we measure by the smaller of the two heads, treating it as wholly included, and we do not make up what is lacking from the face or the nape of the neck. Instead, the balance is taken as a proportional share of the arsh (monetary compensation) for a bone-exposing wound were that arsh to be allocated over the whole head.
If the assailant’s head is the larger, only an area equal to the victim’s head is uncovered, and the sounder view is that the choice of where that area is to be taken lies with the perpetrator.
Should he have laid bare the victim’s forelock while his own forelock is smaller, the shortfall is made up from the remainder of his head.
If the avenger exceeds his entitlement in a muḍiḥah, he becomes liable to retaliation for the excess. When that excess was unintentional, or the offender pardons him in exchange for money, a full arsh is due—though another opinion limits the liability to the proportionate share.
Where several people caused the muḍiḥah, one identical wound is inflicted on each of them; another view holds that only each person’s proportional share is taken.
A sound limb is not amputated in return for a paralyzed one, even if the perpetrator consents. Should the amputation nevertheless be carried out, it is not regarded as qiṣāṣ; rather, the offender must pay the blood money for that limb, and, if the injury subsequently leads to death, he is liable to retaliation for life.
Conversely, a paralyzed limb may be taken for a sound one—unless specialists testify that the bleeding would not cease, in which case the claimant must be satisfied with the paralyzed limb alone.
A healthy limb may be cut in retaliation from someone who is left-handed (aʿsam) or lame (aʿraj), and nail discoloration—green or black—has no legal effect. The stronger opinion is that a finger whose nails are missing may be severed in return for a finger with intact nails, but not the reverse.
The male organ, whether sound or paralyzed, is treated like the hand: the paralyzed organ may be permanently contracted and unable to extend, or the opposite. Erection or the lack of it is immaterial; thus the organ of a virile man is amputated in retaliation for that of a castrated or impotent man. Likewise, a sound nose may be taken for a flattened one, and a hearing ear for a deaf one; but not a sound eye for an eye whose pupil is blind, nor a speaking tongue for a mute one.
For the extraction of a tooth there is qiṣāṣ, not for merely breaking it. If a tooth is pulled from a small child who has not yet developed permanent teeth, no liability arises at once. When the age arrives for those teeth to emerge—namely, the other baby teeth fall out and none appears in that socket—and experts affirm that the root is ruined, qiṣāṣ becomes obligatory, though it is not carried out while the child is still a minor. If an adult tooth is extracted and it subsequently grows back, the more correct view is that qiṣāṣ is not nullified.
If the victim’s hand was already missing one finger and the offender severs an entire hand, his hand is amputated in retaliation, and he must also pay the indemnity for one finger.
Should a complete hand be cut off in place of one that was incomplete, the person whose hand was severed may, at his option, take the blood money for his four fingers or amputate them himself. The sounder opinion is that a ḥukūmah (court-assessed indemnity) for the roots of those fingers is due if he elects to amputate them, not if he accepts their blood money, and that in either case a ḥukūmah equal to one-fifth of the value of the palm is obligatory.
If a palm that has no fingers is cut off, there is no qiṣāṣ unless the perpetrator’s palm is likewise fingerless.