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non-Muslim had begun, some Medinese allotted him only one-third of the weregeld for a Muslim or even less: 4,000 dirham for a Jew or Christian and 800 for a Zoroastrian. This was projected back to 'Umar and 'Uthmān on the authority of Ibn Musaiyib, and Ibn Musaiyib was made to express indignation at the doubt whether it was generally accepted.¹ But this claim is not correct nor is the protest of Ibn Musaiyib genuine, since we find a statement on the authority of Sulaimān b. Yasār to the effect that 'people used to fix the weregeld for Zoroastrians at 800 dirham, and for Jews and Christians at the amount customary between them' (Tr. III, 43).

The Umaiyad administration deducted the weregeld (or the fractions of it due for wounds) from the pension account of the culprit or of his tribe, if necessary in three yearly instalments, and paid it to the family of the victim (or to the victim in person).² Mu'āwiya is said to have instituted this procedure (Kindī, 309). This administrative practice is the basis of the common doctrine of the ancient schools of law. According to this doctrine, the 'āqila of the culprit must pay the weregeld for accidental killing (or the fraction of it due for an accidental wounding) in three yearly instalments;³ the 'āqila consists in the first place not of the members of the tribe as such, as in ancient Arab tribal society from which this idea of collective responsibility derived,⁴ but of those whose names are entered in the same pay-roll. The Medinese, however, made the culprit individually responsible for all fractions amounting to less than one-third of the weregeld (Muw. iv. 42). Shāfi'ī more or less openly reproached them with following, against analogy, the decree of some governor (Tr. VIII, 14), and we must conclude that they endorsed an administrative ruling which left it to the aggrieved party to collect smaller amounts from the culprit.⁵