Book of Injuries
Introduction
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Book of Injuries

A death-inducing act is of three kinds: ʿamd (intentional), khaṭāʾ (mistake), and shibh ʿamd (quasi-intentional). Qiṣāṣ (retaliatory execution) is enforced only in cases of intentional killing, which is defined as directing both the act and the person with an instrument that normally kills, whether sharp-edged or heavy.

If either intention is lacking—such as when the killer falls upon the victim and he dies, or shoots at a tree and strikes him instead—the act is a mistake. When he intends both the act and the person, yet with something that does not ordinarily kill, it is quasi-intentional; an example is beating with a whip or a stick.

Should he drive a needle into a vital organ, the killing is intentional; likewise if he inserts it elsewhere and the spot swells and pains him until death follows. If no trace appears and death is immediate, it is quasi-intentional; another opinion holds it to be intentional, and a third that nothing is owed. If he inserts it into a place that does not hurt, such as the skin of the heel, nothing is due in any circumstance.

If he imprisons a person and withholds food, drink, and the means to obtain them until the victim dies, and the period that passes is one in which someone like him would ordinarily perish from hunger or thirst, the killing is intentional. If the victim had not previously been hungry or thirsty, it is quasi-intentional. If he was somewhat hungry or thirsty and the jailer was aware of it, the act is intentional; otherwise, according to the more reliable view, nothing is owed.

Qiṣāṣ is also incurred through causation. Thus, if two witnesses testify to a matter that entails qiṣāṣ, the defendant is executed, and the witnesses then retract, saying, “We lied deliberately,” both become liable to qiṣāṣ—unless the heir admits that he knew they were lying.

If a host serves poisoned food to a child or an insane person and the guest dies, qiṣāṣ is obligatory. If he serves it to a rational adult who is unaware of the food’s condition, the penalty is a diyah (blood money); according to another view, qiṣāṣ; according to a third, nothing. Likewise, if he furtively puts poison into food that the victim normally eats and the victim consumes it unknowingly, the same three opinions apply.

If someone neglects to treat a wound that is ordinarily fatal and the victim dies, qiṣāṣ is obligatory—or, if the victim is an adult who was unaware of the food’s condition, the penalty is a diyah; according to one view, qiṣāṣ; according to another, nothing.