Book of Slaughtered Animals
Chapter One: Locating the Site of Slaughter and Sacrifice
The comprehensive treatment of this book’s principles is confined to five chapters:
- Chapter One: Locating the site of slaughter and sacrifice—that is, the animal that is to be slaughtered or sacrificed.
- Chapter Two: Understanding the acts of slaughter and sacrifice.
- Chapter Three: Identifying the instrument by which slaughter and sacrifice are performed.
- Chapter Four: Recognizing the conditions of ritual slaughter (dhakāh).
- Chapter Five: Recognizing the slaughterer, the one who carries out the slaughter or sacrifice.
The foundations are four in number, while the conditions could be incorporated into four of the chapters; yet, for ease of instruction, it is preferable to assign them a separate chapter.
Chapter One: Locating the Site of Slaughter and Sacrifice
With respect to the requirement of dhakāh for lawful consumption, animals fall into two categories: (1) animals that become lawful to eat only through dhakāh, and (2) animals that are lawful without dhakāh. In some of these matters the scholars agree, while in others they differ.
They concur that the animals subject to slaughter are land-dwelling creatures with flowing blood, provided they are not inherently forbidden, fatally pierced in their vital organs, or beyond hope of survival because of strangulation, beating, falling, goring, predation, or disease; and that marine creatures do not require dhakāh. They disagree about edible creatures that do not bleed—such as locusts—whether dhakāh applies to them or not, and about blood-bearing creatures that at times live in the sea and at other times on land, such as turtles and the like.
They also differ over the effect of dhakāh on the categories expressly mentioned in the verse of prohibition, and over its effect on animals whose flesh is unlawful to eat—namely, whether dhakāh permits the use of their skins and removes impurity from them.
Accordingly, this chapter comprises six principal questions:
- The effect of dhakāh on the five categories specified in the verse, should they be found alive.
- The effect of dhakāh on animals whose flesh is forbidden to eat.
- The effect of dhakāh on diseased animals.
- Whether the slaughter of a fetus is subsumed under the slaughter of its mother.
- Whether locusts require dhakāh or not.