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of the Days of Ignorance. (14) Among these, Muhammad
respected the months of religious truce, (15) retained
the prohibition of swine's flesh, continued the
use of the lunar calendar and the names of the months
and so on. There is a considerable number of such laws
specifically enumerated in the texts:
"The people of the Days of Ignorance engaged in
many practices which the Law of Islám later confirmed.
They would not take in marriage both a mother and
her daughter, and the most shameful of acts in their
view was to marry two sisters. They would stigmatize
a man marrying the wife of his father, derisively calling
him his father's competitor. It was their custom to
go on pilgrimage to the House at Mecca, where they
would perform the ceremonies of visitation, putting on
the pilgrim's dress, practicing the circumambulation,
running between the hills, pausing at all the stopping-places,
and casting the stones. It was, furthermore, their
wont to intercalate one month in every three-year period,
to perform ablutions after intercourse, to rinse
out the mouth and snuff up water through the nostrils,
to part the hair, use the tooth-stick, pare the nails and
pluck the armpits. They would, likewise, cut off the
right hand of a thief."
Can one, God forbid, assume that because some of
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14. Jáhilíyyih: the period of paganism in Arabia, prior to the advent of Muhammad.
place.
15. The pagan Arabs observed one separate and three consecutive months of truce, during which period pilgrimages were made to Mecca, and fairs, poetry contests and similar events took
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