Marking the Body: Resemblance and Medieval Muslim

Constructions of Paternity

Kathryn Kueny

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2014,

pp. 65-84 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/547739

Access provided at 8 Oct 2019 23:02 GMT from Lafayette College

 JFSR 30.1 (2014) 65–84

MARKING THE BODY

Resemblance and Medieval Muslim Constructions of Paternity

Kathryn Kueny

Before blood tests, DNA testing, and close record keeping, re-
semblance was often utilized as the means through which pater-
nity 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 article explores the
rich rhetorical strategies medieval Muslim physicians and schol-
ars adopt to establish paternity through the generation and
determination of like features between fathers and children. I
argue that 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 patriar-
chal household. Observations for this discussion are drawn from
a variety of medieval Muslim medical texts, bestiaries, h.adı̄th col-
lections, 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” por-
nography. 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 un-
derstand 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 Mus-
lim standards for identifying paternity. While maternity is rarely disputed (as

1 David Andrew Schultz, Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution (New York: Info­
base, 2009), 390.

-65-
66 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

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?”2
Clearly, 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 author-
itative voice.
This article explores the rich rhetorical strategies a cross-section of medi-
eval Muslim scholars and physicians adopt to establish paternity through the
generation and determination of 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 ques-
tion provides a face-saving way for fathers to accept offspring who look nothing

2 The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Classics, 1997), I.215–20.
3 Aristotle, Historia animalium 1–VI, trans. A. L. Peck, Loeb Classical Library (London:
Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965): 7.6.586(a); Aristotle, Generation of
Animals, trans. A. L. Peck, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953),
1.18.722; and Plutarch, Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1928), 563a. In the Christian context, see Jerome, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions Genesis, trans.
C. T. R. Hayward, Oxford Early Christian Studies (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.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 67

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 cen-
tury 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 produce offspring that resemble those objects or visions.4 These
statements assume that 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’ 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 med-
icine in Alexandria and Rome during the first and second centuries CE, drew
upon the same narrative structure as Empedocles—with slight shifts in empha-
sis—to argue how misshapen men may ensure they engender perfected chil-
dren 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 that 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 ob-
ject 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 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,

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: Harvard
University Press, 1993), 4, for the same Empedocles reference. Such accounts of premodern genetic
engineering also appear in Gen 30:37–43 in a discussion of animals, which suggests such theories
were most likely derived from practices of animal husbandry (Doniger and Spinner, “Misconcep-
tions,” 99; see also Jan Bondeson, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1997], 145).
5 Soranus’ Gynaecology, trans. Oswei Temkin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1956), 37–38.
68 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

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 patri-
archal family.
Other Jewish examples use this same narrative trope more explicitly to ex-
onerate 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 con-
trolling his wife’s sexual desires. 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

6 Spinner and Doniger, “Misconceptions,” 105. Quotation from Moses Maimonides, The
Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides, trans. Fred Rosner (Haifa: Maimonides Research Insti-
tute, 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 Muh.ammad ibn Mūsā al-Damı̄rı̄, H.ayāt
al-h.ayawān al-kubrā, vol. 1 (Qum: Manshūrāt al-Radı̄, 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.
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 physi-
cian, 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 re-
sembling 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).
 Kueny: Marking the Body 69

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 ol’ block” but
rather taking after someone other than the presumed father.9 In these exam-
ples, 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 the 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.

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 exam-
ple, ninth-century Persian physician ‘Alı̄ ibn Sahl Rabbān al-T.abarı̄ (d. 870) in
his Firdaws al-h.ikma (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-T.abarı̄ reported that the
child had 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 h.adı̄th, Abū ‘Abdallāh Muh.ammad
Yazı̄d al-Qazwı̄nı̄ ibn Māja (d. 887 or 889), in his Sunan, also related informa-

9 R. J. Lee, for example, discusses “maternal impressions” in the context of other medical ail-
ments. 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).
10 Rabbān al-T.abarı̄, Firdaws al-h.ikma fı̄ al-t.ibb (Beirut: s.n., 1970), 35.
70 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

tion similar to Rabbi Akiba’s midrashic advice to a white woman who gave birth
to a black child. In this example, the prophet Muh.ammad explains this rather
unusual phenomenon through appeals to heredity.11 The fourteenth-century
Egyptian scholar Muh.ammad ibn Mūsa al-Damı̄rı̄ (d. 1405), in his H . ayāt
al-h.ayawān al-kubrā (Great Book of Animals), likewise recorded a number of
tales in which white women give birth to black sons, even though their husbands
are also white.12 Like Rabbān al-T.abarı̄, Damı̄rı̄ 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, Damı̄rı̄ 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 exam-
ples 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 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 commu-
nity’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 pro-
tect the integrity of the child as well as the authority of the father, here secured

11 Kitāb al-sunan (Cairo: Dār ih.yā al-kutub al-‘arabı̄ya, 1953), no. 2003.
12 Damı̄rı̄, H.ayāt al-h.ayawān al-kubrā, 24–28. See also al-T.abarı̄, Firdaws, 35, who relates
the story of a woman who bore a girl from an Ethiopian man. 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 Damı̄rı̄, H.ayāt al-h.ayawān al-kubrā, 50.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 71

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 ac-
cusation, 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 fa-
ther 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
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 dis-
solved 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

14 Shahid M. Shahidullah, Comparative Criminal Justice Systems: Global and Local Perspec-
tives (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.
16 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, 2013), 138.
72 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

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 hus-
bands’ 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 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 seems 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 like-
ness 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 mascu-
linity 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 ana-
tomical paradigms many Muslim scholars privileged to explain how reproduc-
tion 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 mate-

17 Ibid.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 73

rial 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 Ar-
istotle, 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 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 ances-
tors, 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 cre-
ative power. In similar fashion, Sūra 42:11 notes how God “has made pairs (az-
wājan) 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 back-

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.
19 Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam, 45.
74 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

bone (al-s.ulbi) and the ribs (al-tarā’ibi). Sūra 76:2 refers to the role of mingled
sperm (nut.fatin 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 ulti-
mate 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.
Following Qur’anic and Hippocratic thought when it comes to reproduc-
tive theories, the majority of medieval Muslim traditionalists asserted males and
females both emit seeds that carry traits inherited by offspring. For example,
in the Muwat..ta’ of eighth-century Medinan scholar Mālik ibn Anas (d. 795),
Umm Sulaym, one of the earliest female converts to Islam, asked the prophet
Muh.ammad 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 emis-
sion?” 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-Dı̄n al-
Suyūt. ı̄ (d. 1505) also emphasized the necessity for male and female contri-
butions to the reproductive process. In his T.ibb al-nabawı̄ (Medicine of the
Prophet), Suyūt. ı̄ argued resemblance will depend on the quality of the sperm
emitted. He notes how “Ibn ‘Abbās related the h.adı̄th that the fluid of a man is
white and thick, and that the fluid of a woman is thin and yellow. The family re-
semblance 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 that the male has a more natu-
rally dominant role in determining inherited traits 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 H . unayn ibn Ish.āq al-‘Ibādı̄ (d. 872), 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

20 Muwat.t.a’ (Beirut: Dār al-gharb al-islāmi), “Kitāb al-t.ahara,” 2.21.86.

21 T.ibb al-nabawı̄, translated as As-Suyuti’s Medicine of the Prophet, ed. Ahmad Thomson
(London: Ta-Ha, 1994), 185.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 75

to be called offspring.22 Like H . unayn ibn Ish.āq, many Muslim scholars similarly
rejected Hippocrates’ two-seed theory to suggest that males alone produce the
life-form of the child. Mālik ibn Anas (d. 795), for example, relates how ‘Abdal-
lāh ibn ‘Umar disapproved of castration because “the completeness of the cre-
ated form is in the testicles.”23 These examples illustrate, perhaps, the contin-
ued 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 nec-
essarily dominate the mother’s, is likewise conferred through depictions of ani-
mal husbandry practices. For example, tenth-century Baghdadi intellectual Abū
H. ayyān al-Tawh.ı̄dı̄ (d. 1023), 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. 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 medi-
eval 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-Rāzı̄ (d. 925 CE), in his
tenth-century Kitāb al-dā’ al-khafı̄ (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 (muh.ı̄l) the other (mustah.ı̄l)
and then to transform it according to its own inherent characteristics.26 The
idea that one sperm must come to dominate the other is reinforced through

22 L. S. Filius, ed., The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle: The Arabic Version of H.un-
ayn ibn Ishāq and the Hebrew Version of Moses ibn Tibbon (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 275.
23 Muwat.t.a’, 51.1.4.
24 Abū H . ayyān al-Tawh.ı̄dı̄, Kitāb al-imtā‘ wa al-mu’ānsa, translated by L. Kopf as The Zoologi-
cal Chapter of the Kitāb al-imtā‘ wa al-mu’ānsa al-Tawh.ı̄dı̄ (10th Century), Osiris 12 (1956): 408–9.
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-Rāzı̄ on the Hidden Illness,” in Science and Medicine in Islam
(London: Variorum: 1990), 52.
76 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

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.
In most cases, medieval doctors argued the more powerful sperm will de-
pend on its superior quantity and/or quality.27 Muslim physicians projected a
variety of scripts to account for why one seed might be “superior” over another.
One suggestion is that the child takes after the first parent to reach orgasm.28
Here, the force of the orgasmic experience empowers and strengthens the first
sperm out of the gate, allowing it to dominate the weaker.29 In theory, the male
or the female could have more abundant or better quality sperm, and there-
fore 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 explain-
ing 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 ‘Arı̄b ibn

27 Muslim ibn al-H . ajjāj al-Qushayrı̄, Jāmi‘ al-s.ah.ı̄h. (Beirut: Dār Ibn H
. azm, 1995), “Kitāb
al-h.ayd,” 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 woman’s is thin and yellow, so resem-
blance comes from the one whose sperm dominates.’ ” Suyūt.ı̄ also notes the differences in sperm
color and consistency: “Ibn ‘Abbās related the h.adı̄th 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 which-
ever of these two fluids is more subtle or more fine” (Jalāl al-Dı̄n al-Suyūt.ı̄, T.ibb al-nabawı̄ [London:
Ta-ha, 1994], 185).
28 ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d, Kitāb khalq al-janı̄n wa-tadbı̄r al-h.abālā wa ‘l-mawlūdı̄n (al-Jaza’ir: Makta-
bat farrāris, 1956), 9. See also Muh.ammad ibn Abı̄ Bakr ibn Qayyim al-Jawzı̄ya, Al-Tibyān fı̄ aqsām
al-qur’ān (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-risāla, 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 Muh.ammad ibn Ismā‘ı̄l ibn Ibrāhı̄m al-Bukhārı̄ makes the same observation in Jāmi‘
al-s.ah.ı̄h. (Al-Riyād.: Bayt al-afkār al-dawlı̄ya 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 resem-
ble the father, and if the woman discharges first, the child will resemble her” (“Kitāb al-anbiyā’,” no.
546; and “Kitāb al-ans.ār,” no. 275).
29 Suyūt.ı̄ states that a man’s fluid is hot and strong, thick and white, and a woman’s fluid is thin-
ner, 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
(T.ibb, 185). Here, Suyūt.ı̄ links sexual desire with the production of greater quantities of sperm.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 77

Sa‘d (d. 980), in his Kitāb khalq al-janı̄n (Creation of the Embryo), emphasized
the importance of foreplay before sex, as passion is key to abundant sperm pro-
duction. ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d explained—quite conveniently perhaps—that the more
pleasure a 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.30
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.31 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.32 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 a man’s ability to produce
a sound child.33
In general, scholars asserted healthy men generate healthy seed; old, sick,
lazy, or diseased men put forth deficient or weak seed.34 Even one’s mood can
affect the quality and quantity of sperm produced. ‘Arı̄b 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.35 Likewise, sad, sick souls only yield weak, thin sperm that will most
likely be dominated by the mother’s.36 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

30 ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d, Kitāb khalq, 10.

31 Abū Ja‘far Ah.mad ibn Ibrāhı̄m ibn Abı̄ Khālid ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir wa qūt al-h.ās.ir,
book 6, trans. Gerrit Bos (New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 249.
32 Ibid., 25. ‘Arı̄b 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).
33 Suyūt.ı̄, T.ibb, 19.
34 Ibid., 10, 11, 19, and see also 186.
35 ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d claims that youths tend to bear more males, because of their strength, happi-
ness of soul, and gladness (Kitāb khalq, 25).
36 Ibid.
78 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

sperm, since it would inevitably be dominated by the female’s.37 In order to

determine what kind of child they would prefer their wives to bear, men can dis-
cipline their minds and bodies in particular ways to produce the desired results.
For example, ‘Arı̄b 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 be-
cause that act would defy their inherent, masculine natures) to produce females
that may or may not resemble them.38 In contrast to the Qur’an’s emphasis on
equal partnering in the generation of offspring, and its assertions that God cre-
ates 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 dispo-
sitions to ensure their sperm will overpower their wives’. Tenth-century Muslim
physician Abū Ja‘far ibn Abı̄ Khālid Ibn al-Jazzār al-Qayrawānı̄ (d. 979 CE), for
example, identified a number of foods men 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.39 The T.ibb al-a’imma, a collection of medical h.adı̄th attributed
to the Shı̄‘ite imams, recommended hot, tender endive, for it increases semen,
improves the color, and multiplies the number of males one can produce.40 The
Shı̄‘ite imams also proposed a meal of parched barley (sawı̄q) for the begetting
of strong, healthy children.41 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.42 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 that 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 Bah.r al-Jāh.iz.
(d.  868), for example, noted that while most children are born in perfected

37 ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d notes how the elderly tend to produce females (Kitāb khalq, 25).
38 Ibid., 24. ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d suggests there may be some instances in which 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).
39 Zad al-musāfir wa qūt al-h.ās.ir, 243.
40 ‘Abdallāh ibn Bust.ām al-Nı̄sābūrı̄, Islamic Medical Wisdom: The t.ibb al-a’imma, trans.
Batool Ispahamy (London: Muhammadi Trust, 1991), 177.
41 Ibid, 111. This tradition is specifically attributed to Ja‘far al-S.ādiq.
42 Ibid., 15.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 79

form,43 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 prevents the craftsman from making something correctly, as he in-
tends.”44 Often, medieval physicians believed little could be done to correct
the innate weaknesses of the womb and were satisfied simply to identify and
catalog its flaws. ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d, for example, noted that women most capable
of conceiving must be of normal weight and size; heavy women will have a
hard time reproducing, as fat cuts off the mouth of the womb, which prevents
male seed from entering.45 Rabbān al-T.abarı̄, 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.46 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 hos-
tile 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 vagaries of a man’s own thoughts, health, and well-being,

43 Abū ‘Uthmān ‘Amr ibn Bar. al-Jāh.iz., “Chance or Creation”? God’s Design in the Universe,
trans. M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Reading, England: Garnet, 1995), 113. Jāh.iz. 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 no hand can
reach, yet the baby comes out well shaped and complete with all the components it needs for its wel-
fare: 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).
44 Ibid.
45 ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d, noting Hippocrates (Kitāb khalq, 19). See also Hippocrates, Aphorisms, in
Hippocratic Writings, trans. J. Chadwick (New York: Penguin, 1978), 5.46. For ancient Greek med-
ical 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 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).
46 al-T.abarı̄, Firdaws, 36. See also ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d, Kitāb khalq, 20; and Hippocrates, Apho-
risms, 5.62.
80 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

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 en-
tertained 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 that
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 re-
sembling its parents’ basest iniquities. For example, Damı̄rı̄ 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.47 The child in this case
embodies the taboo of humans crossing faith boundaries during an act of illicit
sexual intercourse.
Similarly, ninth-century Persian scholar Abū Muh.ammad ‘Abdallāh ibn
Muslim ibn Qutayba (d. 885), in his Kitāb ‘uyūn al-akhbār (Book of Choice Nar-
ratives), stated that the child of a masculine female and effeminate man will be
wicked and have a worse nature than that of the mule.48 In this example, moth-
ers whose copulation practices stray too far outside the accepted taxonomic
group produce offspring that reveal their transgressions. Similarly, in the Tafsı̄r,
attributed to Andalusian mystic Muh.yā al-Dı̄n ibn ‘Arabı̄ (d. 1240 CE), we find
that parents who have consumed unlawful foods may produce children with
souls that are dark, filthy, and evil. Ibn ‘Arabı̄ used a modified Hippocratic argu-
ment 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.49 Here again, the child’s natural composition reveals the inherent
iniquities of the parents.

47 Damı̄rı̄, H.ayawān al-h.ayawān al-kubrā, 2:6.

48 Abū Muh.ammad ‘Abdallāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutayba, Kitāb ‘Uyūn al-akhbār (Cairo:
al-Mu‘assasa al-mis.rı̄ya al-āmma li al-ta’lı̄f wa al-tarjama wa al-nashr, 1964), 65.
49 Muh.yı̄ al-Dı̄n ibn al-‘Arabı̄, Tafsı̄r al-Qur’ān al-karı̄m (Beirut: Dār al-thaqāfa al-‘arabı̄ya,
1968), commentary on Sūra 3:35.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 81

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 inter-
course, no matter how infirm the woman’s womb.
Ibn Qutayba, for example, related a story in which the second Muslim
caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattāb (d. 640) 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 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 deter-
mining 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.”50
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 that female dogs menstruate every seven days.51 Dogs are also rendered
impure to eat because, Abū H . ayyān noted, they are known to lap blood with
their tongues.52 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 h.adı̄th, Muh.ammad
ibn Ismā‘ı̄l al-Bukhārı̄ (d. 870 CE), suggested point-blank that one can prove
adultery if the child does not look like the father.53 Muh.ammad ibn ‘Abdallāh

50 Ibn Qutayba,‘Uyūn al-akhbār, 69.

51 Ibid., 81.
52 Abū H . ayyān, Kitāb al-imtā‘ wa al-mu’ānsa, 431. He notes that lions and cats practice the
same disgusting habit.
53 Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., “Kitāb tafsı̄r al-qur’ān,” nos. 269, 271; “Kitāb al-dı̄yāt,” no. 407. See also
Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., “Kitāb al-farā’id.,” no. 762, where resemblance is determined by an examination
of the feet; and “Kitāb al-h.udūd,” nos. 837 and 839: here resemblance is used to prove illicit sexual
intercourse. In an example from Mālik’s Muwat.t.a’, a “professional” scrutinizer of resemblance could
not determine the child’s father. ‘Umar let the child decide which of the two possible candidates he
wanted to serve as his father (36.21.22). Presumably, that gentleman would have to comply.
82 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

Khat.ı̄b al-Tabrı̄zı̄’s fourteenth-century Mishkāt al-mas.ābı̄h. (A Niche for Lamps),

a handbook of authoritative Sunnı̄ h.adı̄th, also recorded how the prophet
Muh.ammad uses paternal resemblance to determine whether a woman com-
mitted adultery,54 a position that directly counters the need for four witnesses
mandated by the Qur’an to prove cases of illicit sexual intercourse.55
A number of Shı̄‘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 ‘Alı̄ ibn H . usayn al-Sharı̄f al-Murtad.ā
(d. 1044) argued those created from adulterous sperm will never choose a good
and virtuous road.56 Likewise, eleventh-century transmitter of Shı̄‘ite h.adı̄th,
Abū Ja‘far al-T.ūs.ı̄ (d. 1045), 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 gener-
ations.57 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 strawber-
ries while pregnant. In yet another example from Damı̄rı̄’s H.ayāt al-h.ayawān,
the prophet Muh.ammad tells the story of a white man who begets a black and
reddish son. The man wonders why this could be, and the prophet notes it oc-
curred because the man’s own father was leprous, a secret the man had wished
to conceal but that was revealed through the body of his own son.58 In another

54 Muh.ammad ibn ‘Abdallāh Khat.ı̄b al-Tabrı̄zı̄, Mishkāt al-mas.ābı̄h. (Beirut: Dār ibn H
. azm,
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 adul-
terer, God will still transform the features of the child into those of the adulterer in order to reveal
her transgression.
55 Sūras 24:4; 24:13. See also Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., “Kitāb al-maghāzı̄,” no. 462.
56 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.
57 Ibid., 244–45.
58 Damı̄rı̄ mentions that a man by the name of Zurāra b. ‘Amr al-Nakhā‘ı̄ 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” (H.ayāt al-h.ayawān al-kubrā, 28–29). Here, one’s genetic past can never be hidden,
but it is always exposed for public scrutiny and evaluation.
 Kueny: Marking the Body 83

example, the prophet Muh.ammad chastises a woman for trying to use non-
resemblance to sever her husband from his children. Bukhārı̄ reported how
Muh.ammad 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!”59 In this example, resemblance is established by an outside party to pro-
tect 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 un-
expected vagaries of inherited traits, since refusal to do so could create an insur-
mountable 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
in which children would be readily abandoned by insecure men would under-
mine the cornerstones of the faith: the Muslim family and the umma (com-
munity). Damı̄rı̄, for example, reported how the prophet Muh.ammad 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 rela-
tives.60 The concern here is for fathers who were too quick to neglect their chil-
dren 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, Mus-
lim scholars emphasized heredity and the unpredictable nature of inherited
traits, and the many biological explanations for why children often end up look-
ing nothing like their presumed fathers. In each case, men must assert socially
their position as heads of household by accepting responsibility for their chil-
dren 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 break down as the result of a woman’s adultery or her partic-
ipation in other sorts of disreputable acts, the iniquities that caused such de-
struction 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,

59 Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., “Kitāb al-t.ibb,” no. 715.

60 Damı̄rı̄ , H.ayāt al-h.ayawān al-kubrā, 24–28. See also ‘Arı̄b ibn Sa‘d, Kitāb khalq, 10; and
Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., “Kitāb al-s.alāq,” no. 225.
84 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1

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 patriar-
chal family structure, a 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 tradi-
tions, 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, over his wife’s sexuality and reproductive power,
which inevitably results in more forceful efforts to conceal it.