Wine Meaning

WINE. Heb. ‏חֶמֶר‎ k͟hemer, Is. i. 22, “old wine.” Wine under the term k͟hamr (خمر‎), which is generally held to imply all things which intoxicate, is forbidden in the Qurʾān in the following verses:—

Sūrah ii. 216: “They will ask thee concerning wine and games of chance. Say: In both is great sin, and advantage also, to men; but their sin is greater than their advantage.”

Sūrah v. 92: “O believers! surely wine and games of chance, and statues, and the divining arrows, are an abomination of Satan’s work! Avoid them, that ye may prosper. Only would Satan sow hatred and strife among you, by wine, and games of chance, and turn you aside from the remembrance of God, and from prayer: will ye not, therefore, abstain from them? Obey God and obey the Apostle, and be on your guard: but if ye turn back, know that our Apostle is only bound to deliver a plain announcement.”

Al-Jalālān, the commentators, on these verses, say, “Only that wine is forbidden which intoxicates the brain and affects the steadiness of the body.” But all Muslim doctors hold that wine of any kind is forbidden.

Imām Abū Ḥanīfah says: “This doctrine is founded upon a precept of the Prophet, who said, ‘Whoever drinks wine, let him suffer correction by scourging as often as he drinks thereof.’” (Hamilton’s Hidāyah, vol. ii. 53.)

If a Musalman drinks wine, and is seized whilst his breath yet smells of wine, or be brought before the Qāẓī whilst he is yet intoxicated, and two witnesses give evidence that he has drunk wine, scourging is to be inflicted. The punishment is eighty lashes for a free man, and forty lashes for a slave.

Mr. Lane says: “Several stories have been told as to the occasion of Muḥammad’s prohibiting the drinking of wine. Busbequius says: ‘Muḥammad, making a journey to a friend at noon, entered into his house, where there was a marriage feast, and, sitting down with the guests, he observed them to be very merry and jovial, kissing and embracing one another, which was attributed to the cheerfulness of their spirits raised by the wine; so that he blessed it as a sacred thing in being thus an instrument of much love among men. But, returning to the same house the next day, he beheld another face of things, as gore-blood on the ground, a hand cut off, an arm, foot, and other limbs dismembered, which he was told was the effect of the brawls and fightings occasioned by the wine, which made them mad, and inflamed them into a fury, thus to destroy one another. Whereon he changed his mind, and turned his former blessing into a curse, and forbade wine ever after to all his disciples.’ Epist. 3. This prohibition of wine hindered many of the Prophet’s contemporaries from embracing his religion. Yet several of the most respectable of the pagan Arabs, like certain of the Jews and early Christians, abstained totally from wine, from a feeling of its injurious effects upon moral, and, in their climate, upon health; or, more especially, from the fear of being led by it into the commission of foolish and degrading actions. Thus Keys (Qais), the son of Asim, being one night overcome with wine, attempted to grasp the moon, and swore that he would not quit the spot where he stood until he had laid hold of it. After leaping several times with the view of doing so, he fell flat upon his face; and when he recovered his senses, and was acquainted with the cause of his face being bruised, he made a solemn vow to abstain from wine ever after.”—Lane’s Arabian Nights, vol. i. pp. 217, 218.