Section

A full blood-money is due for the loss of each faculty: hearing, sight, smell, and taste. The same applies to speech, intellect, the ability to walk, eat, or engage in sexual intercourse, and the inability to retain urine or stool, …

In this section, the author discusses faculties, which are the senses.

His statement, “For each faculty there is a full blood-money—namely hearing, sight, smell, and taste”: the author mentions only four of the senses, whereas it is well known that there are five; he has omitted touch.

His statement, “hearing,” means that a person assaults another until he can no longer hear, even if the ear itself remains intact. In that case, a full blood-money is due. A hadith has been reported, though it is weak: “For hearing there is a blood-money” (1). If hearing is impaired, however, then an assessment of compensation is due, since the degree of hearing cannot be precisely measured.

But if the injured party claims that his hearing has been lost and the offender denies it, he is tested by a stratagem: someone comes upon him unexpectedly and produces near him things that make a disturbing sound. If he moves or turns around, then he can hear; otherwise, he cannot.

His statement, “sight”: if a person assaults another and thereby causes the loss of his sight, a blood-money is due, whether this occurs through damage to the eye or to the brain. If he destroys the sight of one eye, then the blood-money for that eye is due; if it is in both eyes, a full blood-money is due. If sight is weakened, then an assessment of compensation is due.

The same is said here as was said regarding hearing: if the injured party claims that he cannot see and the offender denies it, he is tested by a stratagem. Some of them said: his eye is opened