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Kathryn Kueny
TH E B I RTH OF C A I N :
R E P RO D UC T I O N ,
M AT E R NA L
RESPONSIBI LITY, AND
MO R A L C H A R AC T E R I N
E A R LY I S L A M I C
EXEGESIS
introduction
The Cain and Abel story is well known to biblical audiences for its
explorations into the origins of murder, human retribution, and divine
justice for those who prove themselves righteous before God. In the biblical account, Adam knows his wife Eve; she conceives and produces a
son named Cain, who tills the soil. Eve then bears Cain’s brother Abel,
who keeps sheep. Both brothers bring offerings before the Lord: Cain, fruit
of the soil, and Abel, the firstlings of his flock. The Lord accepts Abel’s
sacrifice but rejects Cain’s. Although God tells Cain that if he does what
is right, then all will go well for him, Cain still kills Abel in a field. God
uncovers the murder and condemns Cain to a perpetual state of exile.1
The early Islamic exegetical tradition presumes Cain’s crimes are
familiar to its audiences but radically alters the landscape in which those
crimes are committed and the fundamental issues of murder, retribution,
and justice to which the story speaks. Whatever their motivations for
bypassing the basic motifs of the biblical narrative, the early Muslim
versions of the story create something of a testing ground for theories
about the relationship between reproduction and the development of
moral character. These theories articulate the innate tension between the
ideal, that is, radical individualism before God, and lived experience, that
1
Genesis 4:1–16.
ç 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0018-2710/2008/4802-0002$10.00
History of Religions
111
is, one’s person being biologically, socially, and morally determined by
one’s parents.2
For Muslim exegetes, Cain did not kill because God rejected his sacrifice. Cain killed because of who he was, and scholars debated to what
extent his flawed nature was tied to how he came to be. To attempt to
understand how Cain came to be, Muslim exegetes wedded their plethora
of responses to perceived problems posed by an inherited tradition to
broader debates surrounding (1) reproduction and the role of maternal responsibility in shaping moral character (or vice versa the impact of moral
character on human reproduction), (2) the extent to which God’s knowledge and power control both, and (3) the ability of an individual believer
to overcome a familial determinism that has the appearance of being
driven by divine destiny. The story of Cain and Abel, therefore, reveals
the varied but often contradictory avenues that Muslim scholars considered as they tried to locate fault when bad birth outcomes, such as
premature or stillborn births and births in which the mother’s health is
negatively affected or the infant is morally defective, seemingly disrupt a
flawless world where “no soul shall bear the burdens of another,”3 and “it
is He who shapes your bodies in your mothers’ wombs as He pleases.”4
the qurªan’s portrayal of cain as generic type
The biblical telling of the Cain and Abel narrative is highly detailed.
Genesis 4:1–7, for example, identifies what product each son sacrifices
and emphasizes God’s choice of Abel’s meat sacrifice over Cain’s grain
offering. The qurªanic presentation of the same murderous event, however,
is devoid of such detail. The Qurªan is silent on what each son offered,
and it makes no reference to the fact that God would favor shepherds
over farmers. The Qurªan turns the sons into generic types who represent
the righteous and the unrighteous, and asserts that God only recognizes
offerings from the righteous: “Recite to them the truth of the story of the
two sons of Adam. Behold! Each presented a sacrifice. It was accepted
from one of them but not from the other. He said, ‘I will certainly slay
you.’ He said, ‘God only accepts the sacrifice from the righteous (min almuttaqina).’ ”5 By not identifying what each son sacrifices, the Qurªan
bypasses the biblical quandary of why God would prefer meat to crops.
More importantly, to assert that God only accepts the sacrifices of the
2
See, for example, Surat al-fatir (35:18), which states “no soul shall bear the burdens of
another (taziru waziratun wizra ukhra).” The same statement is repeated verbatim in Surat
al-zumar (39:7) and Surat al-najm (53:38).
3 Ibid.
4
Surat Al-ºImran (3:6): Huwa allathi yusawwirukum fi ’l-arhami kayfa yashaªu la ilaha
illa huwa al-ºazizu al-hakimu.
5
Surat al-maªida (5:27).
112
Birth of Cain
righteous removes the rivalry necessary for each brother to determine
his status and favor in the eyes of God through his subsequent words and
actions. For Muslim exegetes, whose task it was to make sense of the
Qurªan’s position that Cain was already to be counted among the unrighteous, the question of whether Cain was innately flawed or later corrupted through his own actions is firmly rooted in broader discussions
and debates about the role Eve plays as mother and the conception, birthing, and nurturing of her sons, Cain and Abel. Added to these conversations are careful analyses of Cain’s own potential reproductive role as
exegetes debated the extent to which a flawed maternal character is imprinted upon the offspring. All of these deliberations draw heavily from
contemporaneous medical and folk wisdom about how reproduction
actually takes place, which highlights the intricate tensions between
lived experience and a cosmic ideal to which that experience is evaluated
and compared.
exceptional conceptions
The Qurªan’s ruthless minimalism when it comes to narrative detail encourages its exegetes to consider a variety of questions having to do with
birth outcomes, all of which radiate from the basic setting of the story.
Although the Qurªan is silent on the issue of which brother killed whom,
the majority of Muslim exegetes do agree that Cain killed Abel.6 As noted
above, the pivotal question that the qurªanic story raises is why Cain is
marked as one of the unrighteous. To address this question, the Islamic
interpretive literature focuses on how Cain came to be in order to consider
whether he was (1) hereditarily marked—either physically or otherwise—
to bear the bad choices made by his mother; (2) produced initially by
good seed but good seed gone bad in, perhaps, a bad womb; or (3) born
innocent and pure but then morally corrupted as a result of his turning
away from God. Within such extended discussions about the physical
formation of Eve’s progeny, early and medieval Islamic exegetes clearly
disagree over the extent to which the mother’s body and mind affect the
formation of an individual’s moral and ethical character.
Most medieval Muslim exegetes agree that Cain was just one of many
children born to Adam and Eve; there was nothing unusual about his
birth relative to his siblings’. For example, scholars claim that Eve bore
6
See, for example, Tabari (Abu Jaªfar Muhammad ibn Jarir), Jamiª al-bayan ºan taªwil alqurªan (Tafsir al-Tabari) (Cairo: Dar al-Maªarif, 1950), 10:205ff. Strangely, Tabari, for the
most part, maintains the Qurªan’s insistence on the anonymity of the brothers and employs
such ambiguous statements as “the son of Adam killed his companion” (222), etc. However,
given that he does relate traditions that do identify the animal sacrifice as being Abel’s
and the agricultural sacrifice as being Cain’s, we can surmise that it was Cain who killed
Abel (204).
History of Religions
113
numerous sets of twins with Adam, male/female pairs with each pregnancy.
Their opinions vary greatly, however, as to how many sets of twins in total
Eve bore; some exegetes come down on the side of one hundred twenty
pregnancies yielding two hundred forty children,7 others “only” twenty
pregnancies yielding forty children.8 The idea that wombs can generate
multiple fetuses with a single pregnancy is underscored by the medical
literature. Rabban al-Tabari, for example, notes one woman who bore
twenty children in “four wombs (or pregnancies)”; another who bore
sixty children in “thirty-five wombs.”9 Whatever the numbers, everyone
agrees wholeheartedly that Eve was extraordinarily productive.
Sunni traditions relate that as Eve’s children grew older, Adam began
to marry off one of the boys to a sister who was not his twin, since God
informed Adam that marrying one’s “womb-mate” was strictly forbidden.10
These sources acknowledge the problems inherent in incestuous unions
but insist cross-twin marriage, an exceptional practice granted through
God’s grace and blessing for the time,11 to be better than copulation with
one’s own twin, or even worse, one’s mother. Notably, Shiªite scholars
found even this relatively distant and anomalous form of sibling incest
abhorrent; rather than allowing each brother to mate with his sister, the
Shiªites claim God created a female jinniya for Cain to marry and a
houriya for Abel.12 In Shiªite traditions, since neither one of these nonhuman beings could bear offspring, God carved out wombs in them so
they could conceive.13
What these Shiªite examples show, as do the Sunni narratives, is that
the divine prohibition against incest is woven so deeply into the fabric
of the universe that all reproductive activities, including the social rules
governing it and the biological mechanics driving it, are inherently
7
Ibn Kathir, Qisas al-anbiyaª, trans. Rashad Ahmad Azami, as Stories of the Prophets
(Riyadh: Darussalam, 1999), 44.
8
Ibid., 44; Tabari, Taªrikh al-rasul wa ’l-muluk, trans. Franz Rosenthal, as General Introduction and from the Creation to the Flood, vol. 1 (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1989), 310; Thaªlabi (Abu Ishaq Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim), ºAraªis almajalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, trans. William Brinner, as Stories of the Prophets (Leiden: Brill,
2002), 73.
9
Rabban al-Tabari (ºAli ibn Sahl Rabban), Firdaws al-hikma fi ’l-tibb (Beirut, 1970?),
35. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya (Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr), al-Tibyan fi aqsam al-qurªan (Beirut:
Muªassasat al-Risala, 1994), also repeats the story of the woman who bore twenty children in
four pregnancies (305).
10
Ibn Kathir, Qisas al-anbiyaª, 40; Tabari, Taªrikh, 309–10.
11
Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 74.
12
Ibid., 75, records a tradition to this effect, whose authority is traced back to Jaªfar alSadiq. Theoretically, the houriya (a paradisical woman whose sole purpose is to pleasure the
righteous in the Garden) would have been more attractive than the jinniya (a female spirit
or demon), which suggests already that God rewarded the righteous prior to Cain’s slaying
of Abel.
13
Ibid.
114
Birth of Cain
subject to that law.14 The exegetes not only construe any sexual union
that violates the prohibition without any sort of divine “stay,” such as son
mating with mother or father with daughter, as a social and moral infringement (even before there was a community to condemn it), but, more strikingly, they depict it as a natural aberration, since nature too is subsumed
under divine law. Therefore, they assert that God must have granted an
exemption to Eve’s sons, whose only choices were to mate with distant
sisters, jinn, and houris, practices that would, in any other context, be considered unnatural and therefore ungodly. In this place and time, however,
their sexual behavior is socially, culturally, naturally, and divinely affirmed
in order to shield the perfection of God’s cosmos against any threat of
corruption caused by even more detestable forms of incest. As a result,
Eve’s offspring are guarded from any social, moral, or physical consequences that would ordinarily arise from an incestuous union.
To bypass further such exceptional incestuous pairings deployed to explain how the first family reproduced itself without incurring any divine
punishment, some scholars also explore the possibility that offspring could
be generated spontaneously from a single being. Thaªlabi, for example,
relates one tradition that describes how God first created Adam and then
stroked his back, from which he withdrew offspring who were then destined for the Garden or Fire, a phenomenon also explored at some length
by Tabari.15 This rather erotic image of the male role in the process of reproduction supports qurªanic statements that suggest that the formation
of man did not come from a process of pairing or mating (a position the
Qurªan also asserts16) but from God’s creation of life from a single speck
of dust, clay, or “single being.”17 Obviously, despite clear evidence of
how reproduction works in the natural world, some exegetes found it desirable to omit Eve’s role in God’s generation of mankind altogether,
which may hint that they found her moral character and maternal involvement in the process suspect or troublesome from the start.
Thaªlabi argues that the only other being to generate spontaneously (this
time without the loving hand of God) is Iblis, who had sexual intercourse
with himself and laid four eggs from which his offspring descended.18 In
14
This claim against incest is confirmed also by Arab wisdom. According to Ibn Qutayba
(ºAbdallah ibn Muslim), the Arabs say that if you go abroad you will not beget weak offspring. Only kindred wives give birth to weak offspring (Ibn Qutayba, ºUyun al-akhbar (Cairo:
al-Muªassasa al-Misriya al-ºamma li ’l-taªlif wa ’l-tarjama wa ’l-Nashr, 1964), 2:67.
15
Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 68. See also Tabari, Taªrikh, 304–7.
16
See, for example, Surat al-dhariyat (51:49): “Everything we have created in pairs.”
17 See Suwar: al-Anªam (6:98); al-Hijr (15:25); al-Hajj (22:5); al-Muªminun (23:12); and
especially al-Aªraf (7:189), which states, “It was He who created you from a single being.
From that being He created his spouse, so that he might find comfort in her.”
18
This comes from a hadith quoted by Thaªlabi (via the lineage of transmission: Muqatil
and Juwaybir > al-Dahhak > Ibn ºAbbas), ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 70.
History of Religions
115
a similar vein, Damiri reports how God created a male organ on Iblis’s
right thigh and a female organ on his left thigh. When the two thighs
copulate, ten eggs come forth, out of which seven hundred devils are
hatched on a daily basis.19 These examples show that in contrast to Adam,
who was chosen by God to generate the human race, any other individual
who engages in deviant sexual practices outside of God’s direct approval
will produce defective offspring. Anomalous sexual practices only create
healthy children under God’s watchful eye, among servants he alone
selects. Clearly, however, the line between producing a future prophet or
devil is precariously thin, since either one could be generated from the
same monosexual act.
extraordinary births
While most Sunni scholars report that Cain’s birth was as normal (i.e.,
conceived through “normal” sexual relations between a male and female
as described in the Qurªan) as any other for the time, a minority claims
that unlike the rest of his siblings, Cain was born under remarkable conditions. These minority traditions describe how Eve became pregnant with
Cain and his twin sister (Iqlima20) in the Garden before their descent to
earth.21 In the perfected Garden, Eve bore none of the burdens of an earthly
pregnancy; she had no fatigue, no labor pains, and no blood during or
after the birth.22 In other words, Eve did not experience the impurities
normal women are thought to contract during pregnancy and birth in the
eyes of Islamic law.23
Thaªlabi, for example, suggests that within this pristine environment,
Eve nursed Cain with “pure milk” (min taharat labanihi), a milk not
mixed.24 Medical scholars of the time, such as Majusi, argue that breast
19
Damiri (Muhammad ibn Musa), Hiyat al-hayawan al-kubra (Qum: Manshurat al-Radi,
1985), 1:297. While viewing it as taboo in the human context, Muslim scholars had no
problems discussing extraordinary cases of spontaneous generation in the animal world. See,
for example, Ibn Qutayba, ºUyun al-akhbar, 2:67.
20
A similar tale of twins (with cognate names for the sisters: Qlimta and Lbuda) appears
in the sixth-century Syriac “Cave of Treasures.” See Jurgen Tubach, “Seth in Early Syriac
Literature,” in Eve’s Children: The Biblical Stories Retold and Interpreted in Jewish and
Christian Traditions, ed. Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 187–208.
21
Ibn Kathir, Qisas al-anbiyaª, 38; Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 74.
22
Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 74.
23
Noting the impurities surrounding menstrual blood, medieval Islamic scholars pondered
how reproduction might occur in an ideal state, that is, if women had not been punished with
menstruation, labor pains, and painful deliveries as a result of Eve’s sins in the Garden.
Thaªlabi, for example, quotes the following hadith: “Were it not for the lapse committed by
Eve, women would not menstruate, yet would still be sexually mature. They would bear in
secrecy and give birth in secrecy” (ibid., 55).
24
Ibid., 74.
116
Birth of Cain
milk is formed out of material otherwise evacuated during menstruation.25
This excess material is then passed up through the body and converted
into milk. According to Ibn Qutayba, this link between milk and menstrual
blood serves as the basis for the belief that an infant emerges from the
womb with a “serene glow” that quickly dissipates once he sucks from
his mother’s milk, which makes him resemble her, or the wet-nurse.26
The idea that milk is inseparable from blood is also emphasized in a
number of hadith that forbid men and women who suckle from the same
wet-nurse from marrying one another.27 Further, some medical works prohibit wet-nurses from having intercourse with their husbands while they
are nursing someone else’s child on the premise that a husband’s semen
served as a source for milk production in his wife.28 The child suckling
the milk from a wet-nurse who was sexually active would also be ingesting the husband’s blood, which generated the semen, thus confusing the
child’s lineage.29 The pure milk Cain suckled from his mother’s breast,
devoid of all such pollutants, would have been something quite different
from what is normally formed out of the womb’s remaining bloody
contaminants.
Tabari and Thaªlabi go on to report how Abel and his twin (Labuda)
were then conceived on earth, with Eve bearing all of the earthly symptoms
of pregnancy and, presumably, nursing him with milk no longer pure.30
In this scheme, Cain was, after all, a marvelous birth—beyond human perfection—and should have led a long, happy, and righteous life. If anyone
were to embrace evil and corruption, one might assume it to be Abel, and
not Cain, for Abel was born into a flawed world that stands in sharp contrast with the ideal Garden.
Not so. Exceptional births only bear fruit if they affirm, at least in some
way, normative practices. The fact that Cain was the murderer even though
25
Majusi (ºAli ibn al-ºAbbas), Kamil al-sinaªal-tibbiya (Egypt: al-Matbaªa al-kubra alºamira, 1877), 2:56.
26
Ibn Qutayba, ºUyun al-akhbar, 68. For an exhaustive account of medieval Islamic
views on breast-feeding and wet-nurses, see Avner Giladi’s Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses:
Medieval Islamic Views on Breastfeeding and Their Social Implications (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
27
See Bukhari (Abu ºAbdallah Muhammad b. Ismaªil b. Ibrahim), Sahih al-Bukhari (alTabªah, 1st ed. [al-Qahira, 1990]), “Kitab al-hayd,” nos. 41, 43, 46; “Kitab al-nikah,” nos. 39,
41, 46, 166.
28
Ibn Sina (Abu ºAli al-Husayn ibn ºAbdallah), al-Qanun fi ’l tibb (Bulaq, 1877), 1:53.
29
Malik b. Anasª, Muwattaª (Cairo: Dar al-Nafaªis, 1977), 414. Note, however, that there
are also statements to the contrary, which suggest that the issue was far from resolved.
Muhammad Ibn Saªd, for example, reports how the Prophet once stated that he wanted to
forbid the ghila (a man having intercourse with his wife while she is breast-feeding) but
then remembered that the Greeks and Persians used to practice it, and it did not harm their
children (Tabaqat al-kabir, pt. 8, trans. Aisha Bewley, as Women of Madina [London: Ta-Ha,
1995], 172).
30
Tabari, Tafsir al-Tabari, 10:310; Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 74.
History of Religions
117
he was born without impurity only underscores the idea that any type of
legal, social, or moral exception—even one that seems quite positive—
forebodes ill. In this scheme, Abel, in all his gritty humanness, becomes
a more perfected, righteous believer than Cain, who may have been born
pure but to whom no legal, moral, social, or natural prescription applies.
According to these traditions, the lack of such necessary and essential
boundaries, which ultimately separate believers from nonbelievers and
even who is fully human from who is not, is what indelibly corrupts Cain’s
nature. In this light, the circumstances surrounding his birth affected
irreversibly his status before God.
barrren wombs
While most Muslim exegetes agree that Eve led an incredibly fruitful life
(Cain and Abel were but two of many sets of twins), many also report her
episodes of barrenness. Kisaªi, for example, reports that Eve first conceived twins, a male and a female, but in the eighth month aborted them.31
Scholars of medicine, such as Rabban al-Tabari, often wrote about the
dangers surrounding the eighth month of pregnancy, since eight is not an
optimal number, such as nine or seven.32 Further, it is during the eighth
month that the fetus begins to descend through the uterus, thus becoming
exposed to a variety of diseases that generally prove fatal.33 According to
Ibn Qutayba, Jesus, the son of Mary, is the only exception: he overcame
such obstacles to be born in the eighth month.34 Because Jesus led such
an extraordinary and exemplary life, no other human born after him
would be exempt from natural law in the same way.
According to Kisaªi, Eve conceives another set of twins after aborting
this first set but miscarries for a second time during the eighth month
of pregnancy. She conceives a singleton the third time, and here Iblis, or
Satan, comes to her and asks if she wants the contents of her womb to
live. Eve says yes, and he tells her to name the child ºAbdu ’l-Harith, which
means “servant of Iblis.” She agrees, and the child lives. Soon after the
birth, an angel comes to her, asking why on earth she named the child
ºAbdu ’l-Harith and not something more appropriate like ºAbdu ’l-Rahman,
which means “servant of God.” Frightened that they had dedicated their
child to Satan and not God, Adam and Eve declared that they no longer
needed this child, so God caused it to die. Eve conceives again, and
this time successfully gives birth to twins, whom she calls ºAbdallah and
31
Kisaªi (Muhammad ibn ºAbdallah), Qisas Anbiyaª al-Kisaªi, trans. W. M. Thackston Jr.
(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), 72.
32
Rabban al-Tabari, Firdaws al-hikhma fi ’l-tibb, 33–34.
33
Ibid., 39.
34
Ibn Qutayba, ºUyun al-akhbar, 66.
118
Birth of Cain
Amatallah (which mean “[male] servant of God” and “[female] servant
of God,” respectively). This set of twins was followed by twenty-one
more pairs, all of whom were dedicated to God. At this midway point in
her child-bearing career, at least according to Kisaªi, Eve bore the prophet
Abel and his sister, and then Cain and his sister.
Eve continues to give birth after these two notorious brothers until she
totals one hundred twenty pregnancies.35 Tabari offers a slight variation
of this story, having Satan slay a number of the infants even after they are
dedicated to God as punishment for Eve and Adam’s refusal to submit
to his cunning ways. 36 If the deaths of her infants were a direct result
of her choosing Satan as her children’s first master, then Eve’s first miscarriages—or anyone else’s, for that matter—were caused by an ignorance
of God. Similar to the case of exceptional births, those conceived or born
outside of God’s social, moral, legal, and natural prescriptions are subject
to grave danger. Throughout Islamic literature, miscarriages often serve
as portents of impending doom. The Qurªan, in fact, reveals that the
simultaneous miscarriages of all pregnant women will serve as one of the
signs of the Last Day, when those who have turned away from God will
be severely and eternally punished.37 Only when Eve acknowledges the
existence of God and places him above all else does her womb begin to
respond abundantly and profitably.
The hadith mention many other examples supporting this connection between the invocation of God’s name and a successful pregnancy.
Bukhari, for example, relates a story about Solomon, son of David, who
declared: “ ‘Tonight I will go round one hundred women, every woman
will bear boys who will kill in the cause of God.’ An angel said to him,
‘Say: If God wills.’ But Solomon did not say it; he forgot. So he had
sexual relations with them, but none of them delivered except one woman,
who delivered a half-person (nisfa insan). The prophet said, ‘If Solomon
had said, ‘If God wills,’ God would have fulfilled this desire and that saying would have made him more hopeful.’ ”38
In this example, the “nisfa insan” suffers the direct effects of his parent’s
impiety. Barrenness stands as a punishment aimed directly at parents,
which results from their “forgetting” God’s central role in the reproductive process. Other hadith stress how important it is to utter the following
phrase during any act of sexual intercourse, so that Satan will not interfere with conception and pregnancy: bismillah Allahumma jannibna
35
Kisaªi, Qisas Anbiyaª al-Kisaªi, 72–73.
See Tabari, Taªrikh, 322, where Adam refuses to listen to Satan (since he had misled
him in the Garden), and names his son Salih. So, Satan kills the boy.
37
Surat al-Hajj (22:2).
38
Bukhari, “Kitab al-nikah,” no. 169 (Mahmud > ºAbdu ’l-Razzaq > Maªmar > Ibn Tawus >
his father > Abu Hurayra). See also Bukhari, “Kitab al-adab,” nos. 634, 711.
36
History of Religions
119
al-shaytan wa jannib al-shaytanu ma razaqtana (in the name of God,
God, protect me from Satan, and protect what you bestow on us from
Satan).39 Likewise, Ghazali insists that a man must chant the adhan in
the right ear of the child and the second call in the left in order to repel
epilepsy.40 By ignoring God, humans can affect negatively those divinely
controlled, procreative processes that ensure the birth of a healthy child
and expose their reproductive systems to the wiles of Satan.
In much of the early Islamic literature, childlessness is a topic of great
anxiety and speculation. The medical literature lists a number of infallible
“tests” one can conduct to demonstrate whether the male or female is responsible for a stagnant womb. For example, Rabban al-Tabari describes
how a man’s urine can be cast upon a head of lettuce and, likewise, a
woman’s urine upon a second head of lettuce. In the morning, whichever
of the two heads has dried up, the corruption lies in that “seed.”41 Another
option, Rabban al-Tabari notes, is to toss male and female seeds into a
container of water. Whichever of the two seeds floats is flawed.42 The legal
determination of the barren party is vital in divorce cases, for example,
since according to Islamic law a man may divorce his wife for her inability
to produce heirs. In this context, barrenness becomes an exception to the
norm that prevents a woman from fulfilling her social, religious, and legal
duties as wife and mother, thereby realizing her true nature. If she falls
short of her ideal role as wife and mother, a husband may divorce her for
another who is more physically capable of discharging her duty. Here,
true piety can only be realized through a perfected physique, and, presumably, vice versa.
While medieval scholars do suggest that a woman’s barrenness could
bar her from having a successful marriage, they also entertain the idea
that females could still fulfill their duties as wives and mothers without
producing offspring. This debate over the role of barren wives centers on
the life of the prophet Muhammad’s favored wife, Aªisha, who became,
according to some, a mother to believers, even though she was childless.43
The prophet Muhammad’s many biographers recall how Aªisha greatly
lamented the fact that she was barren. She referred often to her own jealousy of Muhammad’s first wife Khadija, with whom he produced many
children, including two sons, who died tragically at young ages. She
would often ask why, since she was so much younger and more attractive
than Khadija and the prophet more intimately involved with her than
39
Bukhari, “Kitab al-nikah,” no. 94.
Ghazali (Abu Hamid), Ihya ºulum al-din, pt. 12, trans. Madelain Farah, as Marriage
and Sexuality in Islam (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984), 114.
41
Rabban al-Tabari, Firdaws al-hikma fi ’l-tibb, 38.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibn Saªd, Tabaqat al-kabir, 46.
40
120
Birth of Cain
with any of his other wives, God did not allow her to conceive.44 However, because Aªisha once stated, “God has given you better than her
(meaning Khadija) in exchange”45—a phrase that mimics a divine revelation sent to Muhammad that promises more obedient and pious wives
in replacement for ones divorced (presumably because they did not fulfill
their ideal roles)46—many medieval Muslim scholars suggest a strong
link between a woman’s barrenness and her moral behavior.47
Notably, the Prophet himself never divorced Aªisha or any of his other
wives because they were barren; this, however, did little to squelch the
medieval speculation reflected in many hadith that Aªisha’s impiety somehow caused her infertility. The link postulated between infertility and
impiety suggests many Islamic scholars believed that the activities that
go on inside a womb are far from random. In this way, Aªisha paradigmatically recalls her very distant mother Eve to demonstrate how God
does not create fully developed humans (who are synonymous with perfected believers) in morally tainted wombs. As reflected in many of the
examples noted above, these women’s child-bearing difficulties stand
as clear examples of how moral action directly affects a woman’s physiology—that is, her very nature. Similar to the case of Eve, who endured
a number of miscarriages, these examples illustrate the scholarly position
that mothers do not produce bad children as a direct result of moral
inadequacies; rather, past moral inadequacies render their bodies defective.
This stance would disassociate Eve from Cain’s fate since her impious
actions would have had no effect whatsoever on her son’s moral disposition; only her own womb itself would suffer the consequences of her lack
of faith. Many scholars do concur that once a mother has given birth, the
child stands alone as an individual before God. In none of the interpretive
works does God punish Eve’s offspring for her transgressions; rather, it
is Satan who kills to punish Adam and Eve for choosing the divine over
him, or Adam and Eve who insist that God destroy the infants dedicated
as servants of Satan. Although in each instance the infants were, indeed,
put to death, God never marks the children for death in retribution for
Eve’s initial or subsequent crimes. Early Islamic exegetes agree that individuals are judged for their own faith and actions independently before
44
Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 5, nos. 164, 165.
Ibid., vol. 5, no. 168.
Surat al-tahrim (66:5), which states, “It may be, if he divorced you two, that God will
give him in exchange consorts better than you, who submit (their wills), who believe, who
are devout, who turn to God in repentance, who worship, who travel and fast, previously
married or virgins.”
47
Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 5, no. 166. In this and other examples, the Prophet often
elevated Khadija (and later Mariya the Copt, with whom he bore a son, Ibrahim) over and
above the rest of his wives for their ability to bear children.
45
46
History of Religions
121
God. Neither a mother’s piety nor impiety guarantees her child’s success
or demise in this world. This emphasis on individual human accountability
would suggest that Cain had every opportunity to be counted among the
righteous, even if he had emerged from a tainted or even suspect womb.
So why did he fail? A number of scholars still could not accept the
idea that a mother’s piety or impiety had absolutely no impact on the
moral or physical disposition of her child. Sufi and Shiªite exegetes, who
posit a more intricate connection among divine, natural, and moral law,
challenge the position that Eve’s impiety did little to shape Cain’s nature
and subsequent actions. For many Sufis and Shiªites, parents’ piety or
impiety can leave an indelible mark on their offspring. For example,
Ibn ºArabi speculates on how parents who have consumed unlawful foods
will then produce children with souls that are dark, filthy, and evil. Their
souls are corrupted because the sperm from which the child is formed is
born out of that unlawful nourishment and nurtured by that tainted soul;
therefore, it must be in accord with it.48 Likewise, his fellow Sufi, Ghazali,
notes how intercourse during menstruation, which the Qurªan condemns,
engenders leprosy in offspring, and sodomy causes permanent harm.49 Like
Ghazali, many of the Shiªite imams, who had much to say about human
health and well being, not only admonished couples for unlawful acts
of intercourse but also warned them against having intercourse during
moments of natural liminality. For example, Abu Jaªfar reported the
Prophet’s concern for children conceived between dawn and sunrise,
between sunset and nightfall, during an eclipse of the sun, or on the day
of an earthquake. According to the Prophet, these children, when born,
will possess detestable qualities.50 Likewise, children conceived on the
night of a new moon will be born insane.51 For many scholars, any kind
of liminality may affect adversely a pregnancy. Ibn Saªd, for example,
reports how Ruqayya, the Prophet’s daughter, suffered a miscarriage
during the first emigration.52
Folk traditions also reflect the debate over what extent parental behavior
or disposition may be imprinted upon offspring. Ibn Qutayba, for example, notes that if a man rapes a woman, and she becomes pregnant as
a result of his violence against her, the son she bears will not be evil like
the father, but virtuous.53 In opposition to this perspective, Ibn Qutayba
48
Ibn ºArabi (Muhyi ’l-Din), Tafsir al-qurªan al-karim, ed. Mustafa Ghalib (Beirut: alAndalus, 1978), 1:180 (commentary on Surat Al-ºImran, 35).
49
Ghazali, Ihya ºulum al-din, 107.
50
ºAbd Allah ibn Bustam Nisaburi, Islamic Medical Wisdom: The tibb al-aªimma, trans.
Batool Ispahamy (London: Muhammadi Trust, 1991), 173.
51
Ibid., 174.
52
Ibn Saªd, Tabaqat al-kabir, 24–25.
53
Ibn Qutayba, ºUyun al-akhbar, 26.
122
Birth of Cain
also records how the Arabs claim that a jealous woman could never give
birth to virtuous sons,54 and that the son of a masculine woman or an
effeminate man would be wicked because he inherits the worst qualities
of his father and mother.55 Here, parental behavior directly affects the
character, and therefore the destiny, of the offspring, for better or worse.
Such a child would simply lack the innate potential to become a righteous,
perfected believer.
twin births
Another issue raised in the exegetical context is whether or not Cain was
driven to murder because something simply went wrong during the period
of gestation. Rabban al-Tabari, for example, views the cycle of conception,
gestation, and birth as a treacherous path that often leads to less than desirable birth outcomes. Following the conclusions of Hippocrates, Tabari
discusses how problems in embryonic development often occur when a
woman’s belly constricts, leaving little room for the child to grow, or
when a woman’s womb is weak, depriving the embryo of vital nourishment.56 Tabari also notes that good seed can, in fact, fall on “rocky
ground,” or a deformed womb, which may lead to the twisting or contorting of a child’s limbs.57 ºArib ibn Saªd suggests, too, that procreation can
only take place in wombs free of putrification (al-fad).58 ºArib ibn Saªd
never identifies fully what he means by “putrification”; the word fad
could refer to a womb that contains impure remnants of menstrual blood
or one that is morally corrupt.59 The two are likely synonymous.
The sources reveal little about what went on in Eve’s womb after she
conceived. If anything at all is notable about Eve’s womb, besides its
fertility after a slow start, it is that it brought forth many sets of twins.
Could Cain’s despicable act in some way stem from the fact that he was
a twin? In many mythological contexts, twins represent a category fraught
with extraordinary power and danger. Whether identical or fraternal, twins
present a unique challenge to any religious, legal, literary, or practical
discourse that must navigate alterity; how are two individuals who share
the same womb and the same moment of birth identical, yet other; like,
yet unlike? Are they halves to a whole or a whole never realized? The
underlying resemblances of twins suggest an eerie fragmentation of a
54
Ibid., 21.
Ibid., 20.
Rabban al-Tabari, Firdaws al-hikhma fi ’l-tibb, 36. See also Hippocrates (Hippocratic
Writings, ed. G. E. R. Lloyd, trans. J. Chadwick, W. N. Mam, O. M. Lonie, and E. T.
Withington [New York: Penguin, 1978], 322–23).
57
Rabban al-Tabari, Firdaws al-hikhma fi ’l-tibb.
58
ºArib ibn Saªd, Kitab khalq al-janin wa tadbir al-habalaª wa ’l-mawludin (Algeria:
Maktabat al-Farraris, 1956), 10.
59
The word al-fad can signal decay, putrification, wickedness, or depravity.
55
56
History of Religions
123
once unified self, a fissure so deep it generates great social or psychological
confusion that requires immediate repair. Their dichotomous identities,
which often embody the polarity of good and evil, signify fundamental
moral or ethical contradictions that undermine the social fabric and threaten
the cosmic whole. As extraordinary phenomena, twins and the unique
events surrounding their births result in real or imagined disruptions of
the established individual, familial, social, and cosmic order. From the
standpoint of religious discourse and praxis, these ruptures must be repaired through a variety of exegetical and ritual controls. The exceptionality of twins may either be interpreted negatively (they are a danger) or
positively (they bring good luck).
If anything extraordinary can be said about twins in the Sunni context,
it would have to be that their presence is imbued with little to no physiological or mythological significance. As we have seen already, the exegetical privileging of twins explains how the world became populated
without resorting to more problematic forms of incestuous relationships
that would have desecrated the very fabric of the universe. Islamic sources
do not portray Eve’s daughters, or indeed their twin brothers, as opposite
poles, with one twin representing the good, the other evil. Nor do they
suggest incomplete remnants of a severed self whose whole is somehow
more than the sum of its two dysfunctional parts. Their appearance brought
neither exceptional danger nor extraordinary good luck to the first human
community. The only concrete information given about Eve’s daughters
is that their wombs are extremely fruitful and that some are more beautiful
than others.60
This neutral view of twinning is reflected in other Islamic contexts as
well. The Qurªan mentions twinning in a variety of verses that emphasize
natural harmony and balance, for example, the night and day were created
as twin marvels, or signs (ayatayn),61 and men and women were created
as equal pairs (zawjayn).62 The hadith material suggests that women are
the twin halves of men (shaqaªiqu ’l-rajali).63 In Islamic legal materials,
twins present no great dilemma in terms of inheritance, since all male
60
See, e.g., Tabari, Taªrikh, 310.
Surat al-Israª (17:11).
62
Surat al-Dhariyat (51:49).
63
Abu Daªud Sulayman ibn al-Ashªath al-Sijistani and Ahmad Hasan, “Kitab al-tahara,”
in Sunan Abu Dawud, 1st ed. (Lahore: Sh. M. Ashraf, 1984), no. 236. This phrase, which is
often used by Muslims to support the equal status of women and men, is embedded in a discussion of nocturnal wetness: “Qutayba b. Saªid > Hammad b. Khalid al-Khayyat ºAbdallah
> al-ºUmri > Ubaydallah > Qasim > Aªisha said: ‘The Prophet was asked about the man who
found wetness, and he did not remember a wet dream. He said, “He must bathe.” He was
asked about the man who had a wet dream, but did not find wetness. He said, “He does not
need to bathe.” Then Umm Sulaym said, “And if a woman found that, must she bathe?” He
said, “Yes, for women are twins of men (innima ’l-nisaªu shaqaªiqu al-rijali).” ’ ”
61
124
Birth of Cain
sons would share equally in their father’s property.64 This indifference
toward who comes out of the womb first, whether twin or otherwise,
differs radically from the concerns of Jewish context, for example, where
birth order reigns supreme in cases having to do with inheritance and
covenantal promise.65 This fascination with birth order appears in many
descriptions of Jewish midwives whose attestation of which twin came
first is considered valid in court.66 In Islam, “firstborn” is simply not a
category that is privileged. Thus, Cain’s status as firstborn or as twin has
no bearing on his subsequent actions.67
Most importantly, the Islamic exegetical traditions agree that all of Eve’s
twins were conceived through normal, and not extraordinary, acts of intercourse. To summarize briefly, Islamic scholars of medicine generally favor
Hippocratic and Galenic theories over Aristotelian explanations of reproduction.68 The Hippocratics argue that men and women contribute seed
equally to the formation of a living being. Many scholars, such as Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziya and Rabban al-Tabari, suggest that the womb has two
horns, or cavities, and that twinning occurs when excess seed is forced
into both horns, rather than just one.69 The Islamic two-seed, two-horned
theory refutes any idea that Cain’s status as twin would have resulted
from anything other than a single act of intercourse. In fact, Ibn Qayyim
notes that immediately following a single act of intercourse, the womb
draws together and embraces the sperm.70 Therefore, it can not permit
the reception of a second fluid, which might mingle with the first and
theoretically produce a child who has two fathers.71 The insistence that a
64
Surat al-Nisaª (4:11).
In biblical tradition, the firstborn receives double the amount of his brothers. See
Deut. 21:17; I Chron. 5:1–2.
66
Tosefta Baba Bathra (2:2).
67
In fact, many traditions posit that Abel was born before Cain and not vice versa. See
Tabari, Tafsir al-Tabari, 10:222.
68
Basim Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control before the Nineteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 49.
69
See Ibn Qayyim, al-Tibyan fi aqsam al-qurªan, 305.
70
Ibid., 304. See also al-Suyuti (Jalal al-Din), Tibb al-nabawi (London: Ta-Ha, 1994), 193,
who notes that after a drop of semen reaches the womb, a woman no longer desires to have
sexual intercourse.
71
Islamic law abhors adultery in order to avoid having a child whose descent is (literally)
“mixed up.” The Jerusalem Talmud, by way of contrast, suggests that a woman may indeed
become impregnated by two men. If a woman has intercourse with a second man within three
days of having sex with the first man, the sperm could mix together and produce a child with
two fathers (Jerushalmi Yebamoth 4; 5c). Rabban al-Tabari does make reference to Aristotle,
who said that he knew of a woman who gave birth in seven months and then delivered another
child after two months. According to Aristotle (as paraphrased by Rabban al-Tabari, Firdaws
al-hikhma fi ’l-tibb), the woman became pregnant again (after the first conception) by another
man (35).
65
One Line Short
History of Religions
125
child may be conceived only through one act of intercourse and have
only one mother and one father is also confirmed legally; the Shafiªites,
for example, rule that a child can have only one mother and one father.72
Here is an example of how Islamic scholars link nature and divine
order: Islamic law recognizes only one father and one mother per child,
and so too does human physiology. Nature itself, therefore, is constrained
from producing anomalies that would violate normative expectations of
what God would ultimately deem as human. The issue of whether or not
a child could have multiple fathers is explored further in the animal world.
Jahiz, for example, flatly dismisses the idea that some animals, like the
giraffe (zarafa, which means collection), are the product of a number of
beasts’ sperm mingling in a single womb at the same time.73 There are
exceptions to this position, notably supplied by those scholars who embrace Aristotle (e.g., those who support the view that males provide the
life-giving form to the child while women only supply the matter), as
opposed to Hippocrates (e.g., those who embrace the theory that both
partners contribute equally to the formation of the child). These individuals
take the view that numerous acts of intercourse with a woman who is pregnant can actually change the form of the fetus in her womb. This position
was created to resolve the issue of why, when numerous offspring are
produced in a single litter, they will often vary in shape, size, and appearance from one another. It was concluded that such differences in form
and “corruption in disposition” are the result of the male and female (or
several males and one female) engaging in numerous acts of sexual intercourse after the female is pregnant, so that “other seed is added during
the completion of the form of the seed which has already started to complete its form.”74
In many religious myths, the presence of twins signals some sort of
unusual conception that takes place outside a single act of intercourse
between a husband and wife. Twins emerge as products of shady liaisons
between a woman and two separate men, one of whom is likely to be
72
Ibid., 305.
Damiri records a number of authoritative statements about the zarafa. Some authorities,
he notes, explain how beasts and wild animals collect together at the watering hole in the
summertime and have promiscuous sexual intercourse. As a result, some animals conceive,
others do not, and sometimes, after several males mount the same female, the seminal fluids
become mixed up, and, as a result, females give birth to animals varying in appearance,
color, and form. Damiri goes on to suggest that Jahiz does not accept this explanation for the
appearance of the zarafa and argues instead that God creates whatever he pleases. The zarafa
is a creature unto itself, according to Jahiz, because it is able to bring forth one like itself, a
fact which has been visually affirmed (Damiri, Hiyat al-hayawan al-kubra, 1:534).
74
Hunain Ibn Ishaq, The “Problemata physica” Attributed to Aristotle, ed. L. S. Filius
(Boston: Brill, 1999), 517.
73
126
Birth of Cain
something other than human. As a result, one twin often embodies good
and the other evil. In the Jewish context, for example, many rabbinic
sources that elaborate the details of Cain’s conception posit Cain and
Abel as twin brothers having the same mother but different fathers. Some
Jewish rabbinic documents, such as the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and the
Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, record how Eve was frolicking in the Garden
when she was visited by Sammael, the chief of the devils and the angel
of death.75 Sammael rides past her on a serpent, and she conceives. After
she has sex with Sammael, Adam comes to her, and she conceives again.
As a result of these dual conceptions, Abel was begotten in the likeness
of Adam while Cain was spawned from demonic seed. Given the Muslim
preference for Hippocratic over Aristotelian theories of reproduction and
the belief that the womb closes up after conception occurs, it is physically
impossible for Cain’s unrighteousness to stem from his origins as an evil
twin spawned from demonic seed. However, despite the fact that Cain’s
father was no demon in the Islamic telling of the story, the inherent
problems associated with the initial incestuous acts that must necessarily
take place among twins remain. In addition, scholars are left with the
dilemma of explaining how the unrighteous stems from the righteous.
In other traditions, Cain and Abel are not themselves twins but were
born with twin sisters. In many exegetical elaborations of the Cain and
Abel story, scholars record how God commanded Adam to give Abel’s
twin to Cain, and Cain’s to Abel.76 These traditions maintain that Cain’s
twin sister was more beautiful than Abel’s, and Cain did not want to share
what he believed to be rightfully his. According to these narratives, Cain
is unrighteous because he declares his twin sister as his future wife, which
underscores how he knowingly and willfully defies God’s prohibition
against a particular form of incest.77 Such defiance not only goes against
God’s will, it ultimately disrupts the very fabric of the cosmos. Cain’s
desire for his twin sister, therefore, places him outside all divine, natural,
and social laws that determine his identity as a believer and therefore
calls into question his status as a fully formed human. Because Cain is not
a believer—no one who commits such an act is considered a believer—
God can only acknowledge the sacrifice of Abel, who offers a succulent
lamb, fresh milk, and rich butter,78 and reject the rotted crops laid down
75
See Florentino Garcia Martinez, “Eve’s Children in the Targumim,” in Eve’s Children
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 30–31.
76
Tabari, Taªrikh, 310–11.
77
Ibid., 311.
78
Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 75. See also Tabari, Tafsir al-Tabari,
10:205.
One Line Short
History of Religions
127
by Cain.79 When God grants Abel Cain’s twin sister, according to the
exegetes, Cain becomes filled with rage and kills Abel by smashing his
head against a rock.80 The story ends with Cain and Qalima (his twin)
defying God (and natural law) by descending hand in hand from Mount
Hiraª and fleeing to ºAdan in Yemen.81
But all is not well in ºAdan. While Cain and his offspring are depicted
as being abundantly fruitful throughout the first few generations, a shadow
of impiety continues to hang over them, which eventually corrupts and
then dries up their seed. For example, one of Cain’s descendants, Tubish,
is described as the first to play string instruments and cymbals.82 Other
children and grandchildren are depicted as godless tyrants who engage
freely in acts of promiscuity and wine drinking.83 Eventually, because the
sullied offspring of Cain began mingling with the pure offspring of Seth,
and then multiplied on the face of the earth, the entire population had to
be drowned in the flood.84 Clearly Cain’s initial reproductive prowess and
the offspring generated from the fruits of his labor were doomed to fail as
a result of his initial transgression.
Because he willfully violated the initial incest prohibition, Cain was
necessarily condemned from the start. Despite the fact that Cain may have
been justified in his desire to circumvent the womb-mate restriction (confirmed in those accounts that insist Cain and his sister were born in the
pristine Garden where they dined on “pure milk” while Abel and his twin
were born on earth), being superhuman in this context results in one
becoming less than human, since he who is born from above cannot escape
the divinely sanctioned laws of the world. It is not the quality of Cain’s
offering that makes him unrighteous, or the fact that God prefers shepherds
to farmers, or even that God was testing Cain’s countenance. Rather, his
desire to engage in an ungodly form of sexual intercourse automatically
strips him of his status as a believer. Why he chose such a path, however,
remains unclear. These examples show that many of the sources are open
79
Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 75. Kisaªi makes the exact opposite
claim, and suggests that Cain offered from the best of his grain (Qisas anbiyaª al-Kisaªi, 77).
In his commentary on Surat al-maªida, verse 27, Tabari records traditions that support both
views and also includes neutral reports that Cain simply offered grain that was not accepted
by God. See Tabari, Tafsir al-Tabari, 10:204–5.
80
Thaªlabi, ºAraªis al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiyaª, 77, reports how Ibn Jurayj said, “Cain
did not know how to kill his brother, so Iblis appeared to him and took a bird, placed its head
on a stone, and then crushed it with another stone.” For the same narrative, see also Tabari,
Tafsir al-Tabari, 10:222. Kisaªi reports how Cain, on his own initiative, took a large rock,
struck his brother in the head, and killed him (Qisas anbiyaª al-Kisaªi, 77).
81
Tabari, Taªrikh, 314.
82
Ibid., 338.
83
Ibid., 338–39.
84
Ibid., 341.
128
Birth of Cain
to the possibility that Cain’s choice may have been determined by his
mother’s sketchy past or the circumstances surrounding his conception
and birth, all of which corrupts the orderly, reproductive paths God creates
and controls for generations to come.
conclusion
All of these examples expose the rich variety of interpretive approaches
adopted by Muslim exegetes to navigate fundamental questions concerning the formation of human individuals as physical creatures, social beings,
and righteous servants of God. By stripping the Cain story down to its
barest narratological structure, neutralizing the biblical elements that speak
to covenantal favoritism and land distribution, and taking into account
late antique medical theories on how reproduction takes place, Muslim
scholars create a new arena in which to explore the interstices between
God’s knowledge, power, and perfection, and the flawed world of everyday, lived experience. Cain’s birth in particular provides a fertile locus
for exegetes to ponder whether it is reproductive nature, moral decision,
the will of God, or some combination of the three that affects birth outcomes in a positive or negative way.
The above cases represent the vast range of explanations formulated to
address the phenomenon of bad birth outcomes, as exemplified by Cain,
and suggest that the issue was highly contested and far from resolved. As
noted, some scholars argue that despite the obvious presence of flawed
human beings in the world, like Cain, reproduction itself must remain a
perfected, divinely controlled process insulated from human meddling,
since God oversees all that goes on both inside and outside the womb.
From the theological stance that individuals stand alone before God to be
judged, bad birth outcomes can only be identified retrospectively. Cain’s
murdering of his brother did not stem from some glitch in the reproductive
processes that God ordained, or from Eve’s choices, but from his own
moral decision to defy God’s prohibition against incest and marry his twin
sister. It is his hubris that overshadows the birth outcomes of generations
to come. Here, the process of reproduction, which is ultimately manned
by God, remains separate from its less than desirable human products.
Other scholars challenge this theological position by privileging concerns pertinent to ethics or purity. Cain’s birth was exceptional, since he
was conceived in the Garden and not on Earth; as such, his birth, and thus
his person, violated the conditions of a natural world where strict adherence
to God’s rules secures one’s ultimate success in conforming to God’s will.
Some scholars take these ethical concerns a step further by arguing how
the moral condition of the mother may affect directly her ability to reproduce successfully. As demonstrated, many exegetes are quick to explain
Eve’s (and Aªisha’s) barrenness by postulating that individual bodies that
History of Religions
129
challenge the wisdom and power of God become defective. In these
cases, reproduction specifically, and the natural world more generally,
are inextricably linked with divine order. While God may have complete
control over the natural order, the natural order can still be penetrated
and probed negatively by individual human transgression, and vice versa.
More extreme views of how the divine, natural, and human realms are
intrinsically related appear in the Sufi and Shiªite examples. In some of
these traditions, human indiscretions produce flawed children, both physically and morally. In addition, liminal moments—such as when intercourse takes place while a woman is menstruating, or during the time
between dawn and sunset, or on the day of an earthquake—inevitably
compromise reproduction, and natural anomalies affect one’s ability to
reproduce successfully. The colorful stories that illustrate how half-men,
children with filthy souls, or diseased infants are spawned from suspect,
unlawful, or ill-timed acts of intercourse paint a world teetering on the
brink of chaos. While the divine realm may be perfect and stable, at least
in theory, that perfection is obviously threatened by the impious and
devious acts of the men and women who inhabit a world that is far from
ideal. Clearly this social or ethical perspective attempts to explain what
ordinary people experience in their everyday lives; a perfect birth outcome is more the exception than the rule. This emphasis on ethical norms
rejects those traditions that maintain the more ideal, radical individualism
noted above in favor of an attempt to describe the world as it is rather
than as it should be.
In sum, this broad range of Muslim narratives about the first family
shows the persistence of a perpetual conflict between the tradition’s vision
of an ideal, radical individualism before God and the practical realities of
the intimate moral, biological, and social connections between parents
and children. How the exegetes articulate this conflict and try to resolve the
tensions between the real and ideal demonstrates an array of conflicting
interpretive strategies created to navigate the contradiction that even
though individuals must be free to make their own moral choices before
God, those choices are still somehow constrained by ancestral biology
and behavior, which can affect divinely controlled reproductive processes
and familial relationships for generations to come. While no clear, monolithic solution to this dilemma can be detected in the exegetical works
surveyed, the majority assume that only righteous believers are guaranteed of producing healthy and morally sound children. Everyone else can
only look to their own words, actions, and familial inheritance—all of
which have a direct impact on their superior or inferior physical and
moral constitution—when God’s orderly paths of reproduction go astray.
Fordham University