397 
does it condone in any way homosexual
intercourse. The Qur
ān also promotes
marriage to slaves and abstinence (q.v.;
see also ) as alternatives to right
of intercourse by possession. The marriage
of free persons to slaves was unusual in
other Near Eastern cultures and there ap-
pears to have been some problems with its
incorporation into Islamic society. While
al-Zamakhsharī (d. ⁄; Kashshāf, i,
) explains  :, “A believing female
slave is better [to marry] than an idola-
tress,” by stating that “all people are slaves
of God (al-nāsu kulluhum abīdu llāhi wa-
imā$uhu),” while the Jalālayn (ad loc.), on
the other hand, regard marriage to slaves
as shameful (ayb). See also  
.
Jonathan E. Brockopp
Bibliography
Primary: Jalālayn; abarī, Tafsīr; Zamakhsharī,
Kashshāf.
Secondary: F-P. Blanc and A. Lourde, Les
conditions juridiques de l’access au statut de
concubine-mere en droit musulman malekite, in
Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Mediterranee 
(), -; J.E. Brockopp, Early Mālikī law. Ibn
Abd al-Hakam and his Major compendium of
jurisprudence, Leiden ; id., Slavery in Islamic
law, Ph.D. diss., Yale ; R. Brunschvig, *Abd,
in   , i, -; H. Müller, Sklaven, in  ..,
Wirtschaftsgeschichte des vorderen Orients, -; R.
Roberts, The social laws of the Qor$ān, London
; J. Schacht, Origins of Muhammadan
jurisprudence, Oxford , - and -; id.,
Umm al-walad, in   , iv, -.
Confession of Faith (shahāda) see
 
Conquest
Gain or acquisition by force of arms. In
the Islamic context it is associated with the
“opening” of a land to the message and
rule of Islam. The Qur
ān, revealed as it
was before the Islamic conquests had be-
gun, does not possess a clear concept of
conquest, but the Arabic root f-t- pro-
duced during the first Islamic century the
technical term for the Muslims’ conquests
over the Byzantine and Sasanian empires
( fat⁄futū) and is frequently translated as
such in the Qur
ān.
The Qur
ān has much to say about war-
fare (see ). It is enjoined upon those
able to do so ( : exempts the blind,
crippled and ill) at specific times, outside
of specific places ( :; :) and only
within certain limits: “Fight in the way of
God (see    [ ]) those who
fight you, but do not aggress (or trans-
gress)” ( :).  : enjoins a forma-
tion, “God loves those who fight on his
path in a rank,” and  : recommends a
combat protocol, “when you meet the un-
believers, strike their necks until you have
subdued them, then bind a bond” (cf.
 :; see   ). In the
next world, the reward for those who fight
and die in battle is the pleasures of heaven
(q.v.); in this world, it is the spoils of victory
(q.v.), the distribution of booty (q.v.) figur-
ing prominently — even producing the
name of a sūra, Sūrat al-Anfāl ( , “The
Spoils of War”; see   -
; ). The reason and purpose
of warfare are less clear, perhaps because
they were so clear to contemporaries; but
they were probably religious. According to
 : and :, Muammad had been
sent by God to make his religion prevail
over all others, “though the unbelievers
loathe it.”  : and : instruct believ-
ers to fight until there is no fitna, a term
usually understood to mean the Meccans’
opposition to Muammad and his fol-
lowers (see   ).
According to  :, “those who have re-
ceived the book (q.v.)” are to be fought
until they pay the jizya (see ), an
obscure verse that has inspired a small in-
dustry of scholarship.
 
For the historical context of these verses
one conventionally turns to the historical
and exegetical traditions. The Constitution
of Medina, the series of documents under-
stood to have been drafted by Muammad
soon after his emigration (hijra, see -
) from Mecca to Medina, makes
it plain that he put his community on a
war footing fairly soon after the hijra and
indeed the first decade of the hijra was do-
minated by a string of campaigns, the most
prominent being Badr (q.v.) in Ramaān
(q.v.) of ⁄, Uud (q.v.), al-Khandaq
(“The Ditch”; see    ),
al- udaybiyya (q.v.), Khaybar (q.v.), Mecca
(q.v.), unayn (q.v.), and Tabūk in Rajab of
⁄. The political context of this cam-
paigning was tribal rather than imperial:
Forces were small (tribesmen often num-
bering in the hundreds; see  
), marches short and shows of
strength more frequent than actual vio-
lence. The handling of captives (q.v.), one
infers from  :, seems to have been ad
hoc. The object of these campaigns, more-
over, was not to acquire and control land
so much as to secure the loyalty and obedi-
ence of the principal tribes, an object also
achieved by negotiation and the promise of
material blandishments of various sorts.
That the tribesmen’s loyalties had been
committed to Muammad, rather than to
his nascent polity, is made clear by the
eruption of the so-called “Wars of Apos-
tasy” that broke out upon his death (see
). In the view of modern histori-
ans, Abū Bakr’s (r. -⁄-) campaigns
to re-impose Islamic rule within the Ara-
bian peninsula led directly to *Umar’s
(r. -⁄-) campaigns beyond its
borders.
The qur
ānic lexicon of warfare is domi-
nated by the Arabic terms qitāl and jihād
(q.v.), that of victory by nar and fat. The
first of this latter pair of terms, nar, poses
fewer problems than the second, in part
398
because its qur
ānic usage is so clearly mir-
rored by that in the Constitution of Me-
dina where it, too, signifies “support” or
“help” (either God’s or the Believers’). As a
first and second form verb, f-t- usually sig-
nifies the basic Semitic meaning “to open
or loosen” (Hebrew pāta, Aramaic and
Syriac peta, Ethiopic fata). Qur
ānic usage
correlates the verb with gates (usually of
heaven [q.v.], sometimes of hell [q.v.], cf.
 :; :; :; :; :; :, ;
:; :), belongings or baggage (ma-
tāahum,  :; see ), and Gog and
Magog (q.v.;  :). Lexical authorities
such as al-Rāghib al-I2fahānī (d. early
fifth⁄eleventh cent.) not infrequently ex-
plain the Fātia, the opening verses of the
Qur
ān (see ), as the “starting point,
by which what follows is opened.” The
range of this verb also extends in several
instances to the sense of revealing or deliv-
ering, e.g. “blessings from heaven and
earth” and mercy (q.v.;  : and :,
respectively) and in this sense it is echoed
in assān b. Thābit’s (d. ca. ⁄) verses
as well as those of al-Farazdaq (d. ca. ⁄
; Shar dīwān al-Farazdaq, i, , line ).
In two instances of the imperative
( : and :; cf. the tenth forms in
 :, : and :), the root clearly has
the narrower sense of to deliver, render or
make a judgment. In  :, Noah asks
God to “make a judgment between me and
them” ( fa-fta baynī wa-baynahum fatan), a
translation that is indebted in the first in-
stance to J. Horovitz (“Urteil,”  , n. )
who is followed by A. Jeffery (“judgment,
decision,” For. vocab., ). Both adduce
Ethiopic and Jeffery includes South Ara-
bian as well (see J. Biella, Dictionary, f.;
A. Beeston, Dictionnaire, ; W. Leslau,
Comparative dictionary, ). Commentators
suggest the same: R. Paret cites al-Farrā

(d. ⁄) apud al-abarī (d. ⁄) for
his reading of  : (rabbanā fta baynanā
wa-bayna qawminā bi-l-aqq wa-anta khayru
 399
l-fātiīn), to which can be added other au-
thorities, both early and late. Thus Muqātil
b. Sulaymān (d. ⁄; Tafsīr, ii, )
glosses the imperative “make a judgment”
( fta) as iqi; and Makkī b. Abī ālib (d.
⁄; al-Umda, ) and Abū ayyān
al-Andalusī (d. ⁄; Tufat al-arīb, )
gloss it as ukum, the latter also glossing
al-fattā of  : as the judge (al-ākim).
Paret (“Bedeutungsentwicklung,” Kommen-
tar, ) holds that this was the primary
meaning (Grundbedeutung) of f-t-, translat-
ing it as Entscheidung (thus  :; :, the
latter perhaps best translated in English as
reckoning). He further holds that it shifted
towards success (Erfolg), which is how he
suggests the noun and verb be read in a
number of instances (Paret,  :; :;
:, , ; :; :; :).  :, innā
fatanā laka fatan mubīnan, which is said to
have been revealed in connection with ei-
ther udaybiyya or Khaybar, is translated
by A.J. Arberry as “Surely we have given
thee a manifest victory,” and by Paret as
“Wir haben dir einen offenkundigen Er-
folg bescheiden.” *Abd al-Razzāq al-
&an*ānī (d. ⁄; Tafsīr, ii, ; see also
Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, iv, ) glosses
this passage as “We have made a clear
judgment for you” (qaaynā laka qaā$an
mubīnan).
For Paret, as for others (e.g. R. Bell, W.M.
Watt), the fall of Mecca, particularly as
mentioned in  :, probably explains
the historians’ use of fat in the sense of
conquer. In the words of Watt, “The
meaning of conquest, however, is derived
from this conception of the conquest of
Mecca as a judgment or clearing up” (Mu-
hammad at Mecca, ). Certainly Mecca’s
capitulation hardly qualifies as conquest in
any military sense. Only two Muslim fatali-
ties are connected to the event, and these
only tangentially. The city never really re-
sisted, Abū Sufyān, the leader of pagan
opposition, having been captured earlier.

Even so, when medieval Muslims came
across the term al-fat in adīth (e.g., lā
hijra bad al-fat, “there shall be no migra-
tion after the conquest”) or in history in a
more general context (e.g. ām al-fat, “the
year [.. ] of the conquest”), they had
no doubt which one was intended; indeed,
according to some sources (e.g. Bukhārī,
aī, ii, ), Muammad uttered a ver-
sion of the lā hijra statement on the very
day Mecca fell. Ibn Isāq (d. ⁄), as
well as later authorities on the biography of
the Prophet (sīra), describes any number of
forays (sariyyas) and raids (ghazwas), but
only one fat; and it was the Prophet’s cam-
paigns (conventionally called maghāzī ) that
produced the normative form of prophetic
biography in the first three centuries, alter-
native titles (e.g. al-Madā
inī’s putative
Kitāb Futū al-nabī cited by Ibn al-Nadīm,
Fihrist, ) being extremely rare.
That the fall of Mecca came to be called
“al-fat” tout court must therefore be ex-
plained in terms of salvation (q.v.) rather
than military or legal history. For unlike
the treaty of Najrān (q.v.) or especially
Khaybar, the terms of Muammad’s en-
trance into (pagan) Mecca seem to have
played no important role in legal discus-
sions about the conquest fate of the
(mostly Christian and Jewish) communities
of the Near East (see   ;
  ). It might be
suggested that by labelling as futū the
Muslims’ victories outside of Arabia, histo-
rians sought to reinforce a point made by
Tabūk accounts and the modelling of Mu-
ammad’s biography upon Moses’, i.e.
that warfare beyond both the Arabian pen-
insula and the Prophet’s direct experience
enjoyed his (and God’s) sanction. The nat-
ural alternative, the Arabic root gh-l-b
meaning to overcome, conquer or prevail,
was perhaps too closely associated with
the fate of the Byzantines (q.v.) in  .
Exactly when and how Mecca emerged as
 
the definitive fat is just as difficult to know,
the evidence being so exiguous. For exam-
ple,  : (idhā jā$a naru llāh wa-l-fat, see
Nöldeke,  , ii, f.; followed by F. Buhl,
Leben, ) is variously held to be a Meccan
or a Medinan verse. Adducing the Medi-
nan-sounding second verse, Nöldeke opted
for the latter categorization, connecting
it, via the exegetical works, to the fall of
Mecca. This does appear to have been the
tradition’s consensus, one attested already
in the commentary attributed to Mujāhid
b. Jabr (d. ⁄, Tafsīr, ; cf. Ibn an-
bal, Musnad, v, no. ). But some authori-
ties held that events at unayn gave rise to
the verses (thus Wāidī, Asbāb, ) or even
that it was revealed after the Prophet’s
Farewell Pilgrimage some two years later
(see ;   ).
 : is sometimes taken to refer to
Mecca but other times to the truce (ul) of
al-udaybiya. Al-abarī preferred the lat-
ter. In fact, G.R. Hawting has adduced
some evidence suggesting that the associa-
tion of fat in the sense of conquest with
Mecca is secondary on two counts: The
opening of the sanctuary at al-udaybiya
may be primary.
In any case, since the poetry of the early
Islamic period betrays a clear debt to qur-

ānic imagery, one can fairly infer that the
infusion of the Arabic root f-t- with God’s
providential direction was indeed a qur-

ānic innovation, albeit one with scriptural
precedents (e.g. Deut : and Ezek :,
the latter closer to the classical notion of
conquest than anything qur
ānic). The first
instance of this connection is a verse at-
tributed to Muammad’s contemporary
assān b. Thābit (Dīwān, i, , line )
which is said to have been composed
shortly before Mecca fell in Ramaān of
⁄. It already echoes  : and
:, as well as prophetic adīth (Wen-
sinck, Concordance, v, ). Similarly, al-
Farazdaq’s panegyric to the Muhallabids
400
(Shar dīwān al-Farazdaq, i, , lines -)
draws on  : ( fa-anzala l-sakīnata alay-
him wa-athābahum fatan qarīban, see -
). Elsewhere (Dīwān, i, , line ), we
find the qur
ānic conjunction of fat and
nar, along with the familiar instrumental-
ity of human agents (see also Shar dīwān
Jarīr, , line ): God conquers through
men. The poetry of this period now begins
to exhibit signs of the conquest rhetoric
that characterizes the historical prose of
the second and third centuries, even pro-
ducing one of its principal genres, the futū
works of Ibn A*tham al-Kūfī (fl. third⁄
ninth century), al-Madā
inī (d. ⁄)
and, most famously, al-Balādhurī (fl. third⁄
ninth century), among others. When al-
Farazdaq has strongholds (maāqil) defy the
Sasanians, only to be conquered by the
sword of the Muhallabids (Dīwān, i, ,
lines -), the usage is identical to that
found amongst the narrators of historical
material (akhbārīs). See also 
 .
Chase F. Robinson
Bibliography
Primary: *Abd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr; Abū ayyān al-
Gharnā(ī, Tufat al-arīb bi-mā fī l-Qur$ān mina
l-gharīb, amāh ; Bukhārī, aī;
al-Farazdaq, Shar dīwān al-Farazdaq, ed. M.I.*A.
al-&āwī, Cairo ; assān b. Thābit, Dīwān,
ed. W. *Arafāt, London ; Ibn anbal,
Musnad; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist; Jarīr b. *A(iyya,
Shar dīwān Jarīr, ed. I. al-āwī, Beirut ;
Makkī, al-Umda fī gharīb al-Qur$ān, ed. Y.*A.
al-Mar*ashlī, Beirut ; Mujāhid, Tafsīr;
Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr; al-Rāghib
al-I2fahānī, al-Mufradāt fī gharīb al-Qur$ān, Cairo
; Wāidī, Asbāb.
Secondary: E. Beck, Die Sure ar-Rūm, in
Orientalia  (), - and  (), -;
A.F.L. Beeston et al., Dictionnaire Sabéen,
Louvain-la-Neuve⁄Beirut ; J.C. Biella,
Dictionary of old south Arabian, Chico, CA ; M.
Bravmann, A propos de Qur
ān IX-: atta yuū
l-ğizyata an yadin wa-hum āghirūna, in Arabica 
(), -; repr. in Paret, -; F. Buhl, Das
Leben Muhammads, Leipzig ; H. Busse, The
Arab conquest in revelation and politics, in 
 401
 (), -; C. Cahen, Coran IX-: atta
yuū l-ğizyata an yadin wa-hum āghirūna, in Arabica
 (), -; repr. in Paret, -; D.C.
Dennett, Conversion and the poll-tax in early Islam,
Cambridge ; F.M. Donner, The early Islamic
conquests, Princeton ; id., Muammad’s
political consolidation in western Arabia up to
the conquest of Mecca. A reassessment, in 
 (), -; A. Fattal, Le statut legal des
non-musulmans en pays d’Islam, Beirut ; G.R.
Hawting, al-udaybiyya and the conquest of
Mecca. A reconsideration of the tradition about
the Muslim takeover of the sanctuary, in  
(), -; Horovitz,  ; Jeffery, For. vocab.;
J.M.B. Jones, The chronology of the maghāzī —
a textual survey, in   (), -.
W. Leslau, Comparative dictionary of Geez,
Wiesbaden ; Nöldeke,  ; R. Paret, Die
Bedeutungsentwicklung von arabisch fat, in J.M.
Barral (ed.), Orientalia Hispanica sive studia F.M.
Pareja octogenario dicata, Leiden , -; id.,
Kommentar; R.B Serjeant, The sunnah jāmiah,
pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the Tarīm of
Yathrib. Analysis and translation of the
documents comprised in the so-called
“Constitution of Medina,” in   (),
-; E.S. Shoufani, al-Riddah and the Muslim
conquest of Arabia, Toronto ; M.W. Watt,
Muhammad at Mecca, Oxford ; id., Muhammad
at Medina, Oxford ; Wensinck, Concordance.
Consanguinity see   
; 
Consecration of Animals
The ritual reservation or segregation of
animals for religiously mandated reasons.
Some information about pre-Islamic prac-
tices of this sort can be gleaned from qur-

ānic statements that proscribe them. Is-
lamic forms of animal consecration and
sacrifice (q.v.) present both continuities and
discontinuities with earlier practice.
Consecration in pre-Islamic Arabia
Animal consecration in pre-Islamic Arabia
can be conveniently divided into those
forms that involve bloodshed (q.v.) and
those that do not (see - 
  
  
). For the latter the locus of
proscription is  :. Among ancestral
customs (awā$id) that were considered sa-
cred (aā, aāyā) by pre-Islamic Arabs,
the following were condemned by  ::
() The consecration to the gods of any fe-
male camel with her female offspring after
having given birth to the fifth. Such a
camel (q.v.) was given the name of baīra,
i.e. “with slit ear,” because as a sign of her
consecration her ear, as that of her female
offspring, was slit; as a consequence, peo-
ple refrained from mounting such an ani-
mal or cutting its hair. According to the
biographer of the Prophet, Ibn Isāq
(d. ⁄), however, her milk could be
offered to a guest or to a person in need
(Sīra, f.).  : indicates that a camel
consecrated in this manner (nāqat Allāh)
was given by the prophet &āli as a “sign”
(āya) of his mission and allowed to graze
on the “land of Allah” without any harm
being done to her. () The consecration of
any she-camel (or he-camel) following an
oath sworn for the purpose of healing an
illness or ensuring the success of a busi-
ness. No subsequent benefit was to be de-
rived from this consecrated camel, and that
is why it was called sā$iba, “left in nature.”
Ibn Isāq records that a camel that has
given birth to ten she-camels in five preg-
nancies with no intervening male offspring
was also given this name (Sīra, -).
() The consecration of the fruit of the
seventh pregnancy: If a he-camel, it was
sacrificed, but if a she-camel, it was left in
the herd; if twins were born, however, con-
sisting of a male and a female, the male
was not sacrificed. Hence the name of
waīla was given to this she-camel whose
birth spared the life of her brother. Al-
though Ibn Isāq states that both the male
and female were sacrificed, this contradicts
the meaning of the name given to such a
ewe. On the other hand, Ibn Hishām
(d. ⁄), the redactor of Ibn Isāq’s