973: Ibn Ḥawqal on Christian-Muslim Marriages in Sicily: Difference between revisions

Ibn Ḥawqal (d. after 378/988) was one of the major contributors to Arabic-Islamic geography and cartography in the 4th/10th century. He authored an extensive work which is based in the tradition of the Balḫī school and enriched by the experiences of his own travels. His aim was to cover the regions (''iqlīm, pl. aqālīm'') of the world and their borders, whilst also describing the inhabitants and their customs based on personal observation (''ʿiyān''). Originally from Nisibis in Upper Mesopotamia (known today as Nusaybin in southeastern Turkey), Ibn Ḥawqal set out from Baghdad to al-Mahdiyya in May 943 (Ramaḍān 331), where he stayed at the Fatimid court, before embarking on years of travelling. His journey brought him first to al-Andalus, North Africa, and the Southern Sahara (336-340/947-951) before he went east, as far as Armenia and Azerbaijan (ca. 344/955), and onward to Persia and Transoxiana (350-358/961-969 resp. 358/969). His last destination was Sicily, which he visited in the year 363/973, when the island was already under the suzerainty of the Fatimid Caliphate. It has been speculated, that Ibn Ḥawqal travelled on behalf of the Fatimids which would prompt the question as to what extent such an affinity to the Shiite-Ismaili dynasty might have ideologically influenced his writing.<ref name="ftn1">Wiet, L’importance; Miquel, Ibn Ḥawqal; for a recent critique see: Benchejroun, Requiem.</ref>  

From the perspective of historical linguistics and etymology, the common translation “bastards” for Ibn Ḥawqal’s ''al-mušaʿmiḏūn'' seems inaccurate, and also the translation of “apostates” is at least ambiguous. In fact, the translation “bastards” would ultimately not carry the implications inherent in Ibn Ḥawqal’s criticism, given that a “bastard” is usually defined as the offspring of an illegitimate union. In the Qurʾān, marriages between Muslim men and Christian women are not objectionable.<ref name="ftn26">According to Q 5:5; on the prohibition for Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men see Q 2:221; 60:10; 4:141.</ref> According to Islamic law, the offspring of these marriages should invariably adhere to the religion of the father. From this point of view, a violation of the norm would be, firstly, that girls born from Muslim fathers in Sicily became Christians with their mothers and not Muslims, and secondly that the ''mušaʿmiḏūn'' did not perform their Islamic duties in a correct manner. Therefore, the “bastardization” does not refer to the parentage, but—as with the halakhic meaning of ''meshumadim—''to the corruption of religious practice. Thus, instead of witnessing a process of consecutive Islamization, Sicily saw a “production” of Christian women and male ''mušaʿmiḏūn'', but not of “proper” Muslims. It is interesting to note that this marriage practice with its gender-specific regulation of religious affiliation, which is also attested in other sources that pertain to Sicily,<ref name="ftn27">See Metcalfe, Transkultureller Wandel, pp.&nbsp;79-81.</ref> was apparently free of conflict on the island itself.<ref name="ftn28">On children of interreligious marriages, also see König, Caught Between Cultures, pp. 65-68, with a comparison to the “martyrs of Córdoba“ and the Turcopoles (τουρκόπουλοι); idem, ''Transkulturelle Verflechtungen'', pp. 84-90.</ref> Instead, indignation at the violation of the norm is reflected through the outside perspective of the traveler Ibn Ḥawqal—who used a word, which the Arabic-speaking Jews of this period linked with a lax practice of faith, and maybe even with an ideological proximity to Christianity.

Ibn Ḥawqal, ''Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ'', ed. Michael J. De Goeje, rev. Johannes H. Kramers (Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum 2a), Leiden: Brill, 1938.