Cynophagy, homosexuality and anthropophagy in medieval Islamic North Africa as signs of hospitality

Abstract

With reference to Arabic primary sources written in the middle ages, firstly, this paper will account for North African food as a symbolic cultural system expressing local values of hospitality, bravery and manhood. It will also explore the metaphoric and symbolic significance of cynophagy as a customary practice related primarily to the belief in magic by North African Amazigh, Arabs, Christians and Jews. Moreover, the paper will try to contextualise such a practice within the broader North African cultural framework, expressing an awareness of indigenous socio-cultural milieu. Secondly, the paper is designed to address the significance of North African body as an articulation of particular socio-cultural and aesthetic values. It will tackle North African gender and sex relations in a medieval Islamic context totally or partially different from the native milieu of Islam, namely Arabia. In this paper, studying and interpreting North African homosexuality as an act of hospitality will be of paramount importance. Finally, the paper will trace the links between anthropophagy, the offering of female flesh for cannibals and hospitality through scrutinising the ideological underpinnings and the socio-cultural interrelatedness. Medieval sub-Saharan anthropophagy is said to be a social behaviour that displays hospitality and kindness.

Keywords:

• cynophagy
• homosexuality
• anthropophagy
• hospitality
• Amazigh culture
• North Africa

Notes

1. A tentative map on dog flesh consumption in Northwest Africa in recent centuries is available in Simoons (1994, 226).

2. This may explain the fact mentioned by Simoons (1981, 257) that the Almoravids, who dominated North Africa and Andalusia during the eleventh century, and were known by a strict Maliki doctrine, according to Al-Bakri ‘killed dogs wherever they encountered them and never kept any dog themselves’.

3. In Bengardene, South East Tunisia, young boys used to jump over dead dogs seven times from east to west, as they were told that such an act is the best cure for skin blisters caused by their walking bare feet on burning sand during summers.

4. The original French text is as follows:

Un homme est arrivé un jour dans un endroit où il avait que des femmes et des chiens. On bien l'a bien reçu et on a égorgé un mouton en son honneur, seulement on lui a demandé de laisser de la viande autour des os. Il a mangé comme on le lui demandait, puis il vu que c'étaient les chiens qui rongeaient la viande. Alors il comprit que ces femmes étaient mariées avec les chiens. Pendant la nuit, la femme du chef, c'est-à-dire du plus grand des chiens, est venue le rejoindre et elle lui dit: Emmène-moi avec toi. Ils se sont enfuis, mais le chien s'en est aperçu. Ils ont couru, couru, poursuivis par le chien Tozeur où ils se sont réfugiés dans cette rue. Les descendants de ces gens-là sont toujours ici. Lorsque leurs femmes accouchent, une odeur de chien se répand, et lorsqu'il pleut, ils sentent le chien.