Note 8 — Chapter IV

Note 8. I have before mentioned, that this horrid mode of punishing a woman suspected of incontinence is not unfrequently practised among the Arabs. Many similar cases have been mentioned to me in Egypt as having occurred in that country in the present age; and often the murder is committed by the father or a brother of the woman, as her relations are considered as more disgraced than the husband by her crime. The present tale is probably founded on some particular occurrence of this kind. One is related as having happened in the reign of the Khaleefeh El-Moạtaḍid. In this case, some limbs of the murdered woman, in two leathern bags, were brought up from the bed of the Tigris in the net of a fisherman.276 [Such barbarity, however, is contrary to law, as is stated in two former notes.—Ed.]