What Is Meant Here
Shahrur means by al-an’am a specific category: domesticated herbivorous animals. He explains the boundaries of the definition through exclusions: wild animals are not included, nor are cats, dogs, or animals with claws and fangs, even if they are tame.
What Is Attributed to Shahrur
Shahrur says: “Al-an’am, in origin, are domesticated herbivorous animals.” He cites the verses al-Nazi’at 31-33, then explicitly states that describing them as domesticated excludes gazelles, giraffes, squirrels, and wild cattle, while describing them as herbivores excludes cats, dogs, and animals with claws and fangs, even if they are tame.
Later in his discussion, he links the permissibility of livestock to slaughtering them for food and benefit, rather than to the animals merely as such.
Atlas Explanation
In this definition, domestication and herbivory function as two interlocking conditions: the first distinguishes livestock from wild animals, and the second distinguishes them from tame animals that are not herbivores. This page records Shahrur’s definition and its boundaries as stated, rather than establishing an independent classification of animals.
For the broader context in the book, see Muhammad Shahrur al-Qisas al-Qur’ani vol. 2; for the terminological entry, see cattle.
Conclusion
The excluded examples can be read as a practical clarification of the definition’s boundaries: for Shahrur, “livestock” is not a collective name for every tame animal or for every herbivore separately, but for a category in which both descriptions are combined.
Open Question and Limits of the Evidence
The raw text available in this package does not establish the list of benefits found in the page’s previous wording, such as warmth, beauty, carrying loads, hides, and wool. That list should therefore not be attributed to Shahrur here without a connected verbatim witness. Nor does this page assess the basis of his reference to the hadith mentioned in his discussion or its legal implications.
Further reading links: the Book, the Qur’an, and the Mother of the Book, and The Qur’anic stories are tidings for reflection.
The Qur’anic Stories vol. 2 · The Qur’anic stories are tidings for reflection