ot find any to protect or to help them, besides God. O men,
now is an evident proof come unto you from your Lord, and we have sent
down unto you manifest light. They who believe in God and firmly adhere
to him, he will lead them into mercy from him, and abundance; and he
will direct them in the right way to himself. They will consult thee for
thy decision in certain cases; say unto them, God giveth you these
determinations, concerning the more remote degrees of kindred. If a man
die without issue, and have a sister, she shall have the half of what he
shall leave:[80] and he shall be heir to her,[81] in case she have no
issue. But if there be two sisters, they shall have between them two
third-parts of what he shall leave; and if there be several, both
brothers and sisters, a male shall have as much as the portion of two
females. God declareth unto you these precepts, lest ye err: and God
knoweth all things.

[Footnote 63: This title was given to this chapter because it chiefly
treats of matters relating to women: as marriages, divorces, dower,
prohibited degrees.]

[Footnote 64: By legacies in this and the following passages, are
chiefly meant those bequeathed to pious uses; for the Mohammedans
approve not of a person's giving away his substance from his family and
near relations on any other account.]

[Footnote 65: Their punishment, in the beginning of Mohammedanism, was
to be immured till they died, but afterwards this cruel doom was
mitigated, and they might avoid it by undergoing the punishment ordained
in its stead by the Sonna, according to which the maidens are to be
scourged with a hundred stripes, and to be banished for a full year; and
the married women to be stoned.]

[Footnote 66: According to this passage it is not lawful to marry a free
woman that is already married, be she a Mohammedan or not, unless she be
legally parted from her husband by divorce; but it is lawful to marry
those who are slaves, or taken in war, after they shall have gone
through the proper purifications, though their husbands be living. Yet,
according to the decision of Abu Hanifah, it is not lawful to marry such
whose husbands shall be taken, or in actual slavery with them.]

[Footnote 67: The reason of this is because they are not presumed to
have had so good education. A slave, therefore, in such a case, is to
have fifty stripes, and to be banished for half a year; but she shall
not be stoned, because it is a punishment whic