[Book of Foods and Drinks]

[Section One – Things Forbidden in the Absence of Necessity]

Our treatment of the principles of this Book is divided into two comprehensive sections:

1. In the first, we shall set out the items that are forbidden when one is under no compulsion.
2. In the second, we shall discuss their rulings in circumstances of necessity.

Section One

Human nourishment is derived from plants and animals. Concerning the animal sources of food, some are lawful according to the Sacred Law and others unlawful. Among them are land creatures and sea creatures. The unlawful may be so either in their very essence or because of an accidental factor. With regard to every category, there are matters on which the scholars agree and matters about which they differ.

Those rendered unlawful by an accidental factor fall, in sum, into nine classes:

1. carrion,
2. the strangled,
3. the beaten to death,
4. the one that falls from a height,
5. the gored,
6. that of which a predator has eaten,
7. every animal for which lawful slaughter is a condition and from which one of the conditions of slaughter is missing,
8. the jallālah (an animal whose habitual fodder is filth), and
9. food that is lawful in itself but has been contaminated by impurity.

As for carrion, the scholars unanimously agree on the prohibition of land carrion. They have disagreed, however, about carrion from the sea, adopting three opinions:
• Some maintain that it is unconditionally lawful.
• Others maintain that it is unconditionally unlawful.
• Yet others hold that fish which float on the surface are unlawful, whereas whatever is left behind by the retreating tide is lawful.

The root of their disagreement lies in the apparent conflict of the transmitted reports on this question: the general wording of the Qur’an opposes some of them completely, accords with others partially, and some of the reports themselves partially contradict one another.

The general text is the Almighty’s statement:

“Carrion has been forbidden to you” (al-Māʾidah 5:3).

The reports that stand in complete opposition to this general text are two: one whose authenticity is agreed upon and another over which there is dispute.

• The agreed-upon report is the ḥadīth of Jābir, in which:
“Certain Companions of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—came upon a huge fish called al-ʿanbar that the sea had cast ashore. They ate of it for twenty-odd days, or a month. When they reached the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—and informed him, he asked, ‘Do you have any of it with you?’ They sent him some of its meat, and he ate of it.”
This ḥadīth opposes the Qur’anic text only in its purport, not in its literal wording.

• The second, disputed report is what Mālik narrates from Abū Hurayrah, that he was asked about sea water