OverviewThis entry examines the legal-ethical rules and
practices, prevalent in Muslim societies, past and
present, which stem from the idea that transmis-
sion of milk from a nursing woman to a strange
(that is, another woman’s) nursling creates impedi-
ments to marriage.
The idea that the relations created through lacta-
tion between a nurse and her (strange) nursling are
similar, from the viewpoint of prohibitions of mar-
riage, to blood relations, is based on a pre-Islamic
Arabic concept. In Arabic medical writings of the
classical period of Islam this idea was supported by
the notion, found in ancient Greek learned medi-
cine, that the breast milk is formed of the blood of
the mother’s womb undergoing, after birth, a slight
change in the breasts. It was, moreover, believed
that the milk influenced not only the physical as
well as psychological traits of the nurse’s own off-
spring but also those of her strange nurslings.
Documenting milk kinship is, therefore, essential in
drawing the social map of relationships in Islamic
societies.
Like their counterparts in the first centuries of
Islam, Muslim doctors and jurists today encourage
mothers to breastfeed their own babies. Maternal
lactation for relatively long periods of time was and
still is very popular (as emerges from recent child
and family health surveys), particularly in village
societies, in the Muslim world. It plays, however, a
less important role nowadays among mothers of
the urban elites.
Early Islamic religious and medical writings sup-
ported voluntary non-maternal lactation by rela-
tives, friends, neighbors, and the like, and allowed
for mercenary wet nursing, viewing both as the most
acceptable alternative when the mother herself
proved incapable of breastfeeding her own infant.
As shown by recent ethnographic and anthropo-
logical studies, no less than in the past Muslims
today are well aware of the legal-moral implica-
tions of non-maternal lactation. Similarly, contem-
porary religious scholars, particularly in the fatwas
they issue on the subject, but also Muslim physi-
cians, reveal a great concern for impediments to
marriage through milk kinship. For instance,
unlike in the West, milk banks in Muslim countries
remain largely a theoretical issue because pooling
Kinship: Milk
the milk of several donors for potential, as yet
unknown, consumers precludes the possibility of
establishing legal marriage ties. Still, the issue is
widely discussed because it serves as a useful foil
when it comes to outlining the legal ramifications
of milk kinship.
By adding milk mothers and milk sisters to the
list of those with whom a man may not have sexual
relations, the Qur±àn, in a single verse, laid down
the foundation for the Islamic rules of milk kinship:
“Forbidden to you are your mothers, your daugh-
ters, your sisters, your parental aunts, brothers’
daughters, sisters’ daughters, those who are your
mothers by having suckled you, those who are your
sisters by suckling” (4:23, English translation by
Richard Bell). Thus, following pre-Islamic Arabic
custom, the Qur±àn extended the range of incest
beyond its definition in Judaism and Christianity.
Qur±àn exegeses in the first centuries of Islam
regard this verse, which mentions only a milk
mother and milk sisters, as intended to duplicate
for milk relationships the list of those blood rela-
tives with whom a Muslim man is forbidden to con-
tract marriage. According to this widely accepted
concept which was, in fact, adopted by Islamic law,
a man is forbidden to marry his milk niece (mater-
nal and paternal), milk aunt, milk daughter, and the
milk mother of his wife. He is also forbidden to
have simultaneous intimate re-lationships with
women who are milk sisters.
£adìthreports attributed to the Prophet Mu™am-
mad and his companions add another dimension to
this idea by postulating a connection between the
nurse’s milk and her husband’s semen: it is the
man’s semen that causes the breast milk to flow in
the woman it made pregnant. The man, therefore,
is the actual “owner” of the milk as the term “sire’s
milk” (laban al-fa™l) indicates. This means, among
other things, that suckling creates ties similar to
blood ties not only between the nursling and his or
her (strange) nurse but also between the nursling,
on the one hand, and the nurse’s husband and his
relatives, on the other. Thus, for instance, a woman
and a man who, in their infancy, separately suckled
from two women unrelated to one another but
married to the same husband are not allowed to get
married since, as Màlik b. Anas (the eponym of the
Màlikìschool of law, d. 795 C.E.) puts it, “the
semen which impregnated both [wet nurses] and