The study of the history of birth control in the Medieval Isalmic world breaks a lot of stereotypes.
According to the Islamic tradition recorded in the _Hadith_ (sacred Islamic scriptures accounting the sayings or deeds of the prophet Muhammad), sexual pleasure was something that married women (as well as men) had a right to. Although the _Qu’ran_ does not specifically discuss birth control, it does suggest that women nurse their young for two years — and nursing had long been known as a way to suppress ovulation. In the _Hadith_, _’azl_, or pulling out/coitus interruptus was considered an acceptable way of preventing pregnancy (if not as successful as modern needs dictate #don‘trelyonthisonefolks).
Abortion was considered differently than it is in the scientific world today. Whereas we might define it as a premature termination of a fetus, many people in the Medieval Islamic world distinguished between a soulless living creature and a human being. In the _Qu’ran_, Surah 23 mentions the stages of in utero development as progressing from a lump of congealed blood that then gains bones and flesh until it becomes “another creature.” Some Muslim legal interpreters even set 120 days of fetal development in the womb as a time after which abortion was not permitted.
The Medieval Islamic world stretched from Spain, across North Africa, and throughout the Middle East and went on for hundreds of years after the seventh century, so this post cannot do the diversity that surrounded this issue full justice. Nevertheless, compared to the European Medieval Church’s hostility to sexual pleasure and birth control, the Islamic-dominated lands had a much more tolerant tradition.
The image shown of a young lady reclining after her bath is from a 16th-century Persian Islamic manuscript.
Source(s): Image, “A young lady reclining after a bath,” Read Persian Album, by Muhammad Mu Min Pierpoint Morgan Library MS M.386.5. “Birth Control and Abortion in the Practice and Tradition if Islam,” Zoe Whaley, _Macalester Islam Journal_, vol. 2, Issue 3, article 5, 3/28/2007. _Envisioning Women in World History: Prehistory to 1500_, Paul, Clay, Senecal, McGraw-hill, 2009.
