The Status of Music in Islamic Law: Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s (d. 974/1567) Treatise Against Recreation in its Polemical Context

Kaff al-raʿāʿ ʿan muḥarramāt al-lahw wa-l-samāʿ is an influential treatise on the legal status of music and other recreational activities written by the Shāfiʿī Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 974/1567) in 958/1551. This article offers the first analysis of this “treatise against recreation”. Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī argues for the impermissibility of most musical activities on the basis of the Qurʾan and Hadith, the consensus of the ʿulamāʾ (particularly from his Shāfiʿī school), and the incompatibility of recreation (lahw) and piety. These arguments are forged in response to claims found in more permissive texts by the Ẓāhirīs Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064) and Ibn al-Qaysarānī (d. 507/1113) and the Mālikī Muḥammad al-Shādhilī al-Tūnisī (d. 882/1477). I suggest that it is Ibn Ḥajar’s negative attitude to lahw that underlies his restrictive views on music, highlight the gendered element in this attitude, and observe that attitudes to recreation are not interchangeable with affiliation to Sufism.