30 No god but God
responsibility was to maintain order within and between the tribes by
assuring the protection of every member of his community, especially
those who could not protect themselves: the poor and the weak, the
young and the elderly, the orphan and the widow. Loyalty to the
Shaykh was symbolized by an oath of allegiance called bay’ah, which
was given to the man, not the office. If the Shaykh failed in his duty to
adequately protect every member of his tribe, the oath would be with-
drawn and another leader chosen to fill his place.
In a society with no concept of an absolute morality as dictated by
a divine code of ethics—a Ten Commandments, if you will—the
Shaykh had only one legal recourse for maintaining order in his tribe:
the Law of Retribution. Lex talionis in Latin, the Law of Retribution
is more popularly known in the West as the somewhat crude concept
of “an eye for an eye.” Yet far from being a barbaric legal system, the
Law of Retribution was actually meant to limit barbarism. Accord-
ingly, an injury to a neighbor’s eye confined retaliation to only an eye
and nothing more; the theft of a neighbor’s camel required payment
of exactly one camel; killing a neighbor’s son meant the execution of
one’s own son. To facilitate retribution, a pecuniary amount, known as
“blood money,” was established for all goods and assets, as well as for
every member of society, and, in fact, for every part of an individual’s
body. In Muhammad’s time, the life of a free man was worth about one
hundred camels; the life of a free woman, fifty.
It was the Shaykh’s responsibility to maintain peace and stability
in his community by ensuring the proper retribution for all crimes
committed within the tribe. Crimes committed against those outside
the tribe were not only unpunished, they were not really crimes.
Stealing, killing, or injuring another person was not considered a
morally reprehensible act per se, and such acts were punished only if
they weakened the stability of the tribe.
Occasionally, the sense of balance inherent in the Law of Retribu-
tion was skewed because of some logistical complication. For exam-
ple, if a stolen camel turned out to be pregnant, would the thief owe
the victim one camel or two? Because there was no formal law
enforcement and no judicial system at all in tribal societies, in cases in
which negotiation was required, the two sides would bring their argu-
ments to a Hakam: any trusted, neutral party who acted as an arbiter