ABSTRACT
The author argues that the Qur'an itself, while referring to incest prohibitions due to milk kinship, does not mention the concept of laban al-fahl, which most likely developed among the jurists of the early second/eighth century. The Qur'an remains vague about breastfeeding. Nurses are designated by the expression "your mothers that gave you the breast", maternity being defined here through breastfeeding. The concept of the "milk father" is, likewise, unknown to the Qur'an, which is why it is not surprising that the formula of laban al-fahl is missing as well. Furthermore, the Qur'an seems to ignore the analogy between kinship by birth and kinship by breastfeeding. The analogy between childbirth and breastfeeding implies that blood parents are the cause of the child's birth, and milk parents are the cause of the child's nourishment. The dead woman is compared to a sleeping woman: If a baby suckles a woman's breast while she is deeply sleeping, matrimonial impediments are the result.
