Skin-to-Skin Violence and Intimacy: Animal skins and human/animal relations in premodern Islamic rhetoric, law, and practice

Using skin as an analytical tool (Ahmed), this study explores how, when, and to what ends premodern Islamic jurists, physicians, and religious thinkers affirmed or troubled customary divisions that separated humans from animals. Close readings of the rhetoric, laws, and practices surrounding the uses of animal skins for water consumption, medicine, prayer mats, disguises, travel accommodations, or parchment reveal ongoing declarations of human uniqueness and dominance, but also the tactile intimacies and health dangers that subverted those claims. Case studies examine several junctures at which Sunni and Shi’ite scholars asserted likeness over difference, or difference over likeness, between human and animal skins to trace deeper considerations of human/animal relations. In deliberations of what skins could touch what parts of whose bodies, under what conditions, and in what ways, we find unresolved tensions over the volatile lines separating humans from animals, and debates about how dis/similitude might best be determined.

Part One considers long-held philosophical and theological positions that humans were distinct from, although dependent upon, animals. The Qur’an refers to God generating tents from animal skins and furnishings comprised of wool, fur, and hair (Nahl:80). Later thinkers expanded on these themes but often shifted the emphasis from divine creativity to human proficiency. From this vantage point, humans’ appropriation of God’s tent-making or furniture-assembling capabilities solidified their uniqueness and power over nonhuman creatures. For example, Ibn al-Jawzi observed that human skin alone was not sufficient to protect the body from harsh elements. Unlike animals, however, humans could overcome biological deficiencies like having thin, hairless skin through skill and intelligence, as displayed in their own creations of coverings made from animal hair, fur, or hides (Ibn al-Jawzi). Similarly, Ibn Khaldun argued that despite their corporeal deficits, humans occupied a station above animals because of their ability to think, perceive universals, engage in sciences and crafts, and execute orderly, civilized actions over chaotic, beastly ones. That said, scholars warned how easily believers might forfeit what made them distinct and slip into the realm of animals. For example, Ibn al-Jawzi claimed that a person who sinned, abandoned prayer, or pursued worldly pleasures morphed into “an animal in the skin of a human.” Tabari recorded how the prophet’s enemies disguised themselves in leopard skins before ambushing believers in battle. By suppressing their humanity to hunt their victims like animals, God’s adversaries chose to abandon their divinely created natures.

Part Two surveys positions of premodern Sunni and Shi’ite jurists regarding the use of animal skins. The skins employed for drinking water, ablution, prayer mats, tents, clothing, shields, or table surfaces were a subject of great concern because now-deceased domesticated/wild, clean/unclean, or im/properly slaughtered animal skins were brought into direct contact with human skin. This section takes up some of the underlying epistemologies that shaped juridical rulings in these cases, which underscored an ongoing need to assert sovereignty over animals even after their deaths. For the most part, jurists agreed the skins of halal animals could be used after tanning. However, the question became more complicated in cases involving the skins of impure animals, or carrion. Shi’i jurists argued that tanning did not make the skins of impure animals lawful (Tusi; Kulayni). Hanafis, however, reasoned that tanning would purify skins, even those that came from impure animals or carrion, except for pigs and humans (Marghinani). Shafi’is concurred, but added dog skins to the list of exceptions, since they understood dogs to be intrinsically impure based on their behavior when alive. Debates over tanning procedures and their ability to reverse a dead animal’s prior classification disclose ongoing concerns over what separated humans from animals, and the fragility of humanity’s privileged status. These concerns persisted despite the skin’s chemically transformed nature and distance from its living counterpart, and the dire impact that tanning processes had on human health (Steedman).

Despite their potential dangers, animal skins served as porous conduits that facilitated survival, shelter, comfort, flourishing, nurturing, healing, and blessing, which countered legal stances by blurring the barriers between humans and animals. Part three considers examples that facilitated skin-to-skin intimacy over separation. Cases include waterskins serving as flotation devices (Ibn Hisham), sources of relief for the prophet’s fever (Ibn Sa’d), gateways for blessing transference from the prophet’s lips to his followers’ (Ibn Majah), and storage containers for ritual ablutions (Nasa’i). Skins insulated homes (Bukhari), reinforced shields in battle (Waqidi), and covered bodies with warmth and softness to facilitate sleep (Tirmidhi). Leather protected the Qur’an from abomination (Tabrizi), at the same time the word itself was preserved on tanned skins (Waqidi). Physicians extolled the benefits of animal skins in the context of therapeutics. Untanned goat skin, for example, could be placed on snake bites to ease pain and draw out poison (Tabari). Those suffering from gout would be relieved when wearing stockings made from animal skins (Tawhidi). Zahrawi prescribed the use of rubbed down animal gut, as well as ant nippers, for suturing human wounds, especially those affecting the most tender, internal organs. Humans and animals shared many of same skin diseases, like alopecia, and the same remedies (animal fats) were prescribed for both (Shehada). Shi’ite physicians allowed menstruating women to wear Qur’anic verses next to their skin if they were enclosed in leather (Ispahany), since leather allowed for seepage of revelatory healing at the same time it shielded the word from menstrual impurities. These examples show the many ways skin-to-skin contact and exchange challenged theological claims about human uniqueness, and the laws aimed to secure dissonance between, and dominance over, animals.

To conclude, on the surface, human engagement with animal skins projected the superiority of human over nonhuman creatures through flaying, forced subservience, intelligence, skill, and appropriation. While many examples support these claims, others trouble them to disrupt normative assumptions about human/animal power relations. Such disruptions impart more complicated, entangled relationships among humans and animals in which gratitude, congruity, healing, and exchange existed in unresolved tension with violence, utility, affliction, and dissonance. This tension informed premodern Islamic approaches to animal ethics.