In the late eighth century, the Abbasid official Abu Yusuf produced a taxation manual called Kitab al-Kharaj. In it, he acknowledges that it is permissible for Muslims to tax Zoroastrians, but followers of the Good Religion remained beyond the pale of other forms of intercommunal contact. The section on taking jizya from Zoroastrians begins with this statement:

According to Abu Yusuf (died 182/798), Muslim men should not wed Zoroastrian women nor consume meat butchered by adherents of the Good Religion. By contrast, Muslim men could marry Jewish or Christian women, and those religious communities were capable of slaughtering animals in a ritually acceptable manner, as endorsed by the Qur’an (5: 5). When did this prohibition on marriage and meat originate? What was its significance? What effect might it have had on cross-confessional interaction in early Islamicate history? And was there truly no difference on opinion on the matter?

Ideology and Memory

To answer these questions, one might begin in the realm of memory. Pierre Nora and Maurice Halbwachs have demonstrated the importance of memory in the writing of history. Individuals choose to remember or forget information about the past that helps them to explain the present. Collective memories form the basis of societies as well as religions. Historians may write national narratives that promote patriotism or communal narratives that inspire belief. They could discover ‘new’ memories to reinforce the status quo or encourage social change. They might forget ‘old’ memories for the same reasons. In Islamic Studies this phenomenon has been usefully documented by Sarah Bowen Savant and Antoine Borrut. The previous chapter described Muslim efforts to remember prophetic precedents regarding the taxation of Zoroastrians.