Is Maternity Determined by Pregnancy and Delivery? Five Andalusī Interpretations of Qurʾān LVIII,2


This article focuses on the use of Qurʾān LVIII,2 by contemporary Muslim jurists in debates about surrogacy arrangements. As argued by Ayman Shabana in a rich article published in 2015, the majority of those jurists claim that Qurʾān LVIII,2 provides an unequivocal legal definition of maternity and establishes that pregnancy and delivery provide the decisive criteria to determine whether a woman is the mother of a child instead of her contribution to that child’s genetic constitution. Since I am not convinced that the verse in question says exactly that, I have turned to authoritative interpretations of Qurʾān LVIII,2. Being a scholar of Islamic law familiar with legal sources from the pre-modern Islamic West, I have selected the well-known Qurʾān commentaries by Ibn Barraǧān, Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī, Ibn al-Faras al-Andalusī, and al-Qurṭubī. My intention is not to advocate for or against surrogate maternity but to delve into Andalusī Qurʾānic exegesis and show its interest to explore issues such as the legal definition of maternity that have acquired greater relevance in the wake of modern medical technologies.
After expanding the context of the examined exegetical works towards Arabic lexicography and pre-modern Islamic medical views on procreation and embryology, I show that Andalusī exegetes were aware of debates about women’s contribution to procreation, took a position in those debates and deemed the issue worthy of inclusion in their tafsīrs. Eventually I argue that none of the examined tafsīrs can be cited in support of the idea that Qurʾān LVIII,2 provides the textual basis of the Islamic legal definition of maternity let alone that legal maternity is determined by pregnancy and delivery to the exclusion of conception.