Did pre-Islamic Arabians bury infants alive?

Uzza asked: Is there any archeological or other support for the claim that pre-Islamic Arabs buried children alive? AFAIK, there are a couple of passing mentions of this in the Quran and Hadith, I’ve never heard anything from non-Muslim sources.

Sorry it’s taken me a while to answer this, but I wanted to do enough research to be fairly confident in my answer of . . . I don’t think so.  I know, not a particularly helpful answer, but it’s the best I can manage.

First, I think it’s worth giving a bit of background.  There are stories that in pre-Islamic Arabia, even up to the lifetime of the Prophet (peace be upon him), the Arabians buried female infants alive because women were considered less valuable than men.  This is mentioned in Muslims sources to stress the improvements made to the life of women by the Qur’an and Islamic law.  The citation given the most often is the Qur’anic verses 16.58-59, which are addressed to the polytheists in Mecca: “When if one of them receiveth tidings of the birth of a female, his face remaineth darkened, and he is wroth inwardly.  He hideth himself from the folk because of the evil of that whereof he hath had tidings, (asking himself): Shall he keep it in contempt or bury it beneath the dust!  Verily evil is their judgment.”

As you can see from the English rendering, the Qur’anic verse does not openly accuse the Meccan polytheists of burying infants, but it’s clear how that interpretation could be read from this passage.  I think, firstly, this is one of those passages where it’s important to remember that the stories which explain Qur’anic passages were codified several centuries after the first revelation of the Qur’an, and so it is possible that the meaning has been expanded beyond the original intention.

As for archaeological evidence, I’ve checked several studies on the archaeology of Mecca, and unfortunately I could only find a few references to burials, and none mentioning infant burials of any kind.

I think there are two reasons why there is no known evidence for or against this claim.  The first is that, in order to evidence that a child had buried alive, we would need a large sample size of burials, a clear majorities of female bodies, and preferably some sort of evidence for how the burial took place, such as the placement of the body.  We just don’t have enough examples of burial sites to make this kind of judgment.

This fact stems from the second problem with evidencing this claim, which is true of archaeology throughout the Mediterranean – it’s really tough to get the right to excavate.  Meccan burial sites are under the current, living city of Mecca.  As academics, we have access to the ruins that remain above ground, but for excavations within a city, there’s probably someone living over the thing you want to excavate, and so you would need a reason to kick them out and dig up their house.  As Mediterranean cities have often remained inhabited for centuries, there are levels of archaeological evidence that we only have access to in particular circumstances, like construction projects.

So as far as I know, there’s no evidence about infant burials one way or the other.  I would argue that from a practical standpoint, it seems unlikely that the stories are true, or that the practice was common, as presumably an accusation about it could be leveled against the converted Muslims as well as the polytheist Meccans – even if they stopped the practice at their conversion, they might have done it in the past.

There’s also the fact that gender relations tend to be far more balanced in nomadic or semi-nomadic societies – limited resources mean that all members of the community need to produce goods in order to be useful.  There just simply isn’t the surplus of goods needed to allow half the community to be provided for without playing an active role in the production of goods.

I would be inclined to argue that these verses should be read hyperbolically, that it was a practice that had taken place in the past, but that it was being used in this passage to highlight that there were still inconsistencies between the rights of men and the rights of women that the Qur’an eliminated.  The sura then goes on to remind the listener not to treat people unfairly, because he or she will be judged by God for his or her actions, and I think that’s really the point of these verses.  But really, that’s just me.

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