to him on the day of Resurrection, and he shall abide therein in abasement” (25:68-69).

The punishment of murder is, however, prescribed in a Madīnah revelation: “O you who believe, retaliation (qiṣāṣ) is prescribed for you in the matter of the slain; the free for the free, and the slave for the slave and the female for the female. But if remission is made to any one by his (aggrieved) brother, prosecution (for blood-money) should be according to usage, and payment to him in a good manner. This is an alleviation from your Lord and a mercy. Whoever exceeds the limit after this, will have a painful chastisement. And there is life for you in (the law of) retaliation, O men of understanding, that you may guard yourselves” (2:178, 179).

The word qiṣāṣ rendered as retaliation, is derived from qaṣṣa meaning he cut it or he followed his track in pursuit and it comes therefore to mean retaliation by slaying for slaying, wounding for wounding and mutilating for mutilating (LL.). The law of qiṣāṣ among the Israelites extended to all these cases, but the Holy Qur’ān has expressly limited it to cases of murder (fil-qatlā). It speaks of retaliation in wounds as being an ordinance of the Mosaic law (5:45), but it is nowhere prescribed as a law for the Muslims, who are required to observe retaliation only in the case of the slain (2:178). In some ḥadīth it is no doubt mentioned that the Holy Prophet ordered retaliation in some cases of wounds, but this was in all likelihood due to the fact that he followed the earlier law until he received an express commandment to the contrary.

The law of retaliation in murder cases is followed by the words “the free for the free, the slave for the slave and the woman for the woman,” which have sometimes been misunderstood as meaning that if a free man has been murdered, a free man should be murdered in his place and so on. This is falsified by the very word qiṣāṣ which requires that the murderer should be killed and not an innocent man. The words were meant to abolish an old Arab custom, for the Arabs before Islām used to insist, when the person killed was of noble descent, upon the execution of others besides the murderer. So it was made clear that whoever it might be, a free man or a slave or a woman, the murderer himself was to be slain.