Against Smoking. Ahmad al-Rumi al-Aqhisari

       “From the ceaseless smoking of the coffee-house riff-raff the coffee-houses were filled with blue smoke, to such a point that those who were in them could not see one another…” ¹

      ¹ Ibrāhīm Peçevi (d. c. 1060/1650), quoted in B. Lewis, Istanbul, p. 134. Engraving from C. de Bruyn, Voyages, p. 431.

Foreword

      I AM delighted to have been offered the opportunity to set down a few reflections about the theme of this book. The last time I heard Prof. Yahya Michot lecture in person, about a couple of years ago in Oxford, he was speaking about opium – a study he has since developed into the book L’Opium et le Café (Beirut–Paris: Albouraq, 2008). If this work on tobacco suggests that he is building an addiction to bad habits in the Muslim world, passed to and from the Europeans, it is not one that has affected his scholarly practice. Readers familiar with Michot’s weighty monographs on Avicenna and Ibn Taymiyya will find here the same relentless curiosity, the same concern to know the history of the text, where it came from and where it went, to understand its information and argument and local cultural context, the same determination to present as literal a translation as is compatible with intelligible English, while recording the significant variations in the available manuscripts, the same copious and detailed notes on proper names and terms of art, a rich bibliography of relevant scholarly works, generous indexes, a long introduction which picks out what is interesting (and entertaining) for scholars of the period, with amusing asides on how similar a critique of smoking informs the ban newly enforced in modern Turkey, and numerous charming and delightful illustrations of the malodorous habit and its consequences. And all that is on top of the labour of love with which Michot began – personally locating and identifying al-Aqḥiṣārī’s work in a bound volume of related manuscripts.

      Smoking first came into the Muslim world in the 11^th/17^th century. The English introduced it to the Ottomans, and then it passed to India and the rest of the Muslim world. It was initially likened to the forbidden muskirāt and mukhaddirāt, substances that intoxicate or stupefy. Furthermore, it had a bad smell, something that the Prophet disliked, in particular at prayer time and other occasions of religious attention; it impacted the health; it established in some people the habit of selfindulgence with concomitant neglect of their religious, familial and social responsibilities. To spend money on it was thus to waste the wealth that God had provided to enable people to improve their lives. Aware of all these negatives associated with smoking, jurists naturally formed and expressed their opinions about it. However, they differed in the advice they gave, depending on the extent of their comprehension of the problems, and they failed to reach any consensus about it. One reason in particular for the disagreement was that it was something new and hence there could not have been any explicit text about it in the Qur’ān and Sunna and early legal writings. They resorted to analogy to infer a safe ruling; however, since they could not agree on the precise nature of the harm smoking entails for individuals and society, their analogical reasoning led them in different directions.

      Initially, as I mentioned, most jurists likened tobacco to wine in sinfulness and harmfulness and accordingly considered it ḥarām (forbidden).¹ A number of the jurists from each of the four major Sunnī schools wrote treatises on it, the most famous being: Naṣīḥat al-ikhwān fī shurb al-dukhān by Ibrāhīm al-Laqānī, Risāla fī taḥrīm al-dukhān by al-Fakkūn, and I‘lām al-ikhwān bi-taḥrīm al-dukhān by Ibn ‘Allān. The rationale given in these works is more or less the same as that put forward by al-Aqḥiṣārī in the present epistle.

      Then, as smoking became a general phenomenon, especially in some Sufi circles, another opinion appeared, not as popular as the first, but some important people adhered to it nevertheless. According to this opinion, smoking is mubāḥ (permissible).² Among the well known treatises composed in this vein are: ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī’s al-Ṣulḥ bayn al-ikhwān fī ibāḥat shurb al-dukhān, ‘Alī al-Ajhūrī’s Ghāyat albayān li-ḥill shurb mā lā yughayyibu l-‘aql min al-dukhān, ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Ṭabarī al-Makkī’s Raf‘ al-ishtibāk ‘an tanāwul al-tunbāk; and Mar‘ī ibn Yūsuf’s al-Burhān fī sha’n shurb al-dukhān. The argument of this group may be summarized in this way: smoking does not cause intoxication, does not lead to loss of intellect, does not cloud reasoning, and does not inflict any harm on the body; accordingly, its harmfulness being doubtful, it cannot be forbidden. To forbid it amounts to saying on behalf of God and His Messenger

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