_Adultery_ is most severely visited: but to establish a charge of this crime against a wife, four eye-witnessses are necessary.[200] If convicted thus, she is to be put to death by stoning.[201] I need scarcely say that cases of this kind have very seldom occurred, from the difficulty of obtaining such testimony.[202] Further laws on this subject, and still more favourable to the women, are given in the Kur-án[203] in the following words:—“But [as to] those who accuse women of reputation [of fornication or adultery], and produce not four witnesses [of the fact], scourge them with eighty stripes, and receive not their testimony for ever; for such are infamous prevaricators, excepting those who shall afterwards repent; for God is gracious and merciful. They who shall accuse their wives [of adultery], and shall have no witnesses [thereof] besides themselves, the testimony [which shall be required] of one of them, [shall be] that he swear four times by God that he speaketh the truth, and the fifth [time that he imprecate] the curse of God on him if he be a liar; and it shall avert the punishment [of the wife] if she sware four times by God that he is a liar, and if the fifth [time she imprecate] the wrath of God on her if he speak the truth.” The commentators and lawyers have agreed that, under these circumstances, the marriage must be dissolved. In the chapter from which the above quotation is made, it is ordained (in verse 2) that unmarried persons convicted of fornication shall be punished by scourging, with a hundred stripes; and a Sunneh law renders them obnoxious to the further punishment of banishment for a whole year.[204] Of the punishment of women convicted of incontinence in Cairo, I shall speak in the next chapter, as it is an arbitrary act of the government, not founded on the laws of the Kur-án, or the Traditions.[205] _Drunkenness_ was punished by the Prophet by flogging, and is still in Cairo, though not often. The “hadd,” or number of stripes for this offence, is eighty in the case of a free man, and forty in that of a slave.