Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medieval Muslim Discourse and Practice

5 Mother as Monster

163 5 Mother as Monster My mother says that I am his. But I don’t know. Does anyone really know his father? —The Odyssey Unlike the stellar Mary, Āsiya, Khadīja or Fāṭima, “bad” mothers defy both God’s and man’s reproductive command through sexual deviance and corrupt faith, ritual, and practice. Bad mothers don’t confirm social births; rather, they undo both the ritual and theological structures that give their children (and themselves) a legitimate, meaningful life. As a result of their transgressions, they produce not the righteous prophets God demands but rather anomalies or “monsters ” that disrupt the social and cosmic orders. In their elaborate depictions of the grotesque phenomena borne out of sexual aberrance in nature, medieval Muslim scholars project how human iniquity and perversion—both male and female—likewise corrode the reproductive body to the point at which it generates similarly corrupt offspring or other birth anomalies that thwart God’s procreative plans. The mere presence of these deviant beings in literary texts warns both good and bad mothers of what will happen if they do not submit fully their reproductive lives to the care of elite men who alone possess the proper knowledge and authority to fashion an appropriate female womb through which they can beget healthy and righteous believers who will worship God. The threat of monsters also holds men accountable for their own sexual behaviors and iniquities, since they are the guarantors of the superlative life wombs must produce under their protectorate. 164 Conceiving Identities Eve (Ḥawwa), as portrayed in Muslim exegetical texts, provides an instructive example of a mother whose questionable morals impact directly her ability to bear and nurture perfected progeny. After all, Eve’s miscarried fetuses, slain babies, and incestuous, murderous son bear little resemblance to the ideal offspring produced by the paradisiacal queens. The unfortunate circumstances surrounding her rather wayward reproductive life bear witness to the causal connections between maternal piety and fetal development, where unbridled female power, moral turpitude, and weak bodies and minds prove to generate less than optimal offspring, or even monsters. In order to show how medieval scholars link female impiety with flawed wombs, this chapter reads the narratives of Eve’s reproductive life through broader discursive discussions about monstrosities in both the natural and human worlds. Through a variety of discursive contexts found in travelogues, bestiaries, sacred histories, medical wisdom, entertainment literature, and laws governing sexual practices, medieval Muslim literati explored how impious intent in the form of sexual deviation and perversion, either in the natural world, or in human life, engenders monstrous forms. In the case of Eve and all mothers who follow her example, the monstrous forms on the margins come to press upon the children in the center when they bear no physical or moral resemblance to their fathers. Nonresemblance between parents and children in the center creates a fundamental, primordial disorder by revealing the superficial authority of all paternities.1 By producing “monsters,” ordinary mothers undo the familial, communal, and ritual/practical structures that imbue their own lives, and those of their children, with meaning. In these literary contexts, the “monstrous” ranges from a wildly fantastic “other” roaming the margins of civilization to a slightly deviant “self” barely distinguishable from those in the center. The corrupt behaviors that produce one form of monstrosity or another, however , are to be measured by degree rather than kind. For example, the hairy, grunting creatures produced when men copulate with animals may seem more strikingly aberrant than a child who lusts after his twin sister and murders his brother. However, for medieval scholars , both often share much in common as the visual embodiments of maternal indiscretions to be avoided so one does not disrupt paternal reproductive authority. Both Cain and the human/bear combination (for example) were generated as the result of the same violent incursions into the base, normative rituals, practices, laws, and beliefs that make one a believer who resembles his father, and thus a fully human being. 165 Mother as Monster Some Introductory Remarks on the “Monstrous” Medieval authors of zoological works or other forms of adab often preface their works with introductory remarks that imply the half‑beasts or mixed‑up animals they catalogue serve as potent vehicles through which God’s magnificence and ultimate transcendence are displayed.2 Out on the frontiers of both civilization and human life, the grotesque and monstrous bear little...