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Djinn, Genies & The Arabian Nights

MrRING

MrRING

Android Futureman
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I have questions, and lots of them, concerning Djinn, the mytical creatures from the Middle East.

1) I've heard that Islam considers djinn real. Is this the same kind of belief in Christianity has about demons and angels, where it is outside the mainstream to find belief in demons (although there is more belief in angels in gereral, it seems)? Or does the average adherant to Islam believe in djinn as an everyday experience? Or does it matter what sect?

(BTW, I'm not coming from a "look at the primitives" kind of direction, but from more of a "the supernatural world is real, and how much belief and lore of the other worlds around us exist in places where people still believe".)

2) Are the Arabian Nights considered remnants of a pre-existing sacred literature? Or purely entertainment? Are there passeges that contain real middle Eastern pre-Islamic belief, like the funeral section of the Oddesey? Or is it infuesed with Islam in the manner that Christianity is infused into Beowulf?

3) Has there ever been a fortean report of finding a genie in a bottle?

4) Are there any good sites that describe the different types and castes of djinn?
 
I've actually read Robert Kirk's chilling account of the fairy world, and could certainly see the world of the fairy and the world of the djinn being related, but hopefully somebody knows a bit about specific djinn lore.

It's interesting to note though that djinn seem to have specific catagories like fairies do.

And my understanding of the Arabian Nights is that it was some kind of pre-existing collection of tales centuries before Burton's translations, but I don't know much about their origins otherwise.

The thing that seemes weird from what I've heard is the djinn are mortal like humans and are seeking heavenly redemption, although most turn towards evil.
 
Slightly OT, but the Tim Powers novel Declare has an interesting slant on the Djinn and their nature.
 
My understanding is that:

1) The Arabian Nights has a history far predating Burton's translation and does, indeed, has its origins in pre-Islamic folklore.

2) Djinns have their origins in malignant desert spirits that were responsible for the sandstorms that could blow up out of nowhere and lead to all sorts of agita for nomadic desert tribesmen. I think I also read somewhere that they also manifested themselves as jackals.

"The Arabian Nightmare" by Robert Irwin is very good reading for anyone interested in this stuff.
 
A couple of years back, a bloke in India claimed he had captured
a vampire in a bottle. I have a picture of it somewhere: it looked
like a wad of cotton wool with a dab of blood on it.

I have a suspicion that tampons were new in those parts. :rolleyes:
 
As I understand it, there is a relationship between Djinn the word and the old Roman household spirit or guardian, the Genius Loci...
a genie is an islamification of that belief, just as the science and mathematics of the ancient greeks were preseved and elaborated in the Islamic world
 
Found a few links myself:

Here is an informative site about what the Koran says about the Djinn:

http://www.ii.uib.no/~georg/alt/rpg/ars/rules/ArsArabica/node177.html

And from the sublime to the ridiculous, here is a fellow who sells replica I Dream of Jeanie bottles:

http://hometown.aol.com/ian639/

:D

Anybody else find anything?

An edit - the first link is apparently part of a RPG, but seeing as how the religious side of games are often based on real beliefs, it may still have part of the story right, and is entertaining regardless...
 
Inhabitant said:
I think I also read somewhere that they also manifested themselves as jackals.
Click to expand...

IIRC, that also features in Declare.
 
As far as I know, The Arabian Nights is a work that slowly solidified into its present form out of a mass of earlier Arabic oral traditions. The material in it goes back a lot further than Burton (not even the first translation), although its history as a single book is obviously much shorter. An accumulation of stories told in the marketplace and around the fire, often by professionals. Some of the tales seem to be original; others are clearly nicked from elsewhere. It's interesting you mention the Odyssey - quite a few of the Nights stories are blatantly borrowed from that. For instance the tale of the Cyclops, which (if I remember right) turns up again in the adventures of Sinbad.

The best translation at the moment, I reckon, is that of Hassan Haddawy (sp?) - it's available in two parts in a nice hardback Everyman edition. The Burton translation is sometimes fun but very odd and over-the-top and not all that accurate as a representation of the original - a 'literary Brighton Pavillion'.

I think the vast majority of the stories are pure entertainment, without any sacred purpose. Considering the sex, drugs and scatology that a lot of them contain, I reckon the pious would always have objected. Doctrinal Islam forms quite a small part of the world the stories happen in, and there are lots of cheerfully pagan wonders and marvels that only receive the most cursory of religious glosses.

I certainly agree on 'The Arabian Nightmare'; Robert Irwin has also written an excellent book called 'The Arabian Nights - A Companion', which should answer most of your queries on the subject. I have it at home so later on I can post some more material than my hazy recollections have allowed here if you want to know more.
 
I'd just like to say what a pleasure it is to find a good, interesting Fortean thread here.

(Makes a change from all the argumentification elsewhere.. :rolleyes: )
 
Luckily, my university library had a copy of Irwin's Arabian Nights companion, and after a bit of a search I found a neat section on jinn lore. (I guess that is the prefered spelling).

What I've learned so far:

Jinn are mostly invisible, made of air and flame. They have shapeshifting powers. And there are more and less powerful types, the most powerful being Ifrit (who are also usually evil).

They sound alot like poltergiests at times, and more like fairies at others, and they had a very stable and known society.

There were laws on the books concerning how humans and jinn could marry. Sex with the Jinn was not considered as much of a sin, since after intercourse you didn't have to be ritually purified like you would if you had intercourse with a spouse. And they are considered beings with souls.

Many monsters of the area are thought to be in the Jinn family. Udars rape men and infest their anus with worms. Atra's pee in men's ears to make them sleep during a daily prayer session. Qutrubs are werewolf types. A Nasnas is a human divided into half, so they have one arm, one leg, one eye, etc. Peris are beutiful female spirits. And so on.

Apparently, Solomon had power over many of the jinn in his time, and was the main person who stuck them in objects. Aside from bottles, he also put them in columns.

Questions remain for me though - are there any famous Arabic clans who claim desendence from the Jinn? And/or are the Jinn considered real by the average person in Islamic countries?

A free fun bonus: found a nice bit about jinn here:
http://i-cias.com/cgi-bin/eo-direct.pl?jinn.htm
 
A contibutory factor to belief in Djinns could be the little whirlwinds which pick up dust in desert-type regions, and wander erratically across the landscape, like some kind of sentient being.

(These vortices are quite common everywhere, but only become visible when there is enough dust or fine sand on the surface.)
 
Jinn 101

Djinn, or Jinn (either way works...it's translated from the Arabic word), according to the Qur'an were created from "smokeless fire", just as man was created from "clay". From what I understand, Jinn have as much a society of their own as humankind, including heirarchies, families, and so forth. What makes them different to Malaikah (angels) and similar to men, is that they have the power to choose between good and bad, true and false, eat, drink, marry, have children, and also die (ie they have a life span allotted to them).

From http://mediaguidetoislam.sfsu.edu/religion/03l_concepts.htm
Jinn (demons) are a classification of noncorporal beings that the Quran says God created from smokeless fire (Surah 55:15). Jinn may be friendly or hostile toward humans. Jinn are said to have assisted Solomon in the building of the Jerusalem Temple. Jinn can change their size and shape, and they have free will, which makes them capable of achieving salvation in Heaven or damnation in Hell. Scholars believe that Jinn derive from pre-Islamic deities derided in the Quran for being worshipped as equal to God, “though Allah did create the Jinns” (Surah 6:100).

Does that help?
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
An edit - the first link is apparently part of a RPG, but seeing as how the religious side of games are often based on real beliefs, it may still have part of the story right, and is entertaining regardless...
Click to expand...
As long as it wasn't Powers & Perils which was not only an abomination of a game, but also managed to completely misrepresent the role of Djinn. We kept hoping that a fatwa would be declared, but no luck.

Many of the Greek and Latin classics only survived the Dark Ages in Arabic. (The Dark Ages only affecting Christian Europe, oddly enough.)

And Declare is one of Powers' best novels.

A fascinating thread, I must go off and read some of that material. Not to mention the Thousand Nights and One Night.
 
Following on from others in this thread, it is perhaps interesting to note that in Morocco the whirlwinds of sand are called both Djinn and, forgive any incorrect spelling, Shitan (Satan); in America they are, as pointed out, called dust devils, and in Australia certain Aborigine tribes also refer to them as devils.

It's probably been covered in the links provided, but I believe the Koran is very specific that angels are subordinate to humans. Satan reveals his pride by refusing to acknowledge this.
 
I vaguely recall Whirling Dirvishes being regarded as some sort of spirit of the desert too. Not the modern guys who push skewers through their skin but mini-whirlwinds whipping around the sand.
Were they related to Djinn also?


I wouldn't mind some accounts of Genies found in rings, books, carpets and other stuff rather than lamps and bottles. Would a bottle really make that good a prison? It'd break pretty easily.
 
Oh, we take Djinn for granted.

Apart from belief in Djinn being a catechismic must, they are experienced by many and taken to be a part pf the natural fabric of the world.

Actually, the nonchalance with which Djinn are accepted may account for the singular lack of interest shown by many Muslims towards psi research et al. They are real, we sometimes cross their path - what is there to prove ;)

Actually, I've met some. Will kiss and tell in a future posting...
 
It's been said a couple of times but anyone with an interest in Djinn really should read Declare - also anyone else should too. It's tremendous.
 
One of the more pious of my Muslim friends told me about the Djinn, he said they were made of fire.

So I told him about earthlights and how some of them are claimed to act as if they were senitent....He nodded at that.
 
So, here's my Djinn story.

First a little context. Sufism is actually illegal in Turkey (has been since 1925) although active persecution is nowadays very rare. It does sometimes happen though, and a couple of years ago a Dergeh was raided, sufi arrested, paraded on TV...so at the time, everybody was a little jumpy - the word was to keep an eye out for strangers and guard your tongue.

Having participated in a ceremony and retired to the tea-house downstairs for the hard cig smoking, black tea drinking session that custom demanded, I took a table beside 'x' bey and his friends. 'x' bey was a well known character - not actually a brother of the order, but a fellow traveller who had been directed to us to help alleviate his emotional problems. I knew 'x' bey rather well, but his friends were new - two guys in their mid twenties, dressed in the Istanbul street tough uniform - jeans, leather jacket, gelled hair. The way they sat, spoke quietly to one another, generally looked shifty, smoking by the fistful and casting sly glances....fuzz, thinks I. They are cops if anybody ever was.

So I kept an eye on them, waiting for an opportunity to raise the alarm without drawing their attention. Guess they must have picked up on my tention as one of them looked me right in the eye, made some comment to his friend, and the two of them rose and left.

Once they had safely passed, I whistled over one of the lads and asked him if he had recognised either of the tykes who had been sitting beside 'x' bey.

'What delikanli? I didn't see anybody'

Don't f*** me about, I said. The two guys in the leathers, chain smoking.

Drew a blank. Spoke to a few other guys arond and about, folk who must have seen them, but same response - they hadn't seen a dicky bird. Lastly I asked 'x' bey who his friends where.

'What friends?'

By this point I had drawn a little crowd, keen to discover what had freaked me. Ah, one of the older, white bearded characters chimed, Djinn. Don't give it a second thought, he said - they often visited places like this, and are glimpsed from time to time. If they were shifty, it was because they were out for mischief - when they realised they'd been clocked, they made for the door.

General assent from the crowd, who then returned to their tea, rather disappointed it was all over something so commonplace.

So, yeah, fire without smoke. Some are naughty, some are nice, some will try to use you for sex...but very realistic when your catch sight of them face to face. I've heard of folk meeting them in more outlandish forms - speaking cats, dancing dwarves....

'...very real, Mr Keaton, and most determined...'

:)
 
Amazing story, Alexius.

Do you wonder that if someone else had noticed them that they'd have seen the same thing as you?....i.e. you saw them as plain-clothes police because you were half-expecting police spies to be there.
 
True enough - I probably saw what I most feared at that precise moment. Other accounts of Djinn I've heard around and about seem to fit in with the 'observer participation' notion - rural Anatolian Djinn experiences are often distinctively folksy, and sometimes have the high strangeness factor - I didn't make the talking cat up!
 
(Speaking of high strangeness - when I first tryed to post the following, the little composition box erased itself as soon as I'd put in the last stop. Spooky.)

A little lore on why they bother. Djinn come in all shapes and size of personality - just like us. And just like us, they can become obsessed with the fulfilment of appetite - especially ours, which they can taste vicariously (although how they do this, I don't know).

However, some accounts speak of their manifesting to give advice or warn - the talking cat tale was one of those, although the teller didn't go into the specifics.

The antidote to being touched up by Djinn is ritual ablution, abstience from naughtiness and the recitation of certain Surah of the Qur'an which are held to be charms - notably the last two, Al-Falaq & An-Nas. Should symptoms persist, consult a practising and properly qualified dervish...
 
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