293 THE KORAN. 



ingeniously argue, lie may only have sat among wine- 

 drinkers, or wine may have been administered to 

 him by force or fraud. When the crime is fully 

 proved, eighty stripes is the punishment of a free 

 man ; but a slave is liable only to forty, on the 

 principle that, as bondage deprives him of half the 

 blessings of life, he should suffer but half its punish- 

 ments ; all offences being supposed to increase in 

 magnitude in proportion to the rights and enjoyments 

 of the guilty. The inhibition against intoxicating 

 liquors has been extended by the more orthodox to 

 coffee, opium, tobacco, hashish, and benj, or the 

 leaves of hemp in pills or conserve ; but at present 

 the whole of these articles are not merely tolerated, 

 but used without any religious scruple whatever. 



The moral argument against intemperance in 

 drinking applied with equal force to the prohibi- 

 tion of gaming. Dice, cards, tables, sortilege, all 

 Moslem commentators agree to be expressly pro- 

 hibited. An artful and plausible distinction saved 

 chess, the favourite pastime of the East, from this 

 sweeping ordinance. That its success depends less 

 on chance than skill and management has satisfied 

 most of the Moslem nations of its lawfulness ; who 

 allow it under conditio'n that it be not made a spe- 

 culation for money, or a hinderance in the regular 

 performance of their devotions. The fulminations 

 of the Prophet are interpreted to have been directed 

 chiefly against the carved pieces of ivory or wood 

 which the idolatrous Arabs used in playing, being 

 rude figures of men, elephants, horses, and drome- 

 daries ; and consequently condemned in the same 

 text with image-worship. The pure orthodox sects 

 substitute plain pieces of wood and ivory ; but the 

 Persians and Indians are less scrupulous about the 

 sin of using carved images, or betting money. 



The civil and criminal laws of the Mohammedans 

 are based on the Koran, and extended into a sort of 

 digest in various collections of supplementary tra- 



