Auf Leyla wa Leyla is my all-time favorite book. I have read it many, many times. There’s one thing I don’t understand.
Many characters in the book (including historical ones) are devout Muslims; yet they drink wine. (typically, after a meal, which is weird too.)
Can somebody tell me what exactly is the status of wine specifically (not liquor) vis a vis Islamic law, and Islam as practiced then and now?
We’ve had the discussion on alcohol and different alcoholic drinks (and other drugs like hash) in Islam / Islamic laws several times on the board, with different opinions. Basically, there are different interpretations of the relevant passages by different Imams (and therefore, in different cultures and times) - some say all alcohol and drugs that make people Drunk are forbidden; some say alcohol is forbidden, but hash is allowed; some say only certain alcohol drinks are allowed; some say alcohol is allowed if it doesn’t make you drunk …
The stories are (mostly?) pre-islamic, and probably not even originally Arabic. They are also not particularly well-thought-of in modern Arabic culture, as they are considered vulgar and childish. Given that wine was specifically prohibited by Muhammed, they probably don’t like the wine, either, for what my guess is worth.
Have you truly read it many times? I have a copy of the complete Burton translation, and it runs twenty volumes (if you include the supplemental nights). Most people have only read selections from it.
In any event, not everyone is completely faultless of totally devout. Omar Khayyam and other poets writing Ruba’i wrote about drinking – “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou…” after all.
And I’ve known Catholics who ate meat on Fridays (before they changhed the rules), Mormons who drank alcohol, and Jews who ate ham.
You’ve got several issues here, some of which have been hotly debated for many years.
There are two major “denominations” in Islam, Sunni and Shi’a. Neither denomination has a leader comparable to Roman Catholicism’s Pope. Believers seeking assistance in interpreting the Koran and the Haditha turn to Imams, learned scholars, for guidance. Different Imams can have different interpretations of scripture.
The prohibition against consuming alcohol (and other intoxicating substances) is one of the hallmarks of Islam, but there are cultures who, although the members consider themselves Muslim, consume alcohol. Some restrict themselves to wine, some will drink distilled spirits.
When we say “wine” we typically think of the product of fermented grapes. However, wine made from dates may have been meant in the OT&ON. I am not an expert on the subject, but I remember reading that the Prophet Mohammed drank date wine, including after his revelation. This is, of course, one of those issues that is hotly debated.
Drinking wine after meals: many cultures consider postprandial wine to be an aid to digestion. See Wikipedia article on digestifs.
Bear in mind that One Thousand and One Nights “is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.” And that, “[t]he work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars across the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Turkish, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and literature.” So you have different cultural attitudes reflected in the stories. Also, these attitudes can change over the time spanned by the development and collection of the stories.
Further, it is probable that storytellers put contemporary (or what they believed were historical) personality traits, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, habits, etc. “into the mouths” of the historical characters. Whatever suited their purpose in making the tales more accessible, or acceptable, to their audience.
Finally, a minor correction: the title is “ALF Leyla wa Leyla”.
Just some random opinions and I hope you find them useful.
This, and I’ve also known a very great many Christians who eat meat which has blood in it. Which is actually prohibited to Christians, in the New Testament. But even though it’s right there in the Bible, almost all Christians are either ignorant of it, or if they know of that rule, ignore it.
Just a quick point, the fish on Fridays thing for Christians, was never actually a religious dogma thing, but was brought in by one of the Popes to help the fishing industry of the time.
(Though industry might be too strong a word.)
For muslims, you both get intoxicated and it’s a sin, what’s not to like?
Wow didn’t know that - I guess I’m a little bit wiser now 
It wasn’t “Christians”, it was just Catholics. And Catholics didn’t have to eat fish on Fridays-- just abstain fro meat. Not saying you said that, but I remember being asked, as a kid, why Catholics had to eat fish on Fridays. In fact, I remember being given peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the cafeteria of my Catholic grade school. No fish, at least not for lunch.
Having said that, most American Catholics I knew did eat fish for dinner on Fridays. But that was mainly because a completely vegetarian evening meal in the US in the 60s was almost unheard of.
What the Prophet drank was nabīdh, a Classical Arabic word that may lead to misinterpretation. Nabīdh is a drink made of dates steeped in water. If left to sit for a few days, it ferments and becomes alcoholic. If it’s consumed within a day after making it, it isn’t alcoholic. There’s a ḥadīth to the effect that you have to drink nabīdh soon enough after it’s made that it isn’t fermented. (The reliability or authenticity of ḥadīths is a whole other gnarly subject.)
It probably doesn’t help interpretation that in Modern Standard Arabic (which is Classical Arabic adapted to modern times), the word nabīdh is used for all wine in general, replacing the Classical Arabic term for wine in the Qur’ān, khamr. Hmm, this makes me wonder if the word was changed because the word nabīdh leaves it ambiguous whether there’s alcohol in it or not, and it could afford Muslims with a taste for alcohol a way to fudge the issue of what they’re drinking, since the Prophet drank nabīdh after all!
^
The current no alcohol rule was not fully established for several centuries and it took a long time to be accepted. In S Asia in the Mughal era at least until Aurengzebs time the opinion was the it was “drunkenness” that was prohibited.
I think I remember a couple of occasions in the 1001 Nights where particularly saintly characters decline to drink wine. But drinking is certainly ubiquitous in those stories.
Then again, lots of Christians work on Sundays; how important a particular religious rule is can change from one time and place to another.
That’s not actually true. First, as was said, there was never a requirement to eat fish just a prohibition against eating meat (technically, at one point, on Fridays, Saturdays, Lent, Advent, the “Ember days”, and the “Rogation days”. It didn’t have anything to do with the fishing industry. It was a sumptuary and sacrificial thing.
Yes I know, which is why I mentioned that it was instituted by a Pope, though this side of the pond in many company diners, regardless of religion they still serve up fish on a Friday.
Though before Martin Luther, with the exception of "heretical "sects such as gnostics etc everyone in W.Europe were Catholics.
Henry viii considered himself to be a good Catholic.
And also as I said it was a deliberate act to help fishermen, not some sort of penance of going without meat whereby people went out and ate fish by default.
Actually in the Middle Ages, to circumvent this edict many none fish type living things were classified as such so that people could eat meat.
Swans were considered thussly also,aquatic mammals.
Lest some devout person flip out because s/he eats rare steak, what most people identify as “blood” in meat (i.e., the red juices that seep out) is not blood. It’s myoglobin.
Wine-drinking Muslims are not a new controversy.
Enemies of the Umayyad dynasty spread a story that Caliph al-Walīd II (d. 744) had a swimming pool filled with wine. He got into the pool and gulped wine while swimming around in it, drinking so much that when he got out (or, I imagine, was pulled out), the level of wine in the pool had gone down visibly.
One of the most famous works in classical Arabic literature is the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī (circa 1100). The antihero of the stories is a picaresque rogue named Abu Zayd. The narrator travels to many places and keeps meeting up with Abu Zayd who assumes a different disguise each time. Many of the stories are about Abu Zayd tricking people that he’s a pious imam, all the while he drinks wine in secret. And every time he gets busted for his rank hypocrisy, he comes up with another justification. For example, in the 28th maqāmah, Abu Zayd gets up in the mosque and preaches a florid fire-and-brimstone sermon that makes everybody get religion. The narrator is impressed, but then recognizes who it is. And later…
Now, when the wing of darkness had spread, and the time for sleep had come, he brought forth wine-flasks secured with plug, whereupon I said to him: “Dost thou quaff it before sleep, and thou the prayer-leader of the people?” But he replied: “Hush! I by day am preacher, but by night make merry.”—Said I: “By Allah, I know not whether to wonder more at the unconcernedness as to thy kinsfolk and thy birthplace, or at thy preacher-office with thy foul habits, and the rotation of thy wine-cup.”—Thereupon he turned his face in disgust from me, and presently he said:—Listen to me:
“Weep not for a friend that is distant, nor for an abode, but turn thyself about with fortune as it turns about.
Reckon thou all mankind thy dwelling-place, and fancy all the earth thy home.
Forbear with the ways of him with whom thou dealest, and humour him, for it is the wise that humours.
Miss thou no chance of enjoyment, for thou knowest not if thou live a day, or if an age.
Know thou that death is going round, and the moon-haloes circle above all created beings.
Swearing that they will cease not chasing them, as long as morn and even turn and re-turn.
How then mayest thou hope to escape from a net, from which neither Kisrá escaped, nor Dârâ.”
Said he [the narrator]: And when the cups went between us from hand to hand, and the vital spirits waxed gleeful, he dragged from me the oath that allows no exception, that I would screen his repute [secret]. So I complied with his wish, and ranked him before the great in the rank of Al Fuẓail, and let down the skirt over the turpitudes of the night ; and this continued to be his wont and my wont, until the time for my return came, when I took leave from him, while he persisted in hypoctrisy and in secretly quaffing old wine.
Mmmm, dolphin…
No it’s not. Abstaining from meat has been a penitential practice since early Christianity. The idea that it was some act to help the fishing industry is an urban myth.
Mostly, yes, but there’s also some blood in there unless it’s been specially treated to remove it.
And the Pope couldn’t have been trying to help the fishing industry, because for the most part, there was no such thing. Everyone who lived near a body of water could and did fish. That’s what made fish acceptable for a penitential meal: It was common food. If anything, it’d be the meat industry which was influential, since those who raised livestock or who hunted legally were mostly landowners.