and allocates a portion of that seeing-light to the other eye, thereby strengthening its vision (1) as a matter of necessity. For this reason you will notice that a one-eyed man often has keen, sharp sight, and when craftsmen wish to examine something closely they shut one eye and fix the other on the object.

Accordingly, in the Sacred Law the single eye of a one-eyed person counts as two eyes with respect to blood money: if that eye is put out, the offender must pay the full diyah, as Imam Ahmad explicitly ruled.

If someone who has two eyes deliberately gouges out the eye of a one-eyed man, the latter is entitled to put out the corresponding eye of the aggressor and to claim half the diyah as well; this too was affirmed by Imam Ahmad.

If the one-eyed man himself deliberately destroys the sound eye of a fully-sighted person that matches his own, no retaliation (qawad) is taken against him, for such retaliation would leave him completely blind; instead he must pay the full diyah. Others have said that his remaining eye should still be taken and that he must pay half the diyah.

And if the one-eyed man blinds both eyes of a person with normal vision, we may choose either to take his remaining eye or to require him to pay the diyah for that eye (2).

Section

Sighting from within (3): they say that this was the method of Bahrām Gūr, and the mural depiction of him shows him as though he is aiming from inside the bow with both eyes at once,