Journal - International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine

Haitham IDRISS HISTORY OF GENETICS IN ISLAM: ABOUT COLOUR,
STATURE AND CAMELS
Abu Huraira narrated (herein stated in meaning):
A bedouin came to the Messenger of Allah,
Muhammad (peace upon him) and said: “My wife has
delivered a black child.” The Prophet said to him:
“Have you camels? He replied: “Yes.” The Prophet
said, “What colour are they?” He replied: “They are
red.” The Prophet further asked: “Are any of them
gray in colour?” He replied, “ Yes “. The Prophet
asked him: “Whence did that grayness come?” He
said, “I think it descended from the camel’s ancestors.”
Then the Prophet said (to him): “Therefore, this
child of yours has most probably inherited the colour
from his ancestors” Narrated by Bukharry (7).
This hadeeth narrates the story of a man who was
puzzled that his wife delivered a black child, whence
apparently he was not black and he decided to seek
fatwa from the messenger of Allah about the parental
status of this child. Ibnu Hajar Al ^Asqalani said,
Imam Shafi^i said in Al-Umm (what means): ‘the
apparent saying of the Bedouin suggests that he
accused his wife but since his statement had a face
other than Qazef (accusing someone of
fornication/adultery without valid proof). The messenger
of Allah, peace be upon him, did not judge
him with Qazef and did not carry upon him the penalty
for Qazef (8).
Prophet Muhammad’s response to this man was to
ask him about one trait in his herd of camels, namely
colour. He asked him whether in his predominantly
red herd of camels there were camels that had a different
colour, to which the man responded affirmatively.
The messenger of Allah further quizzed the
man as to where he thinks this varied colour came
from and this man attributed this varied colour from
the camels’ ancestors (carried in their genes, as is said
in modern terms). The prophet of Allah then taught
this man to draw analogy between this observation in
camels and what he observed in the newly-born sibling.
This implied this child would be attributed to the
man who came with the query, despite having a different
skin colour than his.
There are many things that one may deduce from
this Hadeeth of the messenger of Allah. Apart from
the moral guidance and judicial content, we may
learn the prophet’s methodology in teaching his fol-
lowers how to draw analogy between two different
living beings. Here the colour of camels was used to
explain what geneticists call inheritance of skin
colour in man. Additionally, one may deduce that
traits which off-springs show, such as skin colour,
may not necessarily be the same as their immediate
parents, but may be carried, in what scientists call,
the parents’ genetic composition (DNA) that may
manifest in later generations. This concept in modern
genetics refers to genotypes, phenotypes, dominant
and recessive traits, whereby parents may have a
genotype expressed, but not necessarily, as a certain
phenotype in off-springs. Parents may therefore act
as carriers for traits that does not morphologically
express in their siblings. A geneticist may interpret
the hadeeth of the messenger of Allah, peace be upon
him, that his companion was puzzled that a phenotypic
trait (black colour) was different than his, but
was not aware that he may be carrying the genes for
it. Therefore, he implicitly asked the prophet whether
the child was his. The messenger of Allah through a
series of analogies, using camels as a model, taught
his companion the black skin colour his child possessed
may be inherited from his ancestors, even
though the colour did not manifest in him (apparently
or his wife), just like his predominantly red herd of
camels had a Grey one in them. In other words, as
geneticists say today the phenotype for black skincolour
was inherited from parents carrying genes for
both black and non-black skin colour. Geneticists
may think, when reading this hadeeth, about the concepts
of inheritance, phenotype, genotype, recessiveness
and dominance as pedigrees. The messenger of
Allah, peace be upon him, showed us the guidelines
in this hadeeth and left generations of human beings
to work out the details (and Allah knows best).
It was not until several centuries after the narration
of the aforementioned hadeeth that a Czech
Christian monk by the name of Mendel described for
Europeans inheritance of monohybrid and dihybrid
traits in plants and alluded to the concept of recessiveness
and dominance of traits. Mendel’s work was
based on observations of seven traits in peas that
were crossed for a number of generations (Figure 1).
He argued that traits were inheritable and may be
genotypically carried, but may not necessarily mani-
24 JISHIM 2004, 3