medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture I don't know what is happening with my e-mail. I forwarded this same e-mail from Melchert 24 hours ago and wondered why it never showed up. I didn't realize at the time it had begun with M. Cormack. My copy came via Letizia Osti and Joseph Lowry. I had added my commentary.

My previous statement that execution for witchcraft and execution by burning was not the norm in the Islamic world during the European Middle Ages is up held by this post.

1. Twelver's are a Shi'a minority who are themselves a minority.
2. The story is "shocking." This is to say that the execution for sorcery is unusual.
3. The Hanbali are one of the four major schools of jurisprudence and generally regarded as the strictest. The Wahabbis in Saudi are of the Hanbali school. We already established that they have executed at least once for sorcery. But their rules do not represent a majority position, nor that of much of the middle ages as they were the last school established.
4. Ibn Qudamah is also a Hanbali.
5. There is exactly one account here of an execution for witchcraft and it is "shocking." The rest is the expressession of opinions by jurisprudents (fiqh) who are not themselves judges or lawyers.
6. The most likely scenario would be that some would be beheaded for "unbelief" even if the real reason for the execution was witchcraft or sorcery. Not that this is any more civilized.

If this sounds preachy, I'm sorry, but we should not judge the majority practice or belief by single, unususal actions. Most Chrisitans would not want to be judged by the actions of Paul Hill nor want his theology to be seen as the norm among Christians. Even if we had ten examples of execution for witchcraft, this would not establish this as the norm.

V. K. Inman

Sorry this came in a round about fashion.

> Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:24:37 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [M-R] FW: H-MEM: witchcraft / sorcery in Islam
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>
> From: Christopher Melchert [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>
> Sent: 16 February 2008 20:59
>
> Rob Gleave raised the subject of sorcery at a little colloquium we
> organized last spring. I think he was talking about some classic
> Twelver rulebooks. He mentioned a shocking story of Hafsah's putting to
> death a slave girl of hers for practising sorcery. Unfortunately, I
> cannot find my notes.
>
> I do remember looking up sorcery in my usual first resort for Hanbali
> rules, al- mardAwI (d. Damascus, 885/1480), _al-inSAf_, a commentary on
> ibn qudAmah (d.
> Damascus, 620/1223), _al-muqni`_. Near the end of _k. al-HudUd_ is this
> (to
> me) surprising quotation of ibn qudAmah: 'The sorcerer (_sAHir_) is the
> one who rides on a broom and goes with it in the air and the like.'
> This mode of transportation is evidently not peculiar to European
> folklore. Mardawi adds that he may also claim to be addressed by stars.
> Ibn Qudamah's verdict: 'He is pronounced an unbeliever and killed.'
> There follows various evidence that this is the majority opinion of the
> school. There is some disagreement over whether he is necessarily an
> unbeliever.
>
> Next from Ibn Qudamah: 'As for the one who enchants by medicines,
> smoking, and pouring what is harmful, he is neither pronounced an
> unbeliever nor killed but punished (_yu`azzar_ [i.e. at the qadi's
> discretion]).' Then more about variant opinions within the school.
>
> I find also that there's an extensive discussion of sorcery from the
> Shafi`i al- mAwardI (d. Baghdad, 450/1058) in _al-HAwI al-kabIr_ at the
> end of _k. al- qasAmah_ & just before _qitAl ahl al-baghy_ (16:342-54 of
> the Dar al-Fikr edn., but there's a rival edn. from Dar al-Kutub
> al-`Ilmiyah with different pagination). He begins with an exposition
> from the Qur'an of why sorcery is forbidden. Then he comes to whether
> there is any truth to sorcery: the Mu`tazilah, the Maghribi of _ahl
> al-ZAhir_ (possibly Ibn Hazm, who was still alive & so could not be
> named; it would be easy to check his _k. al-muHalla_ if the library were
> open), & Abu Ja`far al-Istirabadhi among the Shafi`iyah (a Khurasani who
> died _ca_. 375/985-6? not mentioned by Subki) say there is not.
> Mawardi thinks there is, & goes on to mention various hadith reports
> that implicitly ascribe true effectiveness to sorcery. Also, it would
> derogate from Moses' miracle if there were no sorcery. Moreover, it
> should be possible to influence people by words, since the Qur'an so
> influences people by making them unable to produce the like of it.
>
> There's a short section on the sorts of things sorcerers can do, then a
> longer section on the penalties for performing it & teaching it. Abu
> Hanifah & Malik are said to favour the death penalty but they do not say
> certainly that the sorcerer is an unbeliever. Shafi`i is said to have
> called for neither pronouncing him an unbeliever nor killing him, at
> least for practising
> sorcery: if his explanation of his power involves unbelief or he denies
> that it is forbidden, then he is pronounced an unbeliever & killed, but
> not precisely for the fact of practising sorcery.
>
> Continuing to go backward in time, the story of Hafsah's putting to
> death a slave girl of hers is in Sunni hadith collections. The caliph
> of the day, `Uthman, is angry with her for doing this privately (at the
> hand of `Abd al- Rahman ibn Zayd), not leaving it to him.
>
> This is obviously a very incomplete report. I mean just to show what
> sort of material there is to find in legal discussions.
>
> --
> Christopher Melchert
> Oriental Institute
> Pusey Lane
> Oxford OX1 2LE
>
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