An account of the manners and customs of the modern EgyptiansLane, Edward William
History
An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians
Lane, Edward William
Egypt -- Social life and customs
capital crime, is generally put to death by drowning in the Nile.
The Bedawees have made the law of the avenging of blood terribly
severe and unjust, transgressing the limits assigned by the Kur-án:
for, with them, any single person descended from the homicide, or from
the homicide’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather, or
great-grandfather’s father, may be killed by any of such relations of
the person murdered or killed in fight; but, among most tribes, the
fine is generally accepted instead of the blood. Cases of
blood-revenge are very common among the peasantry of Egypt, who, as I
have before remarked, retain many customs of their Bedawee ancestors.
The relations of a person who has been killed, in an Egyptian village,
generally retaliate with their own hands rather than apply to the
government, and often do so with disgusting cruelty, and even mangle
and insult the corpse of their victim. The relations of a homicide
usually fly from their own to another village, for protection. Even
when retaliation has been made, animosity frequently continues between
the two parties for many years; and often a case of blood-revenge
involves the inhabitants of two or more villages in hostilities, which
are renewed, at intervals, during the period of several generations.
_Retaliation_ for intentional _wounds_ and _mutilations_ is allowed,
like as for murder; “eye for eye,” etc.;[196] but a fine may be accepted
instead, which the law allows also for unintentional injuries. The fine
for a member that is single (as the nose) is the whole price of blood,
as for homicide; for a member of which there are two, and not more (as a
hand), half the price of blood; for one of which there are ten (a finger
or toe), a tenth of the price of blood; but the fine of a man for
maiming or wounding a woman is half of that for the same injury to a
man; and that of a free person for injuring a slave varies according to
the value of the slave. The fine for depriving a man of any of his five
senses, or dangerously wounding him, or grievously disfiguring him for
life, is the whole price of blood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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