Quran

The Quran states that a woman who sleeps around should be “kept in houses until they die, or until Allah finds another way for them”. That excerpt could refer to immurement or just house arrest depending on how you interpret it. But the earliest punishment for female infidelity was immurement until later on when they softened up and switched to stoning.

Persia

The Persians got involved in a bit of immurement every once in a while. M. A. Hume-Griffith stayed in Persia from 1900 to 1903, and she wrote the following:

“Another sad sight to be seen in the desert sometimes, are brick pillars in which some unfortunate victim is walled up alive…The victim is put into the pillar, which is half built up in readiness; then if the executioner is merciful he will cement quickly up to the face, and death comes speedily. But sometimes a small amount of air is allowed to permeate through the bricks, and in this case the torture is cruel and the agony prolonged. Men bricked up in this way have been heard groaning and calling for water at the end of three days”.

A gem trader, Jean Baptiste Tavernier, spotted the same kind of barbarity 250 years earlier. He observed that just simple thieves would become immured. Often their head would be left uncovered and they would ask passers-by to decapitate them to end their misery. John Fryer who travelled in Persia in the 1670s wrote that the victim’s heads were left uncovered…

“…not out of kindness, but to expose them to the Injury of the Weather, and Assaults of the Birds of Prey, who wreak their Rapin with as little Remorse, as they did devour their Fellow-Subjects”.

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