Often when there is a case of theft in the town one of the “wise women” is summoned to help discover the thief and the whereabouts of the stolen property. She occasionally finds the property, but very rarely exposes the culprit. One day a rich merchant came to my office in a great fuss and complained that a quantity of silver ornaments belonging to his wife had disappeared from his house. I held an official inquiry, but there were no clues, and nothing was found out. Then the merchant invited the help of an old woman called Marika, who according to popular opinion was assisted by a familiar jinn. He offered her a substantial reward if she could trace the jewellery. About a week later Marika came to the merchant and asked him to collect every single person in his household outside the door of the house at a certain time that night. The door was closed on the empty house and the old woman hobbled up and down outside it for about ten minutes, muttering incantations and watched with considerable awe by the whole household. After this proceeding she flung open the door and led the merchant to one of the lower rooms where the missing ornaments were found lying on the floor near the window. She explained that a jinn had brought them back; the merchant paid her a reward and she then retired. Nobody thought of trying to discover who had replaced the stuff, and my suggestion that the lady herself had some knowledge of the culprit was indignantly dismissed. These old women have access to all the harems and have a considerable influence over the women, so they are able to collect an enormous amount of information which helps them in affairs like these, though they are by no means always so successful. If a number of people are implicated in a theft another very curious system is used for discovering the culprit. A smooth, round dish, or a flat, round piece of wood about the size of a plate is produced and inscribed with curious hieroglyphics and verses from the Koran. Two men, one of them who has to be an expert, sit down on the ground facing each other, holding the dish in the air about a foot from the ground, balanced on the tips of their fingers. Each of the suspects come in one by one and places a scrap of paper or rag on the middle of the round piece of wood. If they are innocent nothing happens, but when the guilty man has dropped his piece of paper on to it the wood begins to revolve. I have seen this performance done three times; on two occasions nothing happened, but the other time the wood certainly did move round, although I could not see how it was manipulated.