From Body to Substance: Islamic Menstruation Laws in the Shadow of Late Antiquity?

Abstract This essay traces the development of the Islamic legal discourse on menstruation ( ḥayd ) in the formative and classical periods of Islamic law (until approximately 1200 ce ). I argue that, unlike their late antique predecessors and contemporaries, Muslim jurists parsed menstrual blood, with its perceived ability to travel and pollute other bodies and substances, as a generically polluting substance (the “substance-thesis”). This development marked a noteworthy departure from rabbinic law, in which the menstruating female body was regarded as inherently impure. The complex and sophisticated conceptual shift in Islamic legal discourse involved the participation of Muslim jurists, exegetes, theologians, and grammarians, who constructed and justified the new social boundaries between men and menstruant women in their respective disciplines. By treating menstruation laws as part of a comprehensive cultural regime governing the body, I seek to understand the nexus between Islamic menstruation laws and the social worlds they constituted, historically examining the conceptual shifts in the logic of making such laws. The essay puts sociological and anthropological theories in conversation with a wide array of Islamic legal and quasi-legal sources, offering a model for understanding the legal and cultural process by which Islamic (menstruation) laws became codified against the backdrop of much older late antique legal epistemologies.