Scriptural Basis and the Two Remedies
The law of wounds, fiqh al-jirah or al-jinayat fima duna al-nafs (offences below the threshold of homicide), takes its foundational text from Quran 5:45, which prescribes ‘life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and for wounds equal retaliation (wal-juruh qisas)’, adding that whoever forgoes it in charity, it is an expiation for him. This single verse establishes both the principle of exact equivalence and the door to remission. From it the jurists derive two parallel remedies. The first is qisas, talionic retaliation: where an injury is inflicted intentionally (‘amd) and the offender can be made to suffer a precisely matching wound without injustice, the victim may demand like-for-like. The second is arsh (also termed diya for the named injuries), a fixed or assessed monetary compensation imposed where retaliation is barred. The classical maxim is that qisas governs the intentional and equivalence-capable injury, while arsh governs everything else.
Retaliation, however, is hemmed by demanding conditions, because the Shari’a will not permit the cure to exceed the disease. The injury must have healed so its true extent is known; the parties must be of comparable legal standing in the rules of kafa’a applied to qisas; the wound must be one that can be replicated exactly by the instruments of justice without risk of killing the offender or exceeding the original harm; and the offender’s act must be genuinely intentional rather than the quasi-intentional (shibh al-‘amd) or purely accidental (khata’), both of which divert the case to compensation. Where any condition fails, the remedy shifts to arsh.
The Schedule of Named Wounds (al-Shijaj wal-Jirah)
Classical fiqh transmits a detailed, graded schedule of named wounds, most precisely worked out for head-and-face injuries called al-shijaj. The conventional sequence ascends in severity: al-harisa (a graze barely breaking skin), al-damiya or al-dami’a (drawing blood), al-badi’a and al-mutalahima (cutting into the flesh), al-simhaq (reaching the thin membrane over the bone), then al-mudiha — the pivotal wound that lays bare the bone (awdaha al-‘azm) and for which the schools assess a defined fraction of the full blood-money, classically reckoned at five camels. Above al-mudiha lie al-hashima (breaking the bone), al-munaqqila (displacing bone fragments), al-ma’muma or al-amma (reaching the brain membrane, umm al-dimagh), and al-damigha (piercing through to the brain itself), each carrying a progressively larger arsh. For the trunk, the gravest named wound is al-ja’ifa, the wound that penetrates a body cavity such as the abdomen or chest, valued at a third of the full diya.
Beyond cuts, the law fixes compensation for the loss of organs, limbs, and faculties. The destruction of a single one of a pair (one eye, one ear, one hand, one foot) typically incurs half the full blood-money, while destroying both incurs the whole, since the loss of a paired faculty in its entirety is treated as the loss of a life-defining function. Loss of the senses (sight, hearing, speech, smell), of the mind, of virility, or of the use of a limb that remains physically present each carries its own valuation, and broken or knocked-out teeth are individually compensated. The four Sunni schools — Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali — and the Ja’fari school share this architecture, differing in the precise tariffs, in whether the arsh of lesser unnamed wounds is fixed or left to judicial estimation (hukuma ‘adl), and in technical conditions for retaliation.
Assessment, Medical Expertise, and the Right of the Victim
Because both culpability and the quantum of compensation turn on physical facts, fiqh al-jirah is unusually dependent on expert and medical assessment. Whether an injury reached the bone (making it mudiha) or merely the flesh, whether a faculty was permanently lost or recovered, whether a residual disfigurement remains after healing, and whether a death later supervened from the wound are all questions the qadi resolves by summoning knowledgeable assessors — physicians and, in modern practice, forensic specialists. For unnamed wounds the hukuma ‘adl is a proportional estimate: the injured person is notionally valued as a slave, sound and then wounded, and the difference yields the fraction of diya owed, a device showing how the tradition translated bodily harm into a calibrated scale rather than arbitrary penalty.
Crucially, the entire field is classed as a haqq al-abd, a private right of the servant (the victim) rather than a haqq Allah, a claim of God like the fixed hudud. This classification carries large consequences: the victim or, after death, the heirs may pardon the offender outright, may settle for arsh in lieu of retaliation, or may compound for any agreed sum (sulh); the claim is inheritable and the state does not pursue it of its own motion as it does the hudud. Quran 5:45’s closing clause on charitable remission and the wider Quranic preference for forgiveness over strict reprisal frame this remedy as one the victim controls. The result is a humane and pragmatic body of law that holds equivalence as its ideal, compensation as its fallback, and reconciliation as its constant invitation.
See also: Fiqh Al Diyah, Fiqh Al Kaffarah, Fiqh Al Hudud, Fiqh Al Buyu, Seerah Ibn Qudama