Abstract
Death among infants and children and the adults’ reactions to this phenomenon are essential aspects of the history of childhood in any given society. Indeed these issues have been repeatedly raised and dealt with by historians of family and childhood, particularly with regard to the classical world and Europe from the Middle Ages to modern times.
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Notes
See, for instance, A. Cameron, ‘The exposure of children and Greek ethics’, The Classicial Review46(1932), pp. 106–7, 108;
W.V. Harris, ‘The theoretical possibility of extensive infanticide in the Graeco-Roman world’, Classical Quarterly 32 (1982), p. 114;
M. Radin, ‘The exposure of infants in Roman law and practice’, Classical Journal 20(1925), pp. 341–3;
J.E. Boswell, ‘Expositio and Oblatio: The abandonment of children and the ancient and medieval family’, The American Historical Review 89(1984), pp. 12, 13, 19, 21. See also: McLaughlin, ibid., p. 121.
Wilson, ‘The myth of motherhood’, p. 182; A. Wilson, ‘The infancy of the History of Childhood: An appraisal of Philippe Ariès’, History and Theory 19 (1980), pp. 132–53.
Abū al-Faraj ‘Abd al-Rahmān Ibn al Jawzī, Kitāb laftat al-kibad fī nasīhat al-walad in Muhammad Hāmid al-Faqī (ed.), Min dafā’in al-kunū (Cairo, 1349/1930–31), p. 78.
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī, al-Tahadduth bi-ni’mat Allah (ed. E.M. Sartain) (Cambridge, 1975), p. 10.
M. Dols, ‘The second plague pandemic and its recurrences in the Middle East 1347–1894’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 22(1979), pp. 162–89, esp. pp. 168–9.
See L.I. Conrad, ‘Arabic plague chronologies and treatises: social and historical factors in the formation of a literary genre’, Studia Islamica 54(1981), pp. 73, 74.
Muhammad Ibn al-Hājj al’Abdarī, al-Madkhal (Beirut, 1972), Vol. III, pp. 298–9.
Ibn Hajar al-Haytamī, al-Fatāwā al-fiqhiyya al-kubrā (Cairo, 1890), Vol. N, p. 220.
Abū Zakariyā Yahyā b. Sharaf al-Nawawī (d. 1277), Minhāj al-tāibīn (Batavia, 1882–4), Vol. III, pp. 169–70; Fatāwā Qādī Khān, Vol. N, p, 441.
Ibid., p. 113. And see also Jalāl al-Din al-Suyūti, al-Hāun li-al- fatāwā (Cairo, 1959), part II, p. 189.
See Kh. Moaz and S, Ory, Inscriptions arabes de Damas, Les stèles funeraires, L Cimitière d al-Bāb al-Sagīr (Damascus, 1977) (out of 80 gravestones surveyed three were erected on tombs of youths but none on a child’s);
A. ‘Abd al-Tawwāb and S. Ory, Stèles Islamiques de la nécropole d’Assouan (Cairo, 1977) (out of 400 gravestones surveyed not one is a child’s).
J. Idleman-Smith and Y. Yazbeck-Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany, 1981), p. 168;
Taqī al-Dīn Muhammad Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūat fatāwā (Cairo, 1326/ 1908–9), Vol. II, p. 178.
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© 1992 Avner Gil‘adi
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Gil‘adi, A. (1992). Infants, Children and Death in Medieval Muslim Society. In: Children of Islam. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378476_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378476_6
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