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Or was it at any' specific age ? The Qurlan (16: 57.58.59) suggests
that the girl was an unwanted person from the first moment.
So, they committed this practice in such a, way that no blood was
shed. Commenting T
on Q. 81: 8. al-Zamakhshari states: "The grave was
ready by -the side of the bed on which a daughter was born. " 1 But
sometimes she was buried when she was six years old. Al ZamakhsharT'
gives a graphic description - "It was common that whenever a man had
a baby girl whom he wanted to keep alive, he dressed her in a coat
made from the wool of sheepwhich had been bred in the wilderness for that
purposee However, if he wanted to kill her, he would leave her until
she was six years old and then say to her mother, "Dress her up and
perfume the girl that I may bring her to A-Umaeha. In the meantime. he
prepared a hole in the desert for her. Then he would take her to it,
and as they reached that hole, he would ask her to look at the hole.
While she was doing so, he pushed her from behind into the hole, and put
sand on the girl's body until the hole was level with the ground.
Other methods of infanticide are recorded, including throwing the
girl from the top of a high mountain or drowning her, or slaying her.
However. burying daughters alive was more common. 3
Nevertheless. although the hideous practice of burying daughters
alive was known to most Arab tribes, certain tribal chiefs went out
of their way to save the lives of those innocent girls. It was said
that the famous Sa Sala saved as many as three hundred or four hundred
girls
4 from that by paying compensatory money to their fathers.
Al-Farazdaq expressed his pride about his grandafather Salsa who prevented
such burials.
1- al-- Zamak-hahari j al-ýKisti; af ; Vol. 2, quoied by Smith-, o. ci P. 2931V
2. Ibid Aghftiqý992ýýo
3. Ibid and al-trufr. op. cit., P. 297
4. Ali, op. cit% Vol. 5, Po 97
2
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