people’s hearts, and his authority to unravel. If he takes bribes—accepting birtīl payments to suspend one prescribed punishment—he loses the resolve to enforce another and becomes akin to the accursed Jews.

The word birtīl originally denoted an elongated stone. A bribe was so named because it gags the bribe-taker, preventing him from speaking the truth, just as a long stone would gag him (1). It is likewise related in a report: “When a bribe enters through the door, integrity goes out the window” (2)—meaning an aperture (3).

The same applies if he collects money for the state in exchange for doing so, such as these illicit exactions known as “disciplinary penalties.” Do you not see that when corrupt Bedouins seize some people’s wealth, then come to the person in authority driving horses to him and present them—or something else—to him, this only emboldens them to commit further corruption, undermines the dignity of public office and sovereign authority, and corrupts the subjects?

The same applies to peasants and others. Likewise, when a wine-drinker is apprehended and pays some of his wealth, consider how this emboldens the wine dealers: they hope that, if caught, they will be able to ransom themselves with some of their wealth. That governor then takes it as illicit gain, in which there is no blessing, while corruption remains unabated.