Blood-revenge was a common practice among the Egyptian people. The victim’s relations claimed the right to kill the perpetrator, and relationship was widely extended, for the blood guiltiness included the homicide, his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, and all these were liable to retaliation from any of the relatives of the deceased, who in times past, killed with their own hands rather than appeal to the government, and often did so with disgusting cruelty, even mangling and insulting the corpse. Animosity frequently survived even after retaliation had been accomplished, and blood-revenge sometimes subsisted between neighbouring villages for several years and through many generations. Revengeful mutilation was allowed by the law in varying degrees. Cutting off the nose was equivalent to the whole price of blood, or of any two members,--two arms, two hands, or two legs; the removal of one was valued at half the price of blood. The fine of a man for maiming or wounding a woman was just half of that inflicted for injuring a man, if free; if a slave the fine was fixed according to the commercial value of the slave. The whole price of blood was demanded if the victim had been deprived of any of his five senses or when he had been grievously wounded or disfigured for life. The Koran prescribed that for a first offence of theft the thief’s right hand should be cut off, and for a second, his left foot; for a third, the left hand; and for a fourth, the right foot. Further offences of this kind were punished by flogging, or beating with the courbash--a whip of hippopotamus hide hammered into a cylindrical form--or a stick upon the soles of the feet. The bastinado, in fact, was the familiar punishment of the East. Religious offences, such as apostacy and blasphemy, were very rigorously punished. In Cairo a person accused of thefts, assaults and so forth used to be carried by a soldier before the kadi, or chief magistrate of the metropolitan police, and sent on trial before a court of judicature, or if he denied his offence, or the evidence seemed insufficient for conviction, although good grounds for suspicion existed, he was bastinadoed to extort confession. He generally admitted his guilt with the common formula in the case of theft, “the devil seduced me and I took it.” The penalties inflicted less than death included hard labour on the public works, digging canals and the removal of rubbish or compulsory military service.