‘Every Little Boy is Taken as a Pledge against his Sacrifice at Birth’. ʿAqīqa and its Functioning in a Late Medieval Handbook on Raising Good Muslim Children

Muslim tradition prescribes a blood sacrifice to be performed on the seventh day after the child’s birth; this ritual killing is usually associated with shaving and naming the baby. This sacrifice is called ʿaqīqa. Scholarly literature on ʿaqīqa has been particularly concerned with understanding its logic in general. The present study takes a different approach in that it discusses a more circumscribed and hitherto neglected case. It looks at the fourteenth-century Syrian scholar Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) and examines Ibn al-Qayyim’s chapter on ʿaqīqa in his handbook on children: The Gift of the Beloved on the Rules for the Newborn. In particular, it considers the intriguing idea that the child is taken as a pledge at birth until ʿaqīqa is performed for the newborn. Here, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya reflects extensively on the meaning of ʿaqīqa. His reflections give us an unusual organic picture of the functions of this form of sacrifice. When we contrast this picture with earlier or contemporary collections of traditions on the subject or commentaries on such traditions, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s case signals a shift in the logic of ʿaqīqa. This sacrifice is aligned by Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya with Abraham’s intended sacrifice and is seen as a ritual that protects the child’s physical and inner growth from the damage caused by Satan’s aggression.