Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

!440 FISH OF MOSES—JONAH—SOLOMON'S RINGthem illustrates Koranic invention. Thinking to avoid thesin and yet secure their seducers, the sojourners went out.dammed the channels, and ate the fish on the next day. But asthere was, and in some parts of Scotland still is,little differenceas regards working on the Sabbath between fishing and damming,the violation of the day—the punishment scarcely fits the^crime—involved their metamorphosis into apes !The Koran denies to the faithful on pilgrimage any huntingof game en route, but allows fishing and eating of fish from thesea. 2 At first, eating of fish was apparently unlawful, becausethe name of Allah could not always be pronounced over thembefore they died.To remedy this enforced abstinence from such a wealth ofhealthy food Mahomet blessed a knife and cast it into thesea,thus all fish were blessed and had their throats cut before" The large openings behind thethey were brought to shore.gills are of course the wounds thus miraculously made withoutkilHng the fish !" 3We discover in another legend that an accidental act on thepart of Abraham—not a designed ceremony on the part ofMahomet — gave Mussulmans their liberty of ichthyophagy.The patriarch, after sacrificing the ram instead of Isaac, threwthe knife into a stream and incidentally struck a fish, whencefishes are the only animals eaten by Mahometans without theirthroats being previously cut.1 Ci. with these inciters to Sabbath-breaking, (A) The fish, " called theJewish Sheikh, which with a long white beard and a body as large as a calf,but in shape like a frog and hairy as a cow, comes out of the sea every Saturdayand remains on land until sundown on Sunday " (Robinson, op. cit.,p. 35), and (B) the story of how on a Friday during St. Corbinian's pilgrimageto Rome, when although meat and all else abounded—the Saint had alwaysbeen a bit of a bo7i viveur — 'there was an absolute dearth of fish, an eaglesuddenly dropped from the clouds and let fall at the feet of the chef a finefish. Baring-Gould, Lives of the Saints, vol. X. 123 (London, 1897).- " O True Believers, kill no game while ye are on pilgrimage. It islawful for you to fish in the sea and eat what ye shall catch as a provision foryou and for those that travel." The Koran (Sale, chap. V. or " on Contracts ")." This passage," says Jallaleddin, " is to be understood only of fish which livealtogether in the sea, and not of those which live partly in the sea and partlyon land, such as crabs." The Turks, who are Hanifites, never eat of the latterclass ; but some sects have no scruples.^ Robinson, op. cit., p. 41. See the Koran (Sale, vol. II. 89), " God hathonly forbidden you that which dieth of itself, and blood, and swine's flesh,and that which has been slain in the name of any besides God."