Jinn

According to Moslem tradition, Allah created three different species of intelligent beings: Angels, who are made of light; Jinn (‘Jinnee’ or ‘Genie’ in the singular), who are made of fire; and Men, who are made of earth. The Jinn were created of a black smokeless fire some thousands of years before Adam, and consist of five orders. Among these orders we find good Jinn and evil, male Jinn and female. The cosmographeral-Qaswini says that ‘the Jinn are aerial animals, with transparent bodies, which can assume various forms’ . At first they may show themselves as clouds or as huge undefined pillars; when their form becomes condensed, they become visible, perhaps in the bulk of a man, a jackal, a wolf, a lion, a scorpion, or a snake. Some are true believers; others, heretics or atheists. The English Orientalist Edward William Lane writes that when Jinn take the shape of human beings they are sometimes of an enormously gigantic size and ‘if good, they are generally resplendently handsome: if evil, horribly hideous.’ They are also said to become invisible at pleasure ‘by a rapid extension or rarefaction of the particles which compose them’, when they may disappear into the air or earth or through a solid wall.

The Jinn often attain the lower heavens, where they overhear the conversations of angels about future events. This enables them to help wizards and soothsayers. Certain scholars attribute to them the building of the Pyramids or, under the orders of Solomon, the great Temple of Jerusalem.

The usual dwelling-places of Jinn are ruined houses, water cisterns, rivers, wells, crossroads, and markets. The Egyptians say that the pillarlike whirlwinds of sand raised in the desert are caused by the flight of an evil Jinnee. They also say that shooting stars are arrows hurled by Allah against evil Jinn. Among the acts perpetrated by these evil-doers against human beings, the following are traditional: the throwing of bricks and stones at passers-by from roofs and windows, the abduction of beautiful women, the persecution of anyone who tries to live in an uninhabited house, and the pilfering of provisions. Invoking the name of Allah the All Merciful, the Compassionate, is usually enough to secure one against such depredations, however.

The ghoul, which haunts burial grounds and feeds upon

dead human bodies, is thought to be an inferior order of the Jinn. Iblis is the father of the Jinn and their chief.

In I828, young Victor Hugo wrote a tumultuous fifteenstanza poem ‘Les Djinns’ about a gathering of these beings. With each stanza, as the Jinn cluster together, the lines grow longer and longer, until the eighth, when they reach their fullness. From this point on they dwindle to the close of the poem, when the Jinn vanish.

Burton and Noah Webster link the word ‘Jinn’ and the Latin ‘genius’, which is from the verb ‘beget’ . Skeat contradicts this.