The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I.: Commonly Called the Arabian Nights' Entertainments

Of the Criminal Laws, a few only need here be mentioned. Murder is punishable by death, or by a fine to be paid to the family of the deceased, if they prefer it.--Theft, if the property stolen amount to a quarter of a deenár, is to be punished by cutting off the right hand, except under certain circumstances.--Adultery, if attested by four eye-witnesses, is punishable by death (stoning): fornication, by a hundred stripes, and banishment for a year.--Drunkenness is punished with eighty stripes.--Apostasy, persevered in, by death. NOTE 2.--_On the Arabian System of Cosmography._ The words translated "as a bed" would be literally rendered "and the bed;" but the signification is that which I have expressed. (See the Ḳur-án, ch. lxxviii. v. 6; and, with respect to what is before said of the heavens, idem, ch. xiii. v. 2.[13]) These, and the preceding words, commencing with "the Beneficent King," I have introduced (in the place of "the Lord of all creatures") from the Calcutta edition of the first two hundred nights, as affording me an opportunity to explain here the Arabian system of Cosmography, with which the reader of this work cannot be too early acquainted. When we call to mind how far the Arabs surpassed their great master, Aristotle, in natural and experimental philosophy, and remember that their brilliant discoveries constituted an important link between those of the illustrious Greek and of our equally illustrious countryman, Roger Bacon, their popular system of cosmography becomes an interesting subject for our consideration.