Khamr - Prohibited Drink

By Author: Ibrahim Machiwala Lodhi
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Khamr is the drink prohibited in the Koran. The word khamr is derived from the verb khamara means it veiled or covered or concealed a thing, and wine is called khamr because it veils and shrouds the intellect of man. The word khamr occurs six times in the Koran, once in subjective case (5:90), twice in objective case (12:36, 41) and thrice in genitive case (2:219, 5:91, 47:15).

Khamr is differently explained as meaning what intoxicates, of the expressed juice of grapes, or the juice of grapes when it has effervesced and thrown up froth and become freed therefrom and still, or it has common application to intoxicating expressed juice of anything, or any intoxicating thing that clouds or obscures the intellect. The general application is the more correct, because khamr was forbidden when there was not in Medina any khamr of grapes, the beverage of its inhabitants being prepared only from dates. It was sometimes prepared also from grains. The wider sense of khamr, as prepared from other things besides grapes, is borne out by the Koran (16:67). According to a report, wine, when prohibited, was made of five things, grapes, ...
... dates, wheat, barley and honey (Bukhari, 74:4). Hence, khamr is intoxicating liquor prepared from anything.

Intoxicating liquors are first spoken of in deprecatory terms towards the close of the Meccan period: "And of the fruits of the palms and the grapes.