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

Anchassi, Omar (2022). The Churning in the Flogging of ʿUmayra: Or, Towards a History of Masturbation in Premodern Islamic Law. Studi Magrebini, 20(2), pp. 213-246. Brill 10.1163/2590034X-20220075

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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.

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