life against him. Justice demands that you lose an eye.”
The weaver offered money to the robber, to the Kadi, but in vain ; the impartial judge would not be moved. At last, a bright thought struck him, and he said: “An eye for an eye is justice, O my lord the Kadi; yet in this case it is not quite fair on me. You are the impartial judge, and I submit to you that I, being a married man with children, shall suffer more damage in the loss of an eye than this poor robber, who has no one dependent on him. How could I go on weaving with but one eye? But I have a good neighbour, a gunsmith, who is a single man. Let one of his eyes be put out. What does he want with two eyes, for looking along gun-barrels ?” The impartial judge, struck with the justice of these arguments, sent for the gunsmith, and had his eye put out.
A carpenter was fitting the doors and lattice-work
to a house newly built, when a stone over a window
fell and broke one of his legs. He complained to
Karakash, the impartial judge, who called the lord
of the house, and charged him with culpable negligence. “It is not my fault, but the builder’s,”
pleaded the lord of the house; so the builder was
sent for.
The builder said that it was not his fault, because at the moment he was laying that particular stone a girl passed by in a dress of so bright a red that he could not see what he was doing.
The impartial judge caused search to be made for
