The Maghreb Review, Vol. 35, 4, 2010 © The Maghreb Review 2010 This publication is printed on longlife paper ‘SLEEPING PREGNANCY’ IN THE MAGHREB BY ANKE BOSSALLER* The term ‘sleeping pregnancy’ describes a belief which is widespread in the Maghreb, where it is called bu r�qid in Arabic and l’enfant endormi in French. According to this belief, exceptionally long periods of pregnancy are possible. They occur because the foetus becomes dormant in its mother’s womb and remains so for an indefinite period of time. Should it ‘awake’, it resumes its growth and is eventually born as a normal child. In this article I analyse briefly the factors which seem to have led to the emergence of this belief and to its endorsement by the Islamic religious law, the sharıfi�, I also try to explain how it helped women to cope with problems of reproduction with reference to the countries of the Maghreb. Human reproduction has never been a simple, straightforward biological process. It is replete with ambiguity and social complications and faces women with physical hazards and psychological stress. Pregnancy and childbirth have always been hazardous; it is still so even now, in spite of medical progress. A pregnant woman may face problems in the period of gestation which can lead to her death, and she may also die in childbirth. Hence the belief found in the folklore of many societies that a woman stands during her pregnancy near her own open grave and remains there for some time after delivery. For the longest period of human history pregnancy was surrounded by uncertainty and ambiguity. And it was a personal matter with which the woman concerned dealt predominantly herself. If a married, otherwise healthy woman stops menstruating during her reproductive years (between menarche and menopause) she would assume that she was pregnant. And if she noticed other signs associated with pregnancy, she would make her state known to others in her surroundings in the way and at the time she saw fit. Only late in history were methods developed which made the recognition of pregnancy not dependent merely on the cessation of menstruation and how a woman felt. Through the test by which pregnancy is verified, and the ultrasonic technique by which the foetus can be observed during most stages of its development, pregnancy has become an objectively recognizable condition. As long as the recognition of pregnancy and the course of its development depended only on a woman’s observation of her physical condition and how she felt, a manifestly pregnant woman could not be sure that she would give birth to a child, for even if she was pregnant at the start, her pregnancy might become interrupted by complications such as a miscarriage. And it might turn out to be an extra-uterine pregnancy, a condition which will be discussed in some detail below. Consequently, a pregnant woman would remain confronted with * Bayreuth, Germany 430 ANKE BOSSALLER uncertainty regarding the outcome of her pregnancy until she gave birth to a child. Besides the physical risks to which a woman would be exposed during pregnancy and childbirth and the uncertainty regarding their outcome, she would also have to cope with social anxieties related to the expectations of her husband and other members of her family that she would bear children, and also to the sexual norms of her society. In Muslim societies these norms were formulated by male scholars on the basis of the provisions of Islam, but in their application over the centuries they have been adapted to the traditional values of the various Muslim societies. These norms reflected the great significance attached in Muslim societies, and until recently in most other societies, to the legitimacy of children and the recognition of paternity as the decisive factor in it. Women have been subjected over the centuries to various restrictions intended to have them abide by the sexual norms of their societies, and they knew that they would suffer ostracism and legal punishment if they did not. Nevertheless, illegitimate children were born in Muslim societies, and it was not always the women alone who were responsible for their birth, for illegitimate children were not only conceived through...