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Chapter 11 - Menstruating Women and Visiting the Mosque

A Summary Text from Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nawawī (d. 676/1278) with Commentary and Glosses

from Part II - Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh) and Related Genres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Robert Gleave
Edited by
Omar Anchassi  and
Robert Gleave
Omar Anchassi
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Robert Gleave
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

This chapter discusses the question of menstruating women and their exclusion (or otherwise) from mosques as featured in the al-Minhāj of the massively influential jurist Muḥy al-Dīn al-Nawawī (d. 676/1278), along with subsequent commentaries (sing. sharḥ) and glosses (pl. ḥawāshī) on his work. Certain religious duties (such as prayer and fasting) are not permitted during a woman’s menstrual period; sexual intercourse is also forbidden for her; more controversially, visiting (or passing through) the mosque is also (for some) forbidden (or at least discouraged). The text excerpted in this chapter explores various positions on the subject and the arguments for and against them put forward by past jurists of the school. Some space is taken up by an extended discussion of analogous cases to that of a menstruating woman entering a mosque.

Keywords

Commentary (sharḥ)Marginal gloss (ḥāshiya)Legal summary text (mukhtaṣar/matn)Menstruation (ḥayḍ)Impurity (najāsa)Postpartum bleeding (nifās)Mosque etiquettePurity (ṭahāra).
Type
Chapter
Information
Islamic Law in Context
A Primary Source Reader
 , pp. 121 - 131
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Primary Sources

Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Shirwānī and al-ʿAbbādī, Ibn Qāsim. Ḥawāshī Tuḥfat al-Minhāj bi-Sharḥ al-Minhāj (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā Muḥammad, n.d.).Google Scholar
al-Nawawī, Muḥyī al-Dīn Yaḥyā b. Sharaf. Minhāj al-Ṭālibīn wa-ʿUmdat al-Muftīn (Beirut: Dār al-Munhāj, 1427/2005).Google Scholar
al-Ramlī, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad. Nihāyat al-Muḥtāj ilā Sharḥ al-Minhāj (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1423/2003).Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Ahmed, Asad Q. and Larkin, Margaret. ‘[Introduction]: The Ḥāshiya and Islamic Intellectual History’, Oriens 41 (2013), 213–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El Shamsy, Ahmed. ‘The Ḥāshiya in Islamic Law: A Sketch of the Shāfiʿī Literature’, Oriens 41 (2013), 289–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halim, Fachrizal A. Legal Authority in Premodern Islam: Yaḥyā b. Sharaf al-Nawawī in the Shāfiʿī School of Law (London: Routledge, 2019).Google Scholar
Ingalls, Matthew B. The Anonymity of a Commentator: Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī and the Rhetoric of Muslim Commentaries (Albany: SUNY Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Katz, Marion Holmes. Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunnī Law of Ritual Purity (New York: SUNY Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Katz, Marion Holmes. Women in the Mosque: A History of Legal Thought and Social Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Lizzio, Celene. ‘Gendering Ritual: A Muslima’s Reading of the Laws of Purity and Ritual Preclusion’, in Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians, ed. Aslan, Ednan, Hermansen, Marcia and Medeni, Elif (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 167–180.Google Scholar
Maghen, Ze’ev. Virtues of the Flesh: Passion and Purity in Early Islamic Jurisprudence (Leiden: Brill, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazuz, Haggai. ‘Islamic and Jewish Law on the Colors of Menstrual Blood’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 161 (2014), 97–106.Google Scholar

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