Blinding is a type of physical punishment which results in complete or nearly complete loss of vision. It was used as an act of revenge and torture. [1] The punishment has been used since Antiquity; Greek mythology makes several references to blinding as divine punishment, which reflects human practice.
In the Byzantine Empire and many other historical societies, blinding was accomplished by gouging out the eyes, sometimes using a hot poker, and by pouring a boiling substance, such as vinegar, on them. [2]
Oedipus gouged out his own eyes after accidentally fulfilling the prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother. [3] In the Bible, Samson was blinded upon his capture by the Philistines. [4]
Early Christians were often blinded as a penalty for their beliefs. [5] For example, Saint Lucy's torturers tore out her eyes. [6] This form of torture was also applied to the virgin martyrs Saint Tatiana and Saint Hripsime, according to their stories.
In the Middle Ages, blinding was used as a penalty for treason or as a means of rendering a political opponent unable to rule and lead an army in war. [7] The blinding of Byzantine general Belisarius (c. 500 – 565) at the order of the Emperor Justinian is probably apocryphal. Vazul (before 997 – 1031/1032) of the Hungarian royal House of Árpád was blinded at the order either of his cousin King Stephen I or of his queen, Gisela.
After the disinheritance and subsequent rebellion of Bernard of Italy, Louis the Pious attempted to have him blinded, but the procedure was botched, killing him instead. [8]
After the Battle of Kleidion of 1014, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II had captured several thousand soldiers from the Bulgarian Empire. He put them into groups of 100 and blinded 99 in every group. The last soldiers had only one eye gouged out, and these one-eyed men were ordered to lead their blind friends back to their commander. This earned Emperor Basil II the nickname of 'the Bulgar Slayer'. [1] According to some accounts of the story, Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria died from a heart attack upon seeing the returning blind soldiers.
In the 11th century, William the Conqueror used blinding as a punishment for rebellion to replace the death penalty in his laws for England. He was also accused of making the killing of a hart or hind in a royal forest into a crime punishable by blinding, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims that this was made up to tarnish king William's reputation.
Henry I of England blinded William, Count of Mortain, who had fought against him at Tinchebray in 1106. He also ordered blinding and castration as a punishment for thieves. [7] Prince Álmos and his four-year-old son Béla II of Hungary were blinded in 1113 by Álmos' brother Coloman.
Mahmud Shah Durrani, the Afghan Emperor of the Durrani Empire, blinded his brother and former ruler, Zaman Shah Durrani to disqualify him from succession or disputing his power ever again. [9]
Blinding survives as a form of penalty in the modern era, especially on the Indian Subcontinent. In 2003, a Pakistani court sentenced a man to be blinded after he subjected his fiancée to an acid attack resulting in her loss of vision.[ citation needed ]
In response to protests in Indian-administered Kashmir following the assassination of Burhan Wani, Indian Armed Forces used pellet ammunition targeted at blinding protesters in an act referred to by Pakistan's permanent representative to the UN, Dr Maleeha Lodhi as the "first mass blinding in human history." As of November 2016 [update] , 972 people ranging in age from 4 to old age, had been left partially or completely blind. [10] [11]
The man who blinded Ameneh Bahrami in an acid attack was sentenced to blinding by an Iranian court in 2009; Bahrami eventually pardoned the attacker. [1] [12]
The Durrani Empire or the Afghan Empire, also known as the Sadozai Kingdom, was an Afghan empire that was founded by Durrani tribe of Pashtuns, under the Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747, that spanned parts of Central Asia, the Iranian plateau, and the Indian subcontinent. At its peak, it ruled over the present-day Afghanistan, much of Pakistan, parts of northeastern and southeastern Iran, eastern Turkmenistan, and northwestern India. Next to the Ottoman Empire, the Durrani Empire is considered to be among the most significant Islamic empires of the second half of the 18th century.
"An eye for an eye" is a commandment found in the Book of Exodus 21:23–27 expressing the principle of reciprocal justice measure for measure. The earliest known use of the principle appears in the Code of Hammurabi, which predates the Hebrew Bible.
George Maniakes was a prominent general of the Byzantine Empire during the 11th century. He was the catepan of Italy in 1042. He is known as Gyrgir in Scandinavian sagas. He is popularly said to have been extremely tall and well built, almost a giant.
The history of Kashmir is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent in South Asia with influences from the surrounding regions of Central, and East Asia. Historically, Kashmir referred to only the Kashmir Valley of the western Himalayas. Today, it denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered regions of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
Autoenucleation, also known as oedipism, is the self-inflicted enucleation (removal) of the eye. It is considered a form of self-mutilation and is normally caused by psychosis, paranoid delusions or drugs. Between 1968 and 2018 there were more than 50 documented cases of "complete or partial self-enucleation in English medical journals". According to a 2012 study published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, self-enucleation was previously "considered to be the result of psycho-sexual conflicts" even if psychosis is a more likely cause. A particularly extreme form of self-mutilation, autoenucleation.
Qisas or Qiṣāṣ is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice.
Islamic criminal law is criminal law in accordance with Sharia. Strictly speaking, Islamic law does not have a distinct corpus of "criminal law". It divides crimes into three different categories depending on the offense – Hudud, Qisas, and Tazir. Some add the fourth category of Siyasah, while others consider it as part of either Hadd or Tazir crimes.
Selvarajah Yogachandran, also known as Kuttimani was one of the leaders of the former Tamil militant organization TELO from Sri Lanka. He was arrested and sentenced to death, and was killed in the 1983 Welikada prison massacre along with the other TELO leader Nadarajah Thangathurai.
Ameneh Bahrami is an Iranian woman blinded in an acid attack. She became the focus of international controversy after demanding that her attacker, Majid Movahedi, be punished by being similarly blinded. The punishment is permitted under the Qisas principle of sharia law.
Abacination is a form of corporal punishment or torture, in which the victim is blinded by infliction of intentional damage to the eyes. Damage can be in the form of removal of the eyes or eyelids, slitting the eyes, burning, excessive pressure, chemical burns, nerve injury, or brain damage. In one account, a corrosive chemical, typically slaked lime, was contained in a pair of cups with decaying bottoms, e.g., of paper. The cups were strapped in place over the prisoner's eyes as they were bound in a chair. The slowly draining corrosive agent from the cups eventually ate away at the eyeballs.
Mutilation was a common method of punishment for criminals in the Byzantine Empire, but it also had a role in the empire's political life. By blinding a rival, one would not only restrict his mobility but also make it almost impossible for him to lead an army into battle, then an important part of taking control of the empire. Castration was also used to eliminate potential opponents. In the Byzantine Empire, for a man to be castrated meant that he was no longer a man—half-dead, "life that was half death". Castration also eliminated any chance of heirs being born to threaten either the emperor's or the emperor's children's place at the throne. Other mutilations were the severing of the nose (rhinotomy), or the amputating of limbs.
An acid attack, also called acid throwing, vitriol attack, or vitriolage, is a form of violent assault involving the act of throwing acid or a similarly corrosive substance onto the body of another "with the intention to disfigure, maim, torture, or kill". Perpetrators of these attacks throw corrosive liquids at their victims, usually at their faces, burning them, and damaging skin tissue, often exposing and sometimes dissolving the bones. Acid attacks can lead to permanent, partial, or complete blindness.
The Afghan–Sikh wars spanned from 1748 to 1837 in the Indian subcontinent, and saw multiple phases of fighting between the Durrani Empire and the Sikh Empire, mainly in and around Punjab region. The conflict's origins stemmed from the days of the Dal Khalsa, and continued after the Emirate of Kabul succeeded the Durrani Empire.
The Battle of Haram or Chramon was fought between the forces of King Stephen II of Hungary and Emperor John II Komnenos of the Byzantine Empire in the year 1128, or possibly earlier – in 1125, in what is now Serbia, and resulted in a major defeat for the Hungarians. The site of the battle was near the confluence of the Karaš/Caraș and the Danube, between Banatska Palanka and Baziaș, on the modern border between Serbia and Romania.
Timur Shah Durrani, also known as Timur Shah Abdali or Taimur Shah Abdali was the second ruler of the Afghan Durrani Empire, from November 1772 until his death in 1793. An ethnic Pashtun, he was the second eldest son of Ahmad Shah Durrani.
Mehdi Sojoudi Moghaddam is an Iranian writer, literary translator and scholar.
The 2016–2017 unrest in Kashmir, also known as the Burhan aftermath, refers to protests in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, chiefly in the Kashmir Valley. It started after the killing of militan leader Burhan Wani by Indian security forces on 8 July 2016. Wani was a commander of the Kashmir-based Islamist militant organisation Hizbul Mujahideen.
A Byzantine–Hungarian War was fought between Byzantine and Hungarian forces on the Danube between 1127 and 1129. Byzantine primary sources, Cinnamus and Choniates, give little detail about this campaign; no dates are specified, and what they do say differs considerably.
Crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir is a public security practice to prevent and manage violent riots. It is enforced by police forces through laws preventing unlawful assembly, as well as using riot control agents such as tear gas, chili grenades, and pellet guns.
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