>>7309I recently stumbled on a paper that discusses deliberate weight gain in Egypt and ties it back into earlier practices that likely originated in pre-Islamic times. A lot of it is dissecting primary sources, and there are some choice passages:
"some of them (Cairo women) have adopted a blameworthy custom, which is that when a woman goes to bed after eating dinner and filling her belly, she takes with her to bed the pith of bread (lubāb al-ḫubz) that she crumbles up with a number of other things and swallows with water, since she cannot eat it because she is already so sated; sometimes she repeats that after some of the night has passed."
"The pursuit of fatness (taʿāṭī al-
siman) has [also] led to something deplorable and dreadful, which is that
some of them eat human gall (marārat al-ādamī) because those of them
who use it eat a lot and are rarely sated, and as a result grow fat, according
to what [the women] claim."
"Some of them become so large and fat that their arms
cannot reach to clean the impurity that is upon [their private] parts because
of the fatness of body that they have caused... she is able to retain someone
to attend to that part of her and remove [the impurity] from her... A
single slave girl may not suffice her, so she needs more."
"some of them cannot stand in prayer; the same usually applies to bowing, so she prays sitting down"
"a woman does that in order
to increase her beauty (as she claims) and so that men will be pleased with
her (yaġtabiṭu bihā), in contrast to a man, for whom it is ugly to be fat"
"I heard about the women in our times when I was in Egypt in the year 700 [/1300-1301] that they fatten themselves up with the pith of bread until they are unable to stand; as a result of that their faces and bodies are affected by [indecipherable] to the point that one of them is unable to wash her vagina and anus, and requires the help of someone who exposes her private parts and cleans her after she relieves herself—we ask God to preserve us from all of that!"
"In the sixteenth
century, the Venetian physician Prospero Alpini reported at length on the
techniques Egptian women used to increase their girth, believing that they would
be more desirable to men the fleshier they were... He asserted that as a result one saw many very fat women there—interestingly, particularly among the Jewish women."
The comment about Jewish women is interesting in light of the custom of leblouh mentioned in
>>5717, which was practiced particularly in Tunisia.
"The anthropologist Rebecca Popenoe
has exhaustively discussed the pursuit of extreme fatness by women among the
Azawagh Arabs of southern Niger. In this context, girls are (or were in the 1980s
and 1990s, when Popenoe did her fieldwork) fattened before marriage through the
forced daily consumption of milky porridge (and after puberty of couscous). A
combination of systematic feeding and physical inactivity (which also inculcates
an appropriately staid feminine demeanor) yields a body ideally displaying
“pendulous upper arms, rolls of fat around the waist, a protruding behind, and
thighs that together form one vast expanse.” Popenoe notes of one of her
informants, whom she describes as “a paragon of Moor womanliness, ... full in
body and demure in comportment,” that she could no longer stand to pray in the
manner prescribed by Islamic law"
"Visiting the same general region studied by Popenoe, Ibn
Baṭṭūṭa admiringly described the Berber women of the Bardāma as “the most
perfect of women in beauty, and the most remarkable in appearance, with radiant
whiteness and fatness; I have never seen women in any country who have reached
the same degree of fatness”. He continues to describe a fattening regimen involving milk and sorghum consumed every morning and evening."
"“As for what exceeds satiety that does not
lead to this, the correct opinion is that it is permissible because it is one of the
things that perfects [sexual] pleasure (li-annahu min ikmāl al-mutʿa), which is
permissible... Ibn Arafa here prioritizes the legitimate sexual enjoyment of men within marriage (implicitly understood as being enhanced by female fatness)"
"the early
Muslim governor of Iraq Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr as declaring that “Women are
beds; the most pleasant of them are the best cushioned.”45 This maxim is followed
by another saying attributed to an early Iraqi authority, the jurist Ibn Šubruma: “I
have never seen a garment more becoming to a man than eloquence, and I have
never seen a garment more becoming to a woman than fat (šaḥm).”
"ʿĀ’iša (Prophet Mohammed's wife) was fattened up until she became stout enough to keep her from running"
"Al-Tīǧānī continues with anecdotes about ʿAbda bint ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd ibn
Muʿāwiya, a member of the Umayyad house who was married to the caliph Hišām
ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (reigned 105-125/724-743). Quoting from the eleventh-century
scholar al-Bīrūnī, he recounts that “she was exceedingly fat and could not stand
without the help of three or four slave girls.” In a rather cruel interaction, Hišām
offers her a priceless pearl if she stands up unaided; she does so with great
exertion only to fall on her face and bloody her nose, upon which he gives her the pearl. The anecdote itself has nothing to say about the aesthetic or erotic valence
of ʿAbda’s bulk, but once again al-Tīǧānī creates an artful juxtaposition,
following up with a passage from another source in which she is described as so
dazzlingly beautiful that she enthralls a man who is otherwise uninterested in
women. This passage does not mention her fatness, just as the first did not
mention her allure; put together, however, they construct a picture of a woman
who is irresistibly corpulent."
>tfw no morbidly obese muslima gf with harem of slave girls"These stories are followed by one from the Kitāb al-
aġānī about another woman of the Umayyad era, Hind, the daughter of
Asmā’ ibn Ḫāriǧa. The scenario involves her engagement and marriage to al-
Ḥaǧǧāǧ; she is described as being so fat that her black silk shawl gets caught
between her buttocks and her back, and she cannot stand up straight because of her bulk... al-Ḥaǧǧāǧ is certainly depicted as being very eager to secure her hand and consummate the marriage; the description of his lavish marriage gift places this woman of size within an atmosphere of luxury and prestige."
"ʿĀ’iša bint Ṭalḥa (the niece of the Prophet’s wife ʿĀ’iša) is described as
needing two women help her to stand up. This is followed by a report in which a
woman recounts how she visited ‘Ā’iša bint Ṭalḥa and mistakenly thought that there was another woman sitting behind her, so massive were her hindquarters."
There's more, but you get the picture. tl;dr, some women in early and medieval Islamic societies would intentionally get fat, some of them to the point of immobility and needing slaves to help them stand or wash, and they were celebrated and considered beautiful for it by some.
Something I found really interesting was how the article talks about discourse on fatness, apparently books were written discussing the attractions of both thin and fat women, some of them being biased towards fat women.
Essentially, I think that attraction to different body types was understood to be a lot more nuanced than it is in contemporary Western societies. However, the article does talk about a lot of criticism towards the practice of intentional fattening, which leads me to think of it as a holdover practice from the pre-Islamic era that was tolerated and even celebrated for a time, before being suppressed for whatever reason (apart from holdouts that exist today like in Mauritania and Niger among others). Maybe there's some sort of biological imperative behind it as well, and that's something we feedists have retained from our ancestors? I'm not sure, but it's so interesting to think about.
Here is the article if you're interested:
https://journals.openedition.org/anisl/3059#ftn1(save as pdf, easier to read)