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How to define a drink called nabīdh has come up multiple times on my feed recently. Nabīdh was an intoxicating beverage distinguished from khamr, grape wine, which the Qurʾan prohibits (Q. 5:90). But some say nabīdh wasn’t an intoxicating beverage at all. Why all the confusion?
Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/889) already notes the confusion in his Kitāb al-Ashribah; he mentions two ways of defining nabīdh.
"One group says: 'It’s raisin water or date water before they ferment. If that becomes strong and sets, then its khamr. The forebears from ...
"One group says: 'It’s raisin water or date water before they ferment. If that becomes strong and sets, then its khamr. The forebears from ...
the Companions and Followers drank that, making it at the outset of their day and drinking it at its end, making it in the early evening and drinking it with their meals.' They say, 'It was called nabīdh because ...
they would take a handful of raisins or dates and soak them (yunbidhūnahā) in waterskins, i.e., cast them in it.'"
What Ibn Qutaybah describes here is a common view nowadays, but he goes one to quote yet another view altogether, which he himself favors ...
What Ibn Qutaybah describes here is a common view nowadays, but he goes one to quote yet another view altogether, which he himself favors ...
"But the others say, 'Nabīdh is what is made from raisins or dates or other things extracted with water or left until it ferments and becomes an intoxicant. It is not called nabīdh until it passes from its first state [to its second, intoxicating state], ...
!["But the others say, 'Nabīdh is what is made from raisins or dates or other things extracted with water or left until it ferments and becomes an intoxicant. It is not called nabīdh until it passes from its first state [to its second, intoxicating state], ...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er8ZeqiW4AQ8wZ0.png "\"But the others say, 'Nabīdh is what is made from raisins or dates or other things extracted with water or left until it ferments and becomes an intoxicant. It is not called nabīdh until it passes from its first state [to its second, intoxicating state], ...")
just as juice is not called khamr until it passes from its sweet state and khamr is not called vinegar until it passes from its bitter and intoxicating state.'”
In other words, fermentation itself is necessary for nabīdh to be considered nabīdh.
In other words, fermentation itself is necessary for nabīdh to be considered nabīdh.
Ibn Qutaybah sides with the second view, “because if nabdīdh merely meant raisin water then no controversy would have arisen [in the first place] and everyone would be in unanimous agreement that it is permissible before it ferments.”
The point is relatively simple one: ...
The point is relatively simple one: ...
a vast array of traditions and reports circulated in which the Prophet and his Companions drank nabīdh and these impacted legal debates. Many who permitted drinking nabīdh used these reports in their legal arguments for its permissibility. Their opponents – who regarded ...
the ban on khamr as encompassing every sort of intoxicant –had to either reject the reports as unreliable or give a different definition of the word nabīdh. The stricter view won the day in the end, but early on many scholars and jurists, esp. in Iraq, drank intoxicating nabīdh.
As a historian, I really don't care which side of that legal debate you fall on or which legal opinion you choose; however, the evidence for the existence of the permissive position in the early period and its societal prominence is IMHO beyond doubt.
