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Writing the Unwritten Life of the Islamic Eve: Menstruation and the Demonization of Motherhood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

D. A. Spellberg
D. A. Spellberg
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the History Department, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Tex. 78712-1163, USA.
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Extract

Western scholars have long studied Jewish and Christian influence in shaping early Islamic tradition, but almost none of them has considered Eve's transformation as a critical part of the “genesis” of an Islamic historical framework and the evolution of its gender categories. I trace the transformation of the wife of Adam from the revelation contained in the Qurʾan and note the abrupt and distinct changes wrought upon this Qurʾanic persona in post-Qurʾanic sources in the matters of menstruation and motherhood. The figure of Satan plays a pivotal role in both of these biological aspects of Eve's biography. Her function as the first woman serves to explain not just the physiology of all women, but also the essential aspects of character that allegedly make all females different from the normative male in biology and behavior. As a wife, Eve is tested and fails, but as a mother, she both fails and passes the test of satanic temptation. I argue that in her role as wife, she is depicted in post-Qurʾanic sources in accordance with pre-Islamic monotheist precedent. However, in Eve's role as mother—especially as the mother of the prophetic patriline that culminates in Muhammad—Muslim scholars distinguished the meaning and implications of her temptation as distinctly Islamic. Eve embodied a fusion of traditions, a continuity of monotheistic meanings about the feminine in the Middle East, as well as an identity that distinguished her as the first woman of a new, emerging Islamic faith.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , August 1996 , pp. 305 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Fellowship for University Teachers, which supported this research as part of a larger project on gender and sacred biography.

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2 Smith, Jane I. and Haddad, Yvonne Y., “Eve: Islamic Image of Woman,” Women's Studies International Forum 5, 2 (1982), 135–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Stowasser, Barbara Freyer, Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions, and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 25–38.Google Scholar Stowasser's emphasis on interpretation includes al-Tabari's vision of Eve, but does not attempt to explain the differences between his larger body of references and those in earlier canonical hadith collections.

3 Awn, Peter J., Satan's Tragedy and Redemption: Iblis in Sufi Psychology (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983), 19:Google Scholar “[T]he name Ash-Shaytan, Satan, appears more than fifty times in the text of the Qurʾan. The titles are virtually interchangeable, with the name Iblis being used in the context of man's creation and the Devil's fall, while the title Ash-Shaytan is reserved for the enticement of Adam and Eve.” The names, however, do seem to be interchangeable in the post-Qurʾanic materials.

4 Ibid., 41.

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6 Abbott, , Studies, 2:10.Google Scholar Abbott also links the issue of early written materials to the literacy of the Islamic community, most specifically that of the Prophet and his Companions. As she argues for a greater amount of early written work, so too, she supports greater literacy among early Muslims in Arabia (2:6–10).

7 For notable negative examples, see Crone, Patricia, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Cook, Michael and Crone, Patricia, Hagarism, the Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

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13 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh.

14 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:102;Google Scholaridem, Jāmiʿ al-bayān can taʾwīl ay al-Qurʾān, 16 vols., ed. M, . and Shakir, A. (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1955–1969), 1:514.Google Scholar The italics represent the Qurʾanic echo. The addition of the left side specifically appears to be Islamic.

15 Abbott, , Studies, 2:9.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 2:9–10.

17 Newby, , Last Prophet, 8:14.Google Scholar For the case of the Israʾiliyat in the emergence of Islamic written and oral narrative tradition, see Firestone, Reuven, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham–Ishmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1990), 13–21.Google Scholar For the Islamization of Jewish tradition in the case of the Queen of Sheba, see Lassner, Jacob, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries in Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar For a similar process in the case of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, see Goldman, Shalom, The Wiles of Women/the Wiles of Men: Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in Ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic Folklore (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995).Google Scholar

18 Wensinck, A. J., ed., Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane, 8 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), 8:68 (Ḥawwā) and 8:6 (Adam).Google Scholar The six books include al-Bukhāri (d. 870), Muslim (d. 875), Abu Dawud (d. 888), al-Tirmidhi (d. 892), al-Nasaʾi (d. 915), and Ibn Maja (d. 886).

19 al-Bukhāri, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 9 vols. (Cairo: n.p., 1969), 4:161.Google Scholar

20 Abbott, , Studies, 2:9.Google Scholar Many of the hadith attributed to him are spurious. For details of his anti-female feelings and preoccupation with matters of ritual purity, see Mernissi, Fatima, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam, trans. Lakeland, Mary Jo (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1991), 70–74, 78–81.Google Scholar

21 Al-Bukhārī, , Ṣaḥīḥ, , 4:161.Google Scholar

22 Abbott, Nabia, Two Queens of Baghdad: The Mother and Wife of Harun al-Rashid (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), 46.Google Scholar

23 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh 1:102.Google Scholar

24 Ibid.

25 All translations of Genesis are taken from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1988).Google Scholar Both Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages; thus, the names for Eve in both are nearly identical: in Arabic, Ḥawwa or Ḥawwāʾ, in Hebrew, Hawwah or Havvah. The root in Arabic and Hebrew from which the name is derived is also the same. In Arabic, ḥayy, and in Hebrew, hay, for “life/living.”

26 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:103.Google Scholar

27 See Al-Ṭabarī, , The History of al-Ṭabarī: General Introduction and From the Creation to the Flood, ed. and trans. Rosenthal, Franz (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989), 274, n. 671,Google Scholar where he suggests other potential Aramaic roots: in Aramaic, ʿtth' or ʿntth', cognate with the Arabic for “female,” or ʾunthā. Also, see Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Ḥawwā',” J. Eisenberg/G. Vajda. Clearly, this part of Genesis may be the oldest prototype of Middle Eastern creation, reminiscent of the Sumerian myth in which Enki had a pain in his rib and “Ninhursaga caused Nin-ti (woman of the rib) to be created from him. Strikingly, the Sumerian logogram ti (in the goddess's name) stands for both “rib” and “life” Encyclopedia of Religion, s.v., “Eve,” Michael Fishbane. Also Brandon, Samuel, Creation Legends of the Ancient Near East (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1963), 122–30.Google Scholar

28 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:105.Google Scholar The italicized part of the citation indicates Qurʾ'an 7:22. See also Wansbrough, , Qurʾanic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 2,Google Scholar who describes Muhammad's biography as constructed so that scripture “provided the framework for the extended narratio” or the “narratio was itself the framework for frequent if not continuous allusion to scripture.” He terms these two types of narrative techniques “exegetical” and “parabolic,” respectively. One can see something of the same tendency in al-Ṭabarī's work.

29 Al-Ṭabarī, , Tarʾrikh, 1:106,Google Scholar “jawf al-hayyati.” Perhaps the pull is in the pun where all Semitic sorts may laugh as one. The word for snake/serpent, al-ḥayya, from the same root as ḥayy/hay, “life,” and hence Ḥawwa/Hawwah, “Eve,” in Arabic and Hebrew. The word for snake in both languages, not surprisingly, is feminine and gives the wordplay proper gendered bite. The Christian Gnostic community also indulged itself in this rabbinic wordplay. See Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 36,Google Scholar in which still another pun prevails between “serpent” (hewya) and the verb “to instruct” (hawa), both linked to Eve. In this version, Eve's knowledge, however, has positive implications for Adam and humanity. See also Philips, John A., Eve: The History of an Idea (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 166,Google Scholar in which he links this Gnostic account to the Qurʾan and falsely claims, “it is to this tradition that the Qurʾan appears to be indebted: In sura 7, the Satan-snake offers himself as a ‘sincere adviser.’” Philips, who has clearly never read the Qurʾan, apparently refers to sura 7:21, in which Satan, nowhere a snake, says he is among the “faithful advisers”; the Arabic for the term “advisers,” however, is not the ḥyy root that allowed the Gnostics to grammatically and semantically link the demonic force to Eve.

30 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:106Google Scholar. See also The Book of Adam and Eve, trans, and ed. Malan, S. C. (Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1882), 19,Google Scholar in which the serpent is described as “the most beautiful of all beasts.” This Christian work of the 5th–6th centuries preserved in an Ethiopic text an earlier Arabic original.

31 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:106.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.

33 In Genesis 3:4–6: “And the serpent said to the woman, ‘You are not going to die, but God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like divine beings who know good and bad.’… She also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened.” Compare the approach of Satan to Adam in the Qurʾan (20:120), in which Satan contacts only Adam with an offer of “immortality and power.”

34 See also Bal, Mieke, Femmes Imaginaires: L'ancien testament au risque d'une narratologie critique (Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1986), 235.Google Scholar

35 Māja, Muḥammad ibn Yazīd Ibn, Sunan Ibn Māja, 2 vols. (Beirut: n.p. 1980), 1:174–75.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 1:175.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid. See also Adams, Carol J., The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1991), 74, 168.Google Scholar

39 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:109.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 1:109. See also the characterization of menstruation in Midrash on Genesis in Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols., trans. Szold, H. et al. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909–1938, reprinted 1937–66), 1:101, n. 85Google Scholar: “In all the sources menstruation is regarded as a penalty for Eve's sin, and since sexual desire is considered as the result of the eating of the forbidden fruit, the Gnostics, as well as the Kabbalists, maintain that menstruation came to Eve with the enjoyment of the fruit.” In this sense, the mention of the tree in al-Tabari that has bled as Eve will bleed monthly may be derivative. For the modern importance of menstruation in the life of the Islamic Eve as it affects modern Muslim women, see Delaney, Carol, “Mortal Flow: Menstruation in Turkish Village Society,” in Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation, ed. Buckley, T. and Gottlieb, A. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 78–93;Google Scholar and Lughod, Leila Abu, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 130.Google Scholar

41 Hadith on purity and menstruation abound in 9th-century collections, most not surprisingly related on the authority of the Prophet Muhammad's wives, most particularly his favorite, ʿAʾisha bint Abi Bakr. On the confluence of Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Islamic ritual pertaining to menstruation, see Choksy, Jamsheed K., Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism: Triumph over Evil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 94–99.Google Scholar Even in Zoroastrianism, menstruation is the result of a demonic encounter involving Angra Mainyu (the Devil; Evil Spirit) and the Whore Demoness. See Choksy, Jamsheed K., “Woman in the Zoroastrian Book of Primal Creation: Images and Functions within a Religious Tradition,” The Mankind Quarterly 29, 1–2 (1988): 73–82.Google Scholar

42 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:109.Google Scholar The words safīha and ḥalīma are clearly key in this passage. Franz Rosenthal gives them a different dichotomous meaning, juxtaposing the words “stupid” for safīha and “intelligent” for ḥalīma. I am indebted to R. Stephen Humphreys for a more apt pairing: “foolish” and “prudent.” See Al-Tabari, , From the Creation to the Flood, 280.Google Scholar However, I think the combination of these two words suggests less about intellectual acumen than about self-control, an issue linked to female behavior and sexuality rather than strict intelligence. See Lane, E. W., Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1865), 4:1377,Google Scholar in which safīha indicates particularly women and young children and denotes weakness of intellect, lack of rectitude; and 2:80, in which ḥalīma indicates the possession of forbearance, calm.

43 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:109;Google Scholar also exactly the same hadith in his tafsīr, 1:529. For a striking parallel, see Ginzberg, , Legends, 1:78:Google Scholar “The Verdict against Eve also consisted of 10 curses, the effect of which is noticeable to this day in the physical, spiritual, and social state of woman.”

44 Encyclopedia of Religion, s.v. “Eve,” in which Fishbane suggests: “This mythic image of a male as the source of all human life (Gn. 2:21–22) reflects a male fantasy of self-sufficiency.”

45 For a brief discussion of sacred biology in the Islamic cultural construct, strangely without mention of the Islamic Eve, see Sabbah, Fatna A., Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, trans. Lakeland, M. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), 98–104.Google Scholar

46 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:106.Google Scholar

47 Genesis 3:16.

48 Ḥanbal, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn, Musnad, 6 vols. (Cairo: n.p., 1895), 5:11.Google Scholar

49 al-Tirmidhī, Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā, Sunan al-Tirmidhī, ed. ʿAbbās, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 5 vols. (Cairo: n.p. 1967), 4:332.Google Scholar

50 Ibid. He rates this hadith as ḥasan gharīb.

51 Saʿd, Muḥammad Ibn, Al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kubrā, 8 vols., ed. ʿAbbās, Iḥsān (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1957–1968), 1:37.Google Scholar

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid., 1:38.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 The name ʿAbd al-Harith was prominent among the pre-Islamic Christian tribes of the Kinda and Banu Ghassan. For its origins, see Awn, , Satan's Tragedy, 25, n. 26Google Scholar on Leviticus, and the Book of Enoch for the name ʿAzazil. See also Forsyth, Neil, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 163, 174–75.Google Scholar

57 Saʿd, Ibn, Ṭabaqat, 1:38.Google Scholar

58 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:149.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., Newby, , Last Prophet, 40.Google Scholar

60 Al-Ṭabarī, , Taʾrīkh, 1:149.Google Scholar

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid., 1:150.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid., 1:151.

69 Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, Woman's Body, Woman's Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo–lslamic Writing (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 46, 91.Google Scholar

70 Ricoeur, Paul, “Narrative Time,” in On Narrative, ed. Mitchell, W. J. T. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 175.Google Scholar