Leone)Google Scholar; Lightfoot-Klein, Hanny, Prisoners of Ritual: An Odyssey into Female Genital Mutilation in Africa (New York, 1989)Google Scholar; Toubia, Nahid, Female Genital Mutilation: A Call for Global Action (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Abu-Sahlieh, Sami A. Aldeeb, Mutiler au nom de Yahve ou d'Allah: Légitimation religieuse de la circoncision masculine et féminine, Cahiers du Monde Arabe 103 (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar.

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10 Cf. the approach taken by the anthropologist Richard Antoun in his discussion of related issues bearing on female “modesty” in a modern Islamic society: “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Study in the Accommodation of Traditions,” American Anthropologist 70/4 (1968): 671–97Google Scholar. In this article, Antoun seeks to describe and explain the “accommodation” between the demands of “high” Islamic traditions for female modesty and particular local customs and circumstances. After concluding that one can rarely determine whether or not a particular practice was specifically Islamic in origin, Antoun moves on to the more interesting question of the ways in which different cultural values and imperatives, emanating from different cultural strata, have interacted and accommodated themselves to one another.

11 Estimates of the total percentage of Egyptian women who have been subjected to the operation vary and, given the secrecy that surrounds the practice, must be tentative. The Egyptian physician and feminist Nawal El-Saadawi gives figures of 66 percent for girls from educated families and 97 percent for girls from uneducated families, although her estimates are based on a small sample and must be regarded as tentative: El-Saadawi, Nawal, The Hidden Face of Eve (London, 1980), 34Google Scholar. For other estimates of the proportion of circumcised women among the population of several African countries, see Lightfoot-Klein, , Prisoners of Ritual, 31Google Scholar.

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14 For some fragmentary details of the operation as performed at different periods in Iran, see Belon, Pierre, Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables, trouvées en Grèce, Indée, Égypte, Arabie, et autres pays estranges (Paris, 1554), fol. 193rGoogle Scholar; Massé, Henri, Croyances et coutumes persanes (Paris, 1938), 51–53Google Scholar; Elgood, Cyril, Safavid Medical Practice (London, 1970), 152, 232Google Scholar; and Šakūrzāda, Ebrāhīm and Omidsalar, Mahmoud, “Circumcision,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Yarshater, Ehsan, 5:598Google Scholar. On Arabia: Hurgronje, C. Snouck, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century (Leiden, 1931), 113Google Scholar. On the bedouin: Jaussen, , Coutumes, 364Google Scholar. On North Africa: Bousquet, G.-H., L'Éthique sexuelle de l'Islam (Paris, 1965), 89Google Scholar. Aversion to the operation on the part of the inhabitants of the western Islamic world is not new. Ibn al-Ḥājj, a 14th-century resident of Cairo of Maghribi origin, noted the custom's presence in the “East” (al-mashriq) and its absence in the “West” (al-maghrib): al-Ḥājj, Ibn, Madkhal, 3:296Google Scholar. The medieval Damascene jurist Ibn Taymiyya also reported that the Turks ignored the practice. Taymiyya, Taqī ʾ-Dīn Aḥmad ibn, al-Fatāwā al-kubrā, ed. Makhlūf, Ḥasanayn Muḥammad, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1966), 1:51Google Scholar.

15 Meinardus, Otto, “Mythological, Historical and Sociological Aspects of the Practice of Female Circumcision among the Egyptians,” Ada Ethnographica 16 (1967): 389Google Scholar.

16 Ibid. Cf. Ghalioungi, Paul, Magic and Medical Science in Ancient Egypt (London, 1963), 96.Google Scholar

17 Meinardus, , “Mythological, Historical and Sociological Aspects,” 390Google Scholar.

18 Strabo, , Geography, ed. and trans. Jones, H. L., 8 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), 8:153Google Scholar.

19 Quoted in Meinardus, , “Mythological, Historical and Sociological Aspects,” 389–90Google Scholar.

20 “KHITĀN” (by Wensinck, A. J.), in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 5:20–22Google Scholar. On male circumcision, see Kister, M. J., “‘…And he was born circumcised…’: Some Notes on Circumcision in Ḥadīth,” Oriens 34 (1994): 10–30Google Scholar.

21 Qayyim, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-wadūd, 155–56Google Scholar.

22 al-Jāḥiẓ, ʿAmr ibn Baḥr, Kitāb al-ḥayawān, 2nd ed., 8 vols. (Cairo, 1966), 7:27Google Scholar.

23 al-Buhkhārī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1862–1908), 3:85 (“Kitāb al-Maghāzī,” no. 23)Google Scholar.

24 See, for example, al-Sijistānī, Abū Dāʾūd, Sunan, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1935), 1:56 (“Ṭahāra,” no. 216)Google Scholar; Māja, Muḥammad ibn Yazīd ibn, Sunan, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1954), 1:199–200 (“Ṭahāra,” no. 111)Google Scholar; al-Ḥajjāj, Muslim ibn, Ṣaḥīḥ, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1955), 1:271–72 (“Ḥayḍ,” no. 88)Google Scholar; al-Nasāʾī, Aḥmad ibn Shuʿayb, Sunan, 8 vols. (Cairo, 1930), 1:110–11 (“Ṭahāra,” no. 128)Google Scholar. Cf. Wensinck, A. J., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, 8 vols. (Leiden, 1936–1988), 2:11Google Scholar, s.v. “khitān.”

25 Qudāma, Muwaffaq al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh ibn, al-Mughnī, 10 vols. (Cairo, 1968), 1:64Google Scholar.

26 Strabo, , Geography, 8:153Google Scholar.

27 At least some medieval Muslims understood the lack of female excision to be, in fact, an identifying characteristic of the Jews in Near Eastern society. Abūʾl-Ḥasan ʿA1ī ibn Nāṣir al-Kātib, an Iraqi author (of uncertain identity, probably 11th or 12th century) of a treatise on erotics, remarked that “Jewesses, however, find it difficult to practice lesbian intercourse because if a Jewess practises lesbian intercourse, her clitoris will be injured thereby, which is the reason why Jewesses do not practise it”: Encyclopaedia of Pleasure, trans. Jarkas, ʿAdnan and Khawamm, Salah Addin (Toronto, 1977), 189Google Scholar. (I have been unable to consult the original Arabic manuscript.) Whatever the merits of ʿAlī ibn Nāṣir's observation, it clearly suggests that Jewish women, implicitly unlike others, were not circumcised. I owe this reference to Everett Rowson.

28 Burmester, O. H. E., “The Sayings of Michael, Metropolitan of Damietta,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 2 (1936): 113–14, 123–24Google Scholar.

29 Bruce, James, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 5 vols. (Dublin, 1791), 3:670Google Scholar.

30 al-Zahrāwī, Abūʾl-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʿAbbās, Abulcasis de chirurgia, ed. and Latin trans. Channing, John, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1778), 1:314Google Scholar.

31 Qayyim, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-wadūd, 137Google Scholar; cf. “KHITĀN,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 131 ff.

33 Ibid., 139. Cf., in a modern context, Ammar, , Growing Up, 120–21Google Scholar.

34 For example, Anas, Mālik ibn, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1951), 2:921 (“ṣifat al-nabī,” no. 3)Google Scholar; al-Bukhārī, , al-Jāmiʾ al-ṣaḥīḥ, 4:184 (“al-Istiʿdhān,” no. 51)Google Scholar; Muslim, , Ṣaḥīḥ, 1:221–22 (“Ṭahāra,” nos. 49–50)Google Scholar; Dāʾaūd, Abū, Sunan, 1:13–15 (“Ṭahāra,” nos. 8–10)Google Scholar; Māja, Ibn, Sunan, 1:107 (“Ṭahāra,” no. 8)Google Scholar; Dāʾūd, Abū, Sunan, 1:14 (“Ṭahāra,” no. 29)Google Scholar. Cf. Wensinck, , Concordance, 2:11Google Scholar, s.v. “khitān.”

35 al-ʿAsqalānī, Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, 22:105–6Google Scholar; al-Qasṭallānī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad, Irshād al-sārī li-sharḥ ṣaḥīḥ al-bukhārī, 10 vols. (Bulaq, 1305 A.H. [reprinted Beirut, 1971]), 9:170Google Scholar.

36 Lā tunhikī fa-inna dhālika aḥṣā li'l-mar'a wa-aḥabb ilā ’l-baʿl: Dāʾūd, Abū, Sunan, 4:368 (“Adab,” no. 167)Google Scholar; cf. al-Bayhaqī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad, al-Sunan al-kubrā, ed. ʿAṭāʾ, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir, 11 vols. (Beirut, 1994), 8:562Google Scholar. In another version of this tradition, also recorded by al-Bayhaqī, Umm ʿAṭīya herself is identified as the khātina.

37 al-ʿAṣīmabādī, Muḥammad Shams al-Ḥaqq, ʿAwn al-maʿbūd sharḥ sunan abī dāʾūd, ed. ʿUthmān, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad, 14 vols. (Medina, 1968), 14:190Google Scholar.

38 Ḥanbal, Aḥmad ibn, Musnad, 6 vols. (Cairo, 1895), 5:75Google Scholar.

39 al-Jilānī, Faḍlullāh, Faḍl allāh al-ṣamad fī tawḍīḥ al-adab al-mufrad, 2 vols. (Horns, 1969), 2:669–70, 673Google Scholar.

40 Qayyim, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-wadūd, 154–55Google Scholar; Qudāma, Ibn, al-Mughnī, 1:64Google Scholar.

41 Makhlūf, Ḥasanayn Muḥammad, Fatāwā sharʿiyya wa buḥūth islāmiyya, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1965), 1:145Google Scholar.

42 al-Nawawī, Abū Zakariyā Muḥyīʾl-Dīn, al-Majmīʿ sharḥ al-muhadhdhab, 9 vols. (Cairo, 1925–1929), 1:300–301Google Scholar.

43 al-ʿAynī, Badr al-Dīn Maḥmūd, Sharḥ al-kanz, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1894), 2:15Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Shaun Marmon.

44 al-Qurṭubī, Ibn Rushd, al-Bayān wa'l-taḥṣīl wa'l-sharḥ wa'l-tawjīh wa'l-taʿlīl fī masāʾil al-mustakhraja, ed. Aʿrāb, Saʿīd, 20 vols. (Beirut, 1984), 2:162–63Google Scholar.

45 Bābawayh, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn, Man lā yaḥḍuruhu al-faqīh, ed. al-Ghafārī, ʿAlī Akbar, 4 vols. (Qum, 1983), 3:487Google Scholar.

46 al-Kulīnī, Abū Jaʿfar ibn Yaʿqūb, Kitāb al-kāfī, ed. al-Ghaffārī, ʿAlī Akbar, 8 vols. (Tehran, 1983), 6:37–38Google Scholar; al-Majlisī, Muḥammad Bāqir, Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl fī sharḥ akhbār āl al-rasūl, 26 vols. (Tehran, 1984), 21:65–67Google Scholar. The phrase ashraq liʾl-wajh is somewhat obscure. It is paralleled by another tradition, also cited by al-Kulīnī, that a limited operation is aṣfā liʾl-lawn. The implication seems to be that a more limited operation improved a woman's complexion and appearance. On the significance of these words, see below p. 32.

47 al-Ḥilli, Jaʿfar ibn al-Ḥasan, al-Awwal, al-Muḥaqqiq, Sharāʾiʿ al-islām fī masāʾil al-ḥalāl waʾlḥarām, 4 vols. in 2 (Tehran, 1983), 2:565Google Scholar; cf. Querry, A, trans., Droit musulman: recueil de lois concernani les musulmans schyites, 2 vols. (Paris, 1871), 1:743–74Google Scholar. In his discussion of circumcision in his Taḥrīr al-wasīla, 2 vols. (Beirut, 1981), 2:310–11Google Scholar, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei addressed himself exclusively to the operation as performed on males and its requirement by the law, maintaining complete silence on the issue of excision. Elsewhere, however, in his discussion of indemnity for bodily injury (diya), he expressed the opinion that compensation is owed by any injury to the “labia of the woman, the flesh surrounding the vulva,” whether she is “circumcised” (makhtū6una) or not. Ibid., 2:583–84.

48 Cf. the views in favor of female excision of the North African al-Qayrawānī, Mālikī Ibn Abī Zayd (d. 996), in La Risala, ed. and trans. Bercher, Léon, 3rd ed. (Algiers, 1949), 160, 304Google Scholar.

49 al-Ukhuwwa, Ibn, Maʿālim al-qurba fī aḥkām al-ḥisba, ed. Levy, Reuben (Cambridge, 1938), 163Google Scholar.

50 al-Rāziq, Aḥmad ʿAbd, La femme aux temps des mamlouks en Égypte (Cairo, 1973), 75Google Scholar; Kahle, Paul, “A Gypsy Woman in Egypt in the Thirteenth Century A.D.,” in Opera Minora (Leiden, 1956), 307–11Google Scholar.

51 al-Tifāshī, Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf (d. 1253 or 1254), Les délices des coeurs, trans. Khawam, Réné (Paris, 1971), 48Google Scholar.

52 Provided, interestingly enough, that the weather was “temperate” and not unnaturally hot—that is, as long as the immediate performance of the operation was not ill-advised.

53 For full, graphic, and disturbing descriptions of the various operations, see McLean, , Female Circumcision, Excision and Infibulation, 3Google Scholar; Toubia, Nahid, “Female Circumcision as a Public Health Issue,” New England Journal of Medicine 331 (1994): 712–16CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; idem, Female Genital Mutilation, 10–11Google Scholar; El Dareer, , Woman, Why Do You Weep?, 1–8Google Scholar.

54 See, for example, al-Bayhaqī, , al-Sunan al-kubrā, 8:562Google Scholar; al-Jāḥiẓ, , al-Ḥayawān, 7:28Google Scholar; Qudāma, Ibn, al-Mughnī, 1:64Google Scholar; al-Nawawī, , al-Majmūʿ, 1:302Google Scholar. The phrase lā tunhikī, “do not destroy it completely,” is sometimes vocalized lā tanhakī.

55 Cited in Qudāma, Ibn, al-Mughnī, 1:64Google Scholar.

56 al-Ukhuwwa, Ibn, Maʿālim al-qurba, 164Google Scholar.

57 See, for example, Taymiyya, Ibn, al-Fatāwā al-kubrā, 1:51Google Scholar; al-Nawawī, , al-Majmūʿ, 1:302Google Scholar; Qayyim, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-wadūd, 130Google Scholar; Ḥajar, Ibn, Fatḥ al-bārī, 2:204Google Scholar. Several accounts mentioned that modern Egyptian villagers use similar expressions: Meinardus, , “Mythological, Historical and Sociological Aspects,” 387Google Scholar, and Ammar, , Growing Up, 121Google Scholar.

58 Interestingly, in northern Sudan today, the radical form of the operation, known as Pharaonic circumcision, is contrasted with the more limited variety which is described as “sunna”: Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits, 52Google Scholar. The Arabic word sunna of course refers to the normative speech and behavior of the Prophet Muḥammad. This distinction would thus seem to confirm the picture which emerges from the medieval sources: that female excision was often considered a religious norm, but that the religion also encouraged limits on the scope of the operation.

59 Morgenstern, Julian, Rites of Birth, Marriage, Death and Kindred Occasions among the Semites (Chicago, 1966), 48–66Google Scholar.

60 Ammar, , Growing Up, 122–23Google Scholar.

61 Kister, , “And he was born circumcised,” 25–26Google Scholar.

62 Qayyim, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-wadūd, 149Google Scholar.

63 Boddy, , Wombs and Alien Spirits, 53–56Google Scholar. Ironically, of course, complications arising from the procedure may actually contribute to higher levels of infertility. See Lightfoot-Klein, , Prisoners of Ritual, 79Google Scholar.

64 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, al-Ashbah wa'l-naẓāʿir fī qawāʿid wa furūʿ fiqh al-shāfʿiyya (Cairo, 1959), 428Google Scholar.

65 Belon, , Les observations de plusieurs singularitez, fol. 193rGoogle Scholar. I owe this reference to David Nirenberg.

66 Meinardus, , “Mythological, Historical and Sociological Aspects,” 388–89Google Scholar; cf. Lehmann, F. Rudolph, “Bemerkungen zu einer neuen Begründung der Beschneidung,” Sociologus n.s. 7 (1957): 57–74Google Scholar.

67 As in the case of boys, girls were usually circumcised just before the onset of puberty. The al-Nawawī, Shafiʿi jurist, al-Majmūʿ, 1:302–3Google Scholar, observed that there was disagreement as to the proper age for circumcision (of both boys and girls). He himself thought it “kinder” (arfaq) to perform the operation in early childhood (ṣighar), even in earliest infancy, but he stressed that the important point was that it be accomplished before “maturation” (bulūgh). In the contemporary world, too, the age at which girls are circumcised varies considerably; usually, however, the operation is performed between the ages of six and ten. See, for example, El Dareer, , Woman, Why Do You Weep?, 12–13Google Scholar.

68 On the story of Joseph, see Sura 12 of the Qurʾan, and the interpretation in Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab, Sexuality in Islam (London, 1985), 20–29Google Scholar; for further remarks on this general subject, see Antoun, , “On the Modesty of Women,” passim. On the Mediterranean cult of male honor, see, of course, the classic Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. Peristiany, J. G. (Chicago, 1966)Google Scholar.

69 Atiya, Nayra, Khul-Khaal: Five Egyptian Women Tell Their Stories (Syracuse, 1982), 11.Google Scholar Cf. Lightfoot-Klein, , Prisoners of Ritual, 64–66 et passimGoogle Scholar.

70 Bruce, , Travels, 3:679Google Scholar.

71 Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. “baẓr.”

72 Jones, H. L., in Geography, 8:153nGoogle Scholar. It is also worth consulting the famous note in Burton's, Richard translation of the Thousand Nights and One Night, 16 vols. (London, 1885), 5:279Google Scholar, in which he appended an extensive and colorful discussion of female excision. Note especially his opinion that “frequent coitus [with an uncircumcised woman] would injure her health.”

73 Lightfoot-Klein, , Prisoners of Ritual, 179–81Google Scholar.

74 Al-Jāḥiẓ, , al-Ḥayawān, 7:29Google Scholar.

75 Taymiyya, Ibn, al-Fatāwā al-kubrā, 1:51Google Scholar.

76 Al-Jāḥiẓ, , al-Ḥayawān, 7:28Google Scholar.

77 Ibid., 7:27.

78 Ibid. Cf. the modern attitudes described by El-Saadawi, , Hidden Face, 34Google Scholar, and Ammar, , Growing Up, 118, 121Google Scholar.

79 Taymiyya, Ibn, al-Fatāwā al-kubrā, 1:51Google Scholar.

80 Qayyim, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-wadūd, 154–55Google Scholar.

81 Al-Jāḥiẓ, , al-Ḥayawān, 7:28Google Scholar.

82 Ibid.

83 Qayyim, Ibn, Tuḥfat al-wadūd, 154–55Google Scholar. He in fact uses the word taʿdīl (“modification,” “balancing,” or “setting right”), from the same root as iʿtidāl. Cf. Taymiyya, Ibn, al-Fatāwā al-kubrā, 1:52Google Scholar.

84 Lightfoot-Klein, , Prisoners of Ritual, 38–39, 70Google Scholar. On the physical and emotional impact on the women themselves, see ibid., 52–62 and 80–102.

85 The latter version is recorded by al-Shaʿrānā, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Kashf al-ghumma ʿan jamīʿ al-umma, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1964), 1:50Google Scholar.

86 Ay akthar li-māʿ al-wajh wa dammihi wa aḥsan fī jimāʿihā. al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1967), 1:192Google Scholar.

87 Kahle, , “A Gypsy Woman,” 307–11Google Scholar.

88 On this subject generally, see Bousquet, , L'Éthique sexuelle, 43–50Google Scholar.

89 Al-Ghazālī, , Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 2:64Google Scholar; cf. Farah, Madelain, Marriage and Sexuality in Islam (Salt Lake City, 1984), 107Google Scholar.

90 Al-Ghazālī, , Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 1:191–92Google Scholar.

91 See, for example, Khān, Qāḍī, Fatawa-i-kazeekhan, ed. and trans. Bahadur, Mahomed Yusoof Khan and Hussain, Wilayat (New Delhi, 1986), 1/2:128–33 (English trans., 1/2:285–333)Google Scholar, and al-ʿAynī, Badr al-Dīn, al-Bināya fī sharḥ al-hidāya (Beirut, 1980), 5:391–401Google Scholar; cf. Bousquet, , L'Éthique sexuelle, 147Google Scholar; Rahman, Fazlur, Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition: Change and Identity (New York, 1987), 121 and 142nGoogle Scholar; Spectorsky, Susan A., Chapters on Marriage and Divorce: Responses of Ibn Ḥanbal and Ibn Rāhwayh (Austin, Tex., 1993), 79, 113Google Scholar.

92 Musallam, Basim F., Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control before the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1983), 28–36Google Scholar.

93 Al-Ghazālī, , lḥyāʾ, 2:64Google Scholar; cf. Farah, , Marriage, 107Google Scholar.

94 al-Jawziyya, Ibn Qayyim, al-Ṭibb al-nabawī (Mecca, n.d.), 198–99Google Scholar. He also, incidentally, scorned the practice of non-Muslim tributaries (ahl al-kitāb) who, he claimed, approached their wives while lying on their sides, believing this to be “easier” (aysar) for the woman.

95 Ibid., 196. Cf. al-Baghdādī, ʿAbd al-Laṭif, al-Ṭibb min al-kitāb waʾl-sunna (Beirut, 1986), 35Google Scholar, and al-Dhahabī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad, al-Ṭibb al-nabawī (Cairo, 1961), 18Google Scholar.

96 al-Azraqī, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥman, Tashīl al-manāfiʿ fīʾ-ṭibb waʾl-ḥikma al-mushtamil ʿalā shifāʾ al-ajsām wa kitāb al-raḥma (Cairo, 1963), 115–16Google Scholar.

97 Ibid., 121–22.

98 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥma fiʾl-ṭibb waʾl-ḥikma(Beirut, 1970), 173–74 et passimGoogle Scholar. Al-Suyuti, includes variants of the hadith about limiting the scope of the operation in Jamʿ aljawāmiʿ, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1971), 1:524Google Scholar; and records the tradition identifying Hagar as the first woman to be circumcised in al-Wasāʾil ilā maʿrifat al-awāʾil, ed. al-ʿAdawī, Ibrāhīm and ʿUmar, ʿAlī Muḥammad (Cairo, n.d.), 20Google Scholar. In al-Durr al-manthūr fīʾ-tafsīr biʾl-maʾthūr, 6 vols. (Tehran, n.d.), 1:14Google Scholar, in his discussion of sūra 2, verse 125 of the Qurʾan (“When his Lord tested Abraham with certain commandments, which he fulfilled”), al-Suyuti cites the hadith transmitted by Ibn Hanbal, that “circumcision is sunna for men and a noble deed for women.” On another occasion, however, he also remarked that circumcision is not “required” of women, at least according to some: al-Ashbāh waʾl-naẓāʾ:ir, 237Google Scholar. On al-Suyuti as the author of erotica, see Musallam, , Sex and Society, 89Google Scholar.