I've often heard that people mainly drank alcoholic beverages for much of history because they were safer than water. If this is true, did Muslim societies find some way around the forbidding of alcohol? If not, did they find some other way to protect themselves from disease?
I've often heard that people mainly drank alcoholic beverages for much of history because they were safer than water.
It's not true, so the question is rendered moot. See my posts and useful conversations in the threads below which take apart misconceptions of water safety and the place of alcohol.
When did water replace beer as the staple drink?
How drunk were people of Medieval Europe
[How did people (esp. European townsmen) get fresh water in the Middle Ages?] (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1svj1q/how_did_people_esp_european_townsmen_get_fresh/)
I've often heard that people mainly drank alcoholic beverages for much of history because they were safer than water.
This is a very common assertion and one I assumed to be true for a long time since it has been repeated so much. But after spending quite a while researching for a book I want to write it struck me that I had never come across a primary source that seemed to back this up. Whenever there is a citation for this claim (and there usually is not) its usually just to another pop history book that doesn't cite any source.
Clean water is one of the basic requirements of life. Obviously in an era before the understanding of microorganisms and pathology people probably became ill from water more than they do now in areas with sufficient hygiene and water purification, but its notable that there is just no historical record (that I know of at least) that shows that a lack of clean water was a significant concern. One would surmise that if a lack of clean water existed to the extent that people would be forced to drink alcoholic beverages it would be a topic of much discussion and commentary.
What we do have written evidence of is that people realized that cities did have a problem with their local water sources so significant capital, time and energy was expended on sophisticated infrastructure to pipe clean water into the cities. London's great conduit would be an example of this.
That's the cities but most people before the modern era most people lived in rather remote rural contexts. Here you would have access to fresh water from springs, wells and runoff streams. Undoubtedly, these sources of water caused some illness on some occasion but clearly it was good enough because we see no evidence that feared drinking this water.
I've had some debates* with those far more knowledgeable than me on water based pathogens about just how clean the water in that period just may be but I remain convinced the water was clean enough to support life on a general scale simply do the fact that people persevered through the times using these sources.
And lastly, you bring up a great point about Muslim countries. I usually cite the North American Indians in trying to make the same point but Im going to steal your example ;-)
well, Muslim Arabs did a lot for alcohol: for example, Arabs can be credited for it's word root we use today and the copper process we still use to distill it. the root of the word itself as it refers to drinkable spirits is Arabic (al-kohl) which loosely translates to the spirits or the demons (although Europeans used the word alcohol to different things before the 1600s). the word was then appropriated to mean just fluid obtained though distillation, which the Arabs themselves pioneered in the 8th century AD.
Muslim Arabs found ways "around" drinking alcohol by... just ignoring the Qu'ran i suppose. but the Qu'ran does expressly forbid drinking (" it is forbidden to consume the thing that gives the wine its headiness," Qur'an sura 37 verse 47). Arabs and Medieval peoples in the later part of the 14th century used it as a medical remedy to the Black Death, but Muslim Arabs did NOT use it to purify a bad water source.
Muslim Arabs had many ways to protect themselves from disease, but alcohol as an additive to prevent contaminated water consumption was not practiced. Or if it was, I have never read about it anywhere.
My source: Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Ian Gately, 2008.