Table Of ContentRobert Lebling has lived and worked as a journalist in Egypt, L ebanon,
Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and the United States and is the
author, with Donna Pepperdine, of Natural Remedies of Arabia. Married
with two daughters, he is currently a writer and c ommunications
specialist based in Saudi Arabia.
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Legends of the Fire Spirits
Jinn and Genies from
Arabia to Zanzibar
Robert Lebling
Foreword by Tahir Shah
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Published in 2010 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
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175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Selection and editorial matter © 2010 Robert Lebling
Foreword © Tahir Shah
The right of Robert Lebling to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 84511 993 5
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham
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It is itself the morning; its clear radiance dispels
The night when it shoots out sparks like rubies
As the patrolling angels do, when, at night, they stone
With the stars the rebellious demon Afrits.
– Abu Nuwas, poet
The Prophet said, ‘There are three types of jinn: one type
which fl ies in the air all the time, another type which exists as
snakes and dogs, and an earthbound type which resides in one
place and wanders about.’
– Al-Tabarani, hadith scholar
The microscope shows you the creatures on the leaf; no mechan-
ical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and more gifted
things that hover in the illimitable air. Yet between these last
and man is a mysterious and terrible affi nity. ... Now, in space
there are millions of beings, not literally spiritual, for they have
all, like the animalculæ unseen by the naked eye, certain forms
of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtile,
that it is, as it were, but a fi lm, a gossamer, that clothes the
spirit. ... Yet, in truth, these races diff er most widely ... some of
surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some hostile as
fi ends to men, others gentle as messengers between earth and
heaven.
– Sir Edward Bulwer-Litton, novelist
The very fact that our vision of the world can be falsifi ed as a
result of further movement, observation, probing, etc., implies
that there is more in the world than what we have perceived
and known.
– David Bohm, physicist
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Co n t e n t s
Foreword by Tahir Shah ix
Acknowledgements xv
Notes on Transliteration xvii
Introduction
The Nature of Jinn 1
1. Origins 7
Islam 17
Early Legends 24
2. Historical Encounters 48
Al-Andalus 48
Spirits of the Middle Ages 53
Jinn in the Fihrist 58
Genius or Jinn-Master? 59
3. By Their Deeds: Jinn Behaviour 64
Amid Ancient Ruins 65
Human Possession and Exorcism 72
Jinn Hauntings 77
Jinn and Illness 81
‘The Condemned System’ 82
Abductions and Trials 88
Shifting Shapes 94
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viii Legends of the Fire Spirits
Jinn Living 101
Sex and Marriage 110
4. Jinn Geography 115
Arabia: The Heartland 115
Iraq: ‘Pandemonium’ 127
Harran: The ‘North’ 131
Palestine: Underground 135
Syria: The Red King’s Daughter 143
Egypt: Ifrits and Ghouls 148
Morocco: The ‘Masters’ 159
Tunisia: Air, Sea and Land 174
Turkey: Out of the Forest 181
Iran: ‘The Holy Jinn’ 185
Kurds: Children of the Jinn 192
South Asia: Coat of Many Colours 194
Zanzibar and Beyond: Spreading the Wealth 203
Nigeria: ‘Children of Jangare’ 207
Malays: Jinn in the Jungle 210
5. Cultural Echoes 216
How I Met the Ghul 216
The Arabian Nights 218
Southey’s Genii 227
Hugo’s ‘Jinn’ 232
The Mystery of Ishmonia 236
Arab Folktales 239
Appendices
Appendix A: Edward Lane’s Notes on the Jinn 245
Appendix B: Muhammad Asad on the Jinn 256
Appendix C: Jinn Physics 259
Notes 265
References 289
Index 297
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Fo re wo rd b y Ta hi r S h a h
F
ive years ago I moved from a cramped London fl at into a sprawl-
ing Moroccan mansion set squarely in the middle of a Casablanca
shantytown. Looking back, it was a relocation touched by lunacy, but
it was all the more unwise because the house was said to be infested
with Jinn.
The Occidental world has never found it easy to grasp the strange
netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist
in a realm overlaid by our own. Although descended from an Oriental
family with its roots in the mountain fortress of Afghanistan’s Hindu
Kush, I was born and brought up in the West. I thought I knew the
East. I was well accustomed from childhood to understand the fi ner
points of Arab etiquette, and I had been taught its tales, gleaned from
Alf layla wa layla (The Thousand and One Nights). That fabulous treasury
of stories had introduced me early on to the extraordinary possibilities
of a world peopled by invisible legions of Jinn. So when we came to
live here at Dar Khalifa, the Caliph’s House, I felt as if nothing could
surprise me.
How wrong I was.
From the fi rst moment that we crossed the threshold, I realised
that I was way out of my depth. The house had been empty for almost
a decade. Whereas in the West an empty home might appeal to squat-
ters, in the East there is a danger of quite a diff erent kind. The unlawful
occupants of our new home were not human, but superhuman.
The guardians, who came with the house as if through some medi-
aeval right sale, warned us from the outset that there was extreme dan-
ger all around. When I declared that we would be moving into the house
right away to supervise the renovations, they laughed nervously – that
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