find, upon examining the legal principles, that an oath is prescribed for the stronger side—that is, for whichever of the two disputants has the stronger case. It is therefore not always assigned to the defendant’s side; sometimes it is assigned to the defendant, and at other times to the claimant. The stronger of the two sides is considered, and the oath is prescribed in its favor.

The proof is that the scholars have said: if a man and a woman dispute over household utensils, with the woman saying, “This is mine,” and the man saying, “This is mine,” then whatever is normally suited to a man belongs to him if he swears an oath. For example, if the man says of a coffee pot, “It is mine,” and the woman says, “It is mine,” the statement of the man—the claimant—is accepted, even if the coffee pot is in the woman’s possession. We say to the man, “Swear that it is yours, then take it,” because his side is stronger.

Another example: if there is a man of dignity and respectable appearance, wearing a cloak, a thobe, and a headcloth, and he is holding a laborer’s hoe; beside him stands a worker with his garment tucked up around his waist, wearing an unclean thobe, whose appearance plainly suggests that he is a laborer. The worker says, “The hoe is mine,” while the other says, “Rather, it is mine, and it is in my possession.” Here, the laborer is the claimant, but in this case we give greater weight to the laborer’s side. We therefore say to him, “Swear that it is yours, then take it.”

A third example: if two men are in a land where it is customary to cover one’s head with a shemagh, and we find one man bareheaded, without a shemagh, and another wearing a shemagh and holding a shemagh in his hand. The bareheaded man says to the one holding the shemagh, “Give me my shemagh; this is mine.” The other man says, “It is in my possession, so it is mine, and you are the claimant.” In this case, the claimant—the man who has nothing on his head—has the stronger case. So we say to him, “Swear, and take it.”