HKB
imagine that Mohammed, by these regulations, laid so heavy a punishment on involuntary manslaughter, not only to make people beware incurring the same, but also to humour, in some degree, the revengeful temper of his countrymen, which might be with difficulty, if at all, prevailed on to accept a lighter satisfaction. Among the Jews, who seem to have been no less addicted to revenge than their neighbours, the manslayer who had escaped to a city of refuge was obliged to keep himself within that city, and to abide there till the death of the person who was high priest at the time the fact was committed, that his absence and time might cool the passion and mitigate the resentment of the friends of the deceased; but if he quitted his asylum before that time, the revenger of blood, if he found him, might kill him without guilt;4 nor could any satisfaction be made for the slayer to return home before the prescribed time.5 Theft is ordered to be punished by cutting off the offending part, the hand,6 which, at first sight, seems just enough; but the law of Justinian, forbidding a thief to be maimed,7 is more reasonable; because, stealing being generally the effect of indigence, to cut off that limb would be to deprive him of the means of getting his livelihood in an honest manner.8 The Sonna forbids the inflicting of this punishment, unless the thing stolen be of a certain value. I have mentioned in another place the further penalties which those incur who continue to steal, and of those who rob or assault people on the road.9 As to injuries done to men in their persons, the law of retaliation, which was ordained by the law of Moses,10 is also approved by the Korân:1 but this law, which seems to have been allowed by Mohammed to his Arabians for the same reasons as it was to the Jews, viz., to prevent particular revenges, to which both nations were extremely addicted,2 being neither strictly just nor practicable in many cases, is seldom put in execution, the punishment being generally turned into a mulct or fine, which is paid to the party injured.3 Or rather Mohammed designed the words of the Korân relating thereto should be understood in the same manner as those of the Pentateuch most probably ought to be; that is, not of an actual retaliation, according to the strict literal meaning, but of a retribution proportionable to the injury: for a criminal had not his eyes put out, nor was a man mutilated, according to the law of Moses, which, besides, condemned those who had wounded any person, where death did not ensue, to pay a fine only,4 the expression "eye for eye and tooth for tooth" being only a proverbial manner of speaking, the sense whereof amounts to this, that every one shall be punished by the judges according to the heinousness of the fact.5 In injuries and crimes of an inferior nature, where no particular punishment is provided by the Korân, and where a pecuniary compensation will not do, the Mohammedans, according to the practice of the