17. Striping or whipping as a punishment
The magistrates finding a subject before them guilty of a crime had several options available as forms of corporal punishment, including maiming, blinding, deafening (by penetrating the eardrums), and whipping at the stake, which the Persians called striping. In this, they were no different from virtually all other cultures around the world. The practice of whipping miscreants continued in the west well into the eighteenth century, and the number of blows allowed by the magistrates was in many cases staggering, literally and figuratively. In the 18th century Royal Navy, 1,000 lashes were not unheard of, through flogging through the fleet.
Five hundred or one thousand stripes was the usual Persian sentence, which could be had for beating a dog or otherwise abusing an animal (stealing a dog could be subject to capital punishment in some cases). As has been seen, the punishments were not carried out all at once, a period of recovery was allowed in between bouts of the punishment being inflicted. The wealthy and members of noble families were allowed to send their servants to receive their punishment, thus sparing their own backs as well as the idle time while recovering from the lashings. Similar punishments were still allowed in the British Royal Navy as late as 1879 before they were abolished.
