The Churning in the Flogging of ʿUmayra: Or, Towards a History of Masturbation in Premodern Islamic Law

Abstract

This article traces juristic debates on the ethics of masturbation from the formative period of Islamic law to the early nineteenth century. I document the appearance of discussions of the practice in the earliest extant sources and explore how masturbation figures in the Sunnī and Šīʿī ḥadīṯ corpora with attention to regional patterns of dissemination. I also address the terminology used by jurists and point to material in encyclopaedias, adab and other works where relevant, and include some comparative observations from other cultures. My overall findings include the fact of clear regional patterns of opinion across the amṣār (garrison cities) in the early period and an unmistakable increase in “conservatism” on sexual matters with the consolidation of the legal schools (maḏāhib), as well as a clear distinction between Sunnī and Šīʿī views on the practice. I conclude by attempting to explain the relatively low visibility of masturbation in legal sources and to account for the doctrinal shift more generally.