the nursling’s mouth only or also other, indirect
ways, such as pouring milk from the breasts of a
woman into a strange infant’s mouth with no act of
sucking, giving an infant the milk of a strange
woman from a vessel, feeding an infant with bread
or with other kinds of food mixed with a strange
woman’s milk, or pouring strange woman’s milk
into an infant’s nose, eye, ear, and so forth? What is
the minimal number of sucklings that create an
impediment to marriage? What is the maximal age
at which breastfeeding creates an impediment to
marriage? Does the absorption of the milk of a
dead woman create an impediment to marriage?
Legal discussions on these themes reveal there was
much disagreement among those Muslim jurists
who tried to define exactly under which circum-
stances breastfeeding created impediments to mar-
riage. Fatwas, in many cases reflecting aspects of
daily life, are an indication of the relevance of these
questions in Muslim societies throughout premod-
ern times.
In Shì≠ìIslam, the rules of milk kinship were
developed along more or less the same lines as in
the Sunnìlaw. However, the discussion of milk kin-
ship in the writings of contemporary religious
scholars in Iran reveals some differences. For in-
stance, according to Ayatollah Khomeini, a mini-
mum of fifteen suckling sessions in succession are
needed to create a milk relationship between a
nursling and a non-maternal nurse, and the milk
must be suckled at the breast. Moreover, it is rec-
ommended that the wet nurse be a practicing
Twelver ImàmìShì≠ìMuslim. In practice, non-
maternal nurses have been employed in contem-
porary Iran only when it was absolutely essential
and attention has been paid to avoid the choice of
a wet nurse that could affect future marriage
arrangements.
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