Zur Abtreibung in frühen islamischen Texten research-article Thomas Eich Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 170 (2020), Ausgabe 2, Seite 345 - 360 This article analyzes approaches toward abortion in ḫadīth collections covering a time span 2nd-4th centuries AH / 8th-10th centuries CE. It shows that three approaches can be distinguished which I label “gradualist”, “binary”, and “expiation” approach. In later sunni fiqh discourse the first did not have a lasting impact and the second and third where merged into one standard approach. Shī'i collections from the 10th century show a strong emphasis on the gradualist approach and a much smaller interest in the binary approach while the expiation approach is entirely lacking. Further, this article argues that traces can be detected which help to situate the abortion material in Sunni and Shī'i collections in the larger framework of Late Antiquity discussions about ensoulment. These discussions knew three possible points in time, when the soul could be imagined to reach the new (emerging) human being: conception, pregnancy, and birth. The Sunni material clearly excludes conception from the discussion, but apparently had no fixed stand concerning the pregnancy-vs.-birth-debate for some time. The Shī'i material includes early pregnancies much more consistently into its reflections. It can be shown that the concept of ensoulment at the 120th day of pregnancy, which eventually became the overarching concept structuring the abortion debates of Muslim religious scholars, was not an intrinsic part of the debates 8th-10th centuries CE.
