Maryam Rasoulian

RELG 452

Although the otherworldly creatures known as jinn are firmly

rooted in the cosmology of Islam(with an entire Surah dedicated to
them, and with jinn mentioned more often than earth), the concept
of jinn goes back to pre-Islamic times. This paper will begin with an
introduction to the pre-Islamic and Islamic conceptions of jinn, and
then discuss common cultural perceptions of jinn among differing
cultures, continuing and concluding with cross-cultural magical and
religious traditions involving humans and jinn, including jinn possession
and summoning.
Arab historian Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Masudi wrote in his Meadows
of Gold that jinn were created, male and female, from burning wind.
The female jinn laid thirty eggs, and from those eggs different types of
demonic creatures were born, such as qotrobaht(demons in the forms
of cats), iblises(which inhabit walls), maradahs(which inhabit islands),
ghouls(haunt ruins and deserts), silahs(inhabit mountains),
onahaouis(demons in the forms of winged serpents that inhabit the
air), daouasiks, hamasiks, and hamamis(these last three classes were
not defined)(Lebling, 8). Especially of concern are those jinn that
haunt desolate, abandoned places in the desert; these are the jinn that
we hear most about from pre-Islamic Bedouin tribes, responsible for

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spreading the folklore of jinn to stationary communities. Although

these Bedouin tribes were nomadic and possessed a great amount of
folklore regarding jinn that they passed on to villagers they
encountered, the fear of jinn that inhabit these isolated locales was
greater among peoples in stationary communities than in the nomadic
communities that would be more likely to encounter jinn in their
travels(Lebling, 10). Scholars are unclear as to the precise origin of the
concept of jinn some believe that the legends of jinn originated with
the Bedouin nomadic tribes, and others suppose that jinn were once
pre-Islamic pagan deities or demons that were either demoted or
elevated to the status of jinn, respectively. One of these primordial
jinn was the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu, who was associated with
the desert and with the winds, which jinn are also said to travel by and
control. Succeeding the Sumerian Pazuzu were the demons of the
Babylonians, who used charms both to summon and repel them as
necessary. The Babylonian demons that were the closest relations to
modern jinn were the utukku, which lurked in desolate locations such
as cemeteries, mountains, and desert wastelands, sometimes
attacking hapless travelers; and the rabisu, which hid in lonely areas
for the purpose of surprising those who would pass. Graveyards,
expanses of open desert, ruins, and mountains are all considered to be
locations that jinn call home, and the type of jinn known as a ghul
attacks passers-by just as a rabisu would. Scottish folklorist Lewis

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Spence considers these early demons to be prototypes of the Arabian

jinn, to whom they have many points of resemblance (Lebling, 12).
The ancient Syrian city of Palmyra is also linked to both pre- and
post-Islamic notions of jinn. The jinn/gods of Palmyra were known by
the Aramaic terms gny, jny, or ginnaya, which some scholars have
connected also to the Roman genii, which were custodial and
household deities. The ginnaye of Palmyra resembled humans, as
Bedouin jinn do today; they were said to protect desert caravans and
villages(Lebling, 14). As we will see later, Palmyra is linked to Islamic
jinn lore by way of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
These early Arab beliefs then became integrated into the
religious world of Islam beginning in the seventh century. The Prophet
himself was concerned at first that his revelations were not the work of
Allah, but the work of jinn. He was eventually persuaded that the
revelations he was receiving were of divine origin, and the Al-Jinn surah
begins with the tale of a group of jinn that hear the Quran being
recited and decide to accept Islam(Lebling, 18; Quran 72:1-15).
According to the Quran, there are three categories of evil jinn.
These are fallen angels, jinn who are unbelievers, and jinn that were
worshipped as pagan deities, such as Pazuzu(Quran 72:11-14).
However, some claim that there are five main categories of jinn: Jann,
a collective term for all jinn; Jinn, which are good or evil, Shaitans,
which are always evil, and are the children and servants of Iblis; Ifrit,

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which are mostly evil, and more powerful than Shaitans; and Marids,
which are the most evil and most powerful of all(Lebling,8).
The most famous jinn of all is, of course, Iblis the Muslim
equivalent of the Christian Lucifer. While the story of Lucifer in the
Bible is a misinterpretation at its best, the Quran is more explicit in
regards to the story of Iblis.
Iblis and the other jinn were created by God from smokeless fire.
Some accounts regard the pre-Adamite world as being ruled by jinn.
After 25,000 years of ruling the earth, however, jinn became arrogant,
and began to disobey the rules given to them by God. Iblis was a
favored jinn among the jinn that ruled the earth; he was captured,
brought to heaven, educated as an angel, and even became a teacher
to the younger angels. Jinn have free will, and so does mankind;
angels, however, were not created with free will, and thus cannot
disobey the commands of God. When God displayed his new creation
and asked that the angels and jinn bow to Adam, Iblis refused; he saw
himself as superior to Adam, who had only been created out of clay.
Rather than smiting Iblis, God granted him a stay of execution until
Judgment Day, banishing he and his followers to what Robert Lebling
calls a parallel universe where jinn can easily travel back and forth
from their world to the human world. Iblis is chained with one hand in
front of him and one hand behind him, excepting occasions on which
God sets Iblis free to manage the other jinn.

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Iblis is also connected with Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the
Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden (since he was already banished at
this point, we can assume that God unchained Iblis for some reason.)
Iblis sought passage into the Garden of Eden and spoke to all the
animals; the only animal that would let him in was the serpent, a
graceful animal that walked on four legs. The serpent carried Iblis into
the Garden of Eden between her fangs, and he spoke to Adam and Eve
through her mouth. (Unlike the previous versions of the story, Adam
and Eve were both equally to blame for eating the fruit; the weight of
the sin was not unnecessarily shifted to Eve. Additionally, the Islamic
version of the story does not bring with it any Christian notion of
original sin; rather, Adam and Eve repented for this misdeed and
were summarily forgiven.)
According to one scholar, Iblis married the serpent that
transported him into the Garden, and they were fruitful and multiplied;
of the offspring that Iblis and the serpent produced, five sons are
considered the most celebrated of the evil jinn. These are Dasim, who
ruins marriages by causing enmity between husband and wife; Sut,
called father of lies; al-Awar, the one-eyed, who encourages lewd
and lascivious behavior, and Tir, bird, the cause of disaster, injury,
and loss.
One of their offspring was Lilith, also known as Qarinah. Although
we understand that jinn were populous before God created humans,

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Lilith is considered to be Mother of the Jinn. Lilith/Qarinah has a

similar story as she does in Judaism and Christianity; the difference
here is that she is jinn, rather than a fallen human or a demon,
depending on the tale, and also that her story is told as it relates to
interactions between Lilith/Qarinah and King Solomon.

M.W. Hilton-Simpson writes of a ritual conducted among the

Shawiya Berbers of Algeria when a person needs to have a jinn
exorcised. A divination is first conducted to determine the jinns
religious beliefs; these will, in turn, establish the details of the sacrifice.
Although a goat is preferred, a chicken or another type of fowl may be
used if the family that must complete the sacrifice is poor. If the jinn
that is troubling the household is Jewish, then the animal sacrificed will
be red, and the sacrifice will take place at sunset on Saturday the
Jewish Sabbath. If the jinn is Christian, the animal is black, and should
be done at sunset on Sunday, and if the jinn is Muslim, then the
sacrifice will take place at sunset on Friday, and the animal chosen will
be white. The animals color should be uniform, without splotches, and
Hilton-Simpson notes that purely colored animals fetch a much higher
price due to this requirement. The animal sacrificed must also be of the
opposite sex of the person afflicted by the jinn. After the animal is
killed, a dish is prepared with semolina in an earthenware bowl; the
dish will occasionally incorporate fruits and nuts, depending on the

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prescription of the scribe who has divined the sacrificial details. The
bowl with the meal in it is left in an empty room for a short amount of
time, and then the household will gather and consume it in complete
silence. Some say that a small portion of the meal should be left;
others say only the bones(and feathers, if the animal sacrificed was a
fowl) should remain in the dish. A family member then takes the bowl
and its contents called a neshura to the outskirts of the village. The
person transporting the neshura may not speak or look behind him
until they have returned home (Hilton-Simpson,179).
When and how a jinn will leave the person when a neshura is
prepared also varies. Some have reported that the jinn will leave when
the bowl is placed outside the village. Others say that the jinn will
leave the person and enter into an animal that will be able to consume
the offering such as a stray dog or other wild animal. Yet another
opinion is that the jinn will not leave until something overturns or
breaks the neshura, which then leads to people placing neshura right
around corners or in narrow places in order to increase the likelihood
that a traveler will stumble into one(Hilton-Simpson, 180).
Hilton-Simpson also writes that among the Shawiya Berbers,
apotropaic charms against the evil eye are also used similarly against
the jinn, and that in fact many believe the two to go hand in hand
that is, that jinn are either the cause of the evil eye, or that what will
cure one ill will also cure another. The Shawiya Berbers believe that

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the admiring glance of envy that causes the evil eye is accompanied
by a jinn. The measures taken against the evil eye are also taken
against jinn; it does not seem that there is a remedy for one that is
exclusive to the other. That being said, there remain a remarkable
amount of apotropaic charms, remedies, and precautions available
should one be concerned about either jinn or the evil eye.
Some charms that are worn to ward off jinn include spices such
as garlic, red pepper, salt, cumin, or asafoetida. These spices are used
because they have a taste and/or smell that is unpleasant to the jinn
and will thus keep them away(and will perhaps keep other people
away, in the case of asafoetida!). There are also animals that are
considered fearsome to the jinn generally poisonous animals, though
dogs and porcupines are also utilized due to their perceived spiteful
qualities and the Shawiya will wear amulets that either contain parts
of these animals or that resemble them. Animal charms include the
dried heads of vipers, worn in a leather casing; the canine teeth of
dogs; the skin of a snake that has been killed on a Thursday; porcupine
feet or spines; for children, the dried head of a chameleon or a
morsel of a puppys ear is worn. Sometimes a black bead with yellow
and white stripes is worn, as the bead is thought to resemble a
frightening wasp. Additionally, a live scorpion will sometimes be
encased in either a reed or a bundle of cotton and worn as amulets.
However, these charms are either worn by children as a means to ward

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off jinn that will cause them to cry, or by expectant mothers who have
already suffered a miscarriage.
Jinn are also thought to be averse to iron; no explanation has
been given other than jinn are stone-age creatures that were created
before iron was forged. Iron bracelets are worn to fend off jinn and the
evil eye they carry, as are necklaces with iron models of tools and/or
iron keys. One simple way to rid a child of the evil eye is to have him
grasp an iron key. Charms made of flattened bullets, or of circular iron
pieces made to look like flattened bullet casings, are also considered
remarkably effective. Jinn are capable of dying, and some believe that
humans can kill jinn, although a human that kills a jinn may die soon
after, or at the least be severely ill for months on end. Jinn are said to
emit a loud shriek when shot by a gun another insight into the use of
bullets or bullet-like items in apotropaic charms and, according to
Hilton-Simpsons informants, leave a corpse that always resembles a
frog. Although these botanical and animal curios comprise a great deal
of amulets used against jinn, some scribes consider these curios to be
useless as protection, and solely recommend the use of a written
amulet.
Written passages from the Quran are used throughout the
Islamic world as a means of protecting oneself from jinn or, in some
cases, for summoning and working with them. In Algeria, passages

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from the Quran will be inscribed on unlined paper and worn in silver or
leather cases.
A story is told of the Prophet encountering a female jinn in the
desert whose title was Mother of the Night. She appeared as an old,
ugly, and gigantic woman, and the Prophet, recognizing her as a jinn,
began to invoke the name of Allah against her. She revealed to
Mohammed that she was the chieftainess of all jinn and that while
she was used to wreaking havoc, she and her minions would refrain
from harming the followers of the Prophet if they wore particular
written charms, and that the wearing of these charms would even
enable a person to be protected from jinn without uttering the name of
God aloud.
Additionally, Mother of the Night has a male jinn named
Dokuyush assisting her, and should a person need obstacles removed
or wish to begin a new project, they need only tap the amulet
containing the aforementioned charm and Dokuyush will immediately
consult Mother of the Night for instructions for she promised
Mohammad that not only would her followers cease from attacking
these amulet-carriers, but that they would also assist them until they
overcame their difficulty or succeeded in their enterprise. Although the
particulars of this written charm are not specified, there are passages
from the Quran that are used in amulets of this type.

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Surahs traditionally utilized as worn talismans against jinn are

surahs Yaseen and an-Naas. The surah that deals entirely with the
existence of jinn Surah al-Jinn can be worn or recited as a protection
against jinn. Surah al-Mujadillah is a protection against jinn when it is
recited, while Surah al-Ahqaf should be written on a piece of paper and
then placed in a glass of water from the Well of Zamzam of Masjid AlHaram in Mecca. The person should then drink the water in which the
surah has been dissolved.
Another exorcism ritual performed by Algerian scribes involves
making ink from the outer skin of the gall nut and a dirty piece of
lambs wool. The scribe will blot the ink in the patients hand and
divide the blot into four sections. Mystic words are then traced in each
section, and the scribe will read a passage from the Quran. The jinn
will speak through the possessed person(stating how much the scribe
should be paid!) and then vacate the persons body. The scribe can
then feel the jinn singular or plural, depending on the extremity of
the possession move out of the inkblot in the patients hand. When
the jinn have left, the ink is washed off in water that the patient will
drink in order to complete the exorcism.
People are said to be most susceptible to jinn possession during
certain rites of passage where many community members are present
namely, a male childs circumcision, a wedding, or the feast that
takes place on the anniversary of an Islamic saints death. There is

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even a jinn with the specific title of Khatef el areis, or stealer of the
bride. Jinn in these areas of Algeria and Morocco are classified into
three types: the first, jinn who constantly trifle with the affairs of
humans; the second are jinn that are quiescent until they are
disturbed; and the last are those considered beneficial and moral
towards humans. (These last jinn are generally regarded as those jinn
that are Muslim).
Jinn, though feared in the open desert, are also strangely
domestic: they are said to inhabit/haunt empty houses. Not only is this
noted in Hilton-Simpsons ethnographical article about the Shawiya
Berbers in Algeria, but mention is also made of this in a more recent
study of Bangladeshi immigrants in England; the popular belief is that
jinn inhabit certain places abandoned buildings among them and
that one would do well not to disturb these places, as these jinn are
perfectly safe unless they are disturbed. Fear of jinn haunting
continues even in modern times in the late 1990s, workers in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, asked for extra pay on the grounds that the subterranean
chamber they were constructing were haunted by jinn; in 2000, also in
Saudi Arabia, a news report mentioned a haunted girls school in
Jeddah, where teachers reportedly would have fits and seizures, one
teacher even suffering a miscarriage, before the teachers refused to
return to the haunted school; and in Bhopal, India, Imam Ashu Mian
died in 2005 after unsuccessfully trying to rid a 200-year-old mosque of

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jinn, that would reportedly manifest in the mosque and in the imams
home as snakes.
Jinn, who may shapeshift into any creature they choose, can be
dangerous to humans if they manifest in the form of snakes or other
such creatures, as humans are likely to kill snakes that intrude in their
homes and thus risk killing a jinn in disguise. A Muslim should tell a
snake to leave his home three times before he attempts to kill it; if it
does not leave, he may then kill it without impunity. Killing a jinn in the
form of a snake could then cause a person to be abducted and taken to
a jinn court, where they are tried for killing the jinn.
Jinn are also believed to abduct humans for multiple reasons,
including marriage, aforementioned judiciary reasons, or for replacing
a jinn child inadvertently killed by human action. There are also reports
of jinn abducting human babies and leaving jinn babies as
changelings in their place. Since the jinn are replacing the human
child with a jinn child, we can assume that the jinn are not abducting
the child due to the death of a jinn child caused by a member of the
human childs family, and since the jinn will replace the jinn child with
the original human child when the humans discover they have been
tricked, it is unclear if this practice has any ultimate goal other than
mischief. However, there is the possibility of killing the child human
OR jinn when measures are taken to have the human child returned.
In some cases, women will take the presumed jinn-baby to the

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cemetery, leave it there for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then return,
assuming that the jinn will return the original human baby. In some
cases, the baby is left in a cold oven or an abandoned tomb overnight,
with the words God is between us and you; give us our son and take
your own. One story tells of a father whose infant would eat
continually, but would not gain weight nor look older. One day, he
looked in the mouth of his forty-day-old infant and discovered that the
infant had teeth. This led the father to whip the infant with a lash,
asking where it would hurt most; the child looked at him and said, Ill
bring your son back. The jinn-child disappeared into the ground, and
the family found their real child in the other room.
This physical way of approaching jinn is also used in cases of
perceived jinn possession, even if the person supposedly possessed is
a young child. Such was the case with three-month-old Samira Ullah,
whose father, Sitab Ullah, believed her to be possessed by a jinn and
continually inflicted abuse on her until she died. When Samiras mother
saw him flicking the soles of Samiras feet, he was reported as saying,
Im not hurting her. Im hurting the thing inside her(Although this
unfortunate incident occurred in 2005 in the United Kingdom in a
family of Bangladeshi descent, it is worth noting that Sitab Ullah had
problems with heroin and crack cocaine addiction prior to his daughter
being born, and also suffered from paranoid delusions in regards to his
wifes fidelity.) (Dein, 88).

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Jinn are capable of and sometimes expected to possess human

beings, although there is disagreement among imams as to whether
the jinn can actually take up physical space in a humans body (Dein,
80). Early Islamic theologians and scholars agreed that jinn existed as
a matter of fact, and so did jinn possession; Ibn Taymiyyah, both a Sufi
and an Islamic theologian, said that jinn would cause a human to be
impervious to pain, have fits, and speak incomprehensible words.
Islamic judge Abdul Jabbar al-Hamadani believed that jinn possession
was as much a reality as the basic tenets of Islam such as prayer,
fasting, pilgrimage and alms-giving.
The word sar is Arabic for possession, and this word is also
applied to epilepsy and epileptic fits(Lebling, 72). Modern-day issues
regarding jinn possession seem to be that what would once be
diagnosed and treated as jinn possession in the past would now be
diagnosed as mental illness today. However, jinn are also considered to
be the causes of madness in individuals -a mad person in Arabic is
called majnun, from the same root as jinn- so a person believed to be
jinn-possessed could theoretically not be written off as simply being
mentally ill he or she is mentally ill due to their jinn possession, not
instead of it(Lebling, 73; Dein, 80, 84).
In research conducted amongst Bangladeshi immigrants to the
United Kingdom, older and less educated Muslims were more likely to
consider jinn as the source of problems than their younger and more

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educated relatives. However, all unanimously agreed that jinn existed.

Two case studies of women believed to be possessed by jinn were
presented. These women exhibited signs of what their parents
considered to be jinn possession: crying, self-harming, lack of appetite,
antisocial behavior, and nightmares. Both women were taken to faith
healers and imams that diagnosed them as being possessed; both
womens families spent hundreds of pounds on religious ceremonies
promised to relieve their daughters of their afflictions; but they only
began to improve after they were taken to a medical doctor, diagnosed
with depression, and placed on medication(Dein, 86-7) .
Other behavior that could be construed as jinn possession
includes failure to observe Islamic practices, speaking rubbish, and
deviant behavior including infidelity and stealing. Some also state that
it is not the behavior itself that is the warning sign, but rather the
suddenness of the change in behavior that triggers alarm (Dein, 80).
The Arabic word for sorcery or magic is sihr(Kruk, 49; Dein, 79),
and while there are definite instances of people wishing to summon or
control jinn, scholarly research involving the summoning of jinn have
been difficult to come by. It is not as well written on as, say, medieval
magicians in Europe summoning demons by means of ceremonies and
grimoires. It is difficult to speculate as to why this is the case; one
could point to how condemned the practice of sorcery is in Muslim
countries, but the summoning of demons is certainly as condemned

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within Christianity, and while the world is not overflowing with

scholarly articles on early magicians rites, there are certainly more
available than on sorcerers who wish to summon jinn in order to
command them or to use them in working sihr. Most discussions of
human/jinn interaction in which the human is working in conjunction
with the jinn refer to Sufis, who utilize the jinn almost as a type of
daimon; my best hypothesis as to why mentions of jinn sorcery are
limited is the lack of English translations of Arabic sorcery texts.
Arguably, the most famous human to hold command over the
jinn was King Solomon, who was considered not only an impressive
leader, but a powerful magician. King Solomon is the greatest
scriptural and folkloric hero in terms of jinn existence and obeisance to
humans. Solomon was rumored to understand the language of birds,
animals, and insects. He also commanded strict obedience from the
jinn by use of a magical sealing ring, commonly called the Seal of
Solomon. Accounts on the design and composition of the ring differ. It
is said to carry both the Star of David and the most great name of
Allah. Some accounts say that it displayed a large sapphire or
diamond set in gold; others describe it as half brass and half iron, so
that commands to good jinn were stamped with brass, and to the evil
jinn with iron. Regardless of the alignment of the jinn good or evil
Solomon had unlimited power over them, just as he possessed power
over wild beasts, birds, and the wind(Lebling , 38). Belief about

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Solomons dominion over jinn is not as explicit in the Bible as it is in

the Quran. However, Hebrew midrash may support this belief. In
Ecclesiastes 2:8, Solomon describes how he obtained shiddah
veshiddot, which can be related to shed, the Hebrew word for demon.
Sheddim are the Jewish equivalent of jinn. The Quran is more explicit
as to Solomons sovereignty: Then We subjected the Wind to his
power, to flow gently to his order, whithersoever he willed as also the
evil ones [shayatin], including every kind of builder and diver(Quran
38:36-38). The builders mentioned here include Solomons great
workforce that constructed his kingdom; the divers are jinn enlisted
by Solomon to dive for pearls.
The Quran states that Solomon enlisted jinn to assist him in
constructing his kingdom, building for him statues, palaces, and the
First Temple. Some of these jinn that served Solomon were evil jinn
serving out their punishment. They were effectively enslaved by
Solomon and were sent to taste of the Penalty of the Blazing
Fire(Quran 34:12) should they disobey his orders. Believing jinn
served Solomon freely, making up his army of warriors. Quran 27:17
says Before Solomon were marshaled his hosts of Jinns and men and
birds, and they were all kept in order and ranks. In Surah
Saba(Sheba), God says They made for him whatever he wished,
synagogues and statues, dishes large as water-troughs, and cauldrons

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firmly fixed(on ovens; and We said): O house of David, act and give
thanks(Quran 34:13).
It is of note that the book of the Quran that discusses this is Saba, or
Sheba, as Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba with whom King Solomon was
enamored, is said to have been half-jinn. As jinn are sometimes
described as having a humans upper body and the lower body of a
goat or another creature with cloven hooves, so Solomon feared that
Bilquis had the body of a jinn for she was reportedly born of a human
father and a jinn mother, and Solomon had so many jinn enslaved in
his castle that they feared if he married Bilquis that their enslavement
would never end. One of Solomons jinni said to him, O prophet of
God, a son by this woman will be cruel, sharp, and hot in body and
soul as a means of dissuading Solomon from marrying Bilquis.
Solomon, concerned about the rumors that his potential bride
may have been half jinni, invented a test for Bilquis: he had a glass
floor constructed in his quarters, with water and fish beneath. When
Bilquis entered Solomons quarters, she thought it to be a fishpond,
and lifted her skirts in order to walk through the water. Although she
did not have cloven feet, she did reportedly have hairy legs. Solomons
jinn thought this would be sign enough for him, but he then
commanded his jinn to make a lotion of ash and slaked lime to remove
her leg hair. Somehow this depilatory method causes Bilquis to
subsequently accept monotheism, marry Solomon, and bear him a

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son(Lebling, 40-3). Bilquis died after seven years and seven months of
being with Solomon, and he buried her in the ancient Syrian city of
Palmyra. Bilquis is linked to Palmyra not only because it is traditionally
connected to jinn, but in some legends she had come across the ruins
of Palmyra while married to Solomon and asked him to have his jinn
rebuild it to her tastes(Lebling, 44).
Arabic tradition as well as the Quran relates the tale of King
Solomons death as follows: Solomon was leaning on his staff and
watching his jinn work on his construction projects when he silently
died at the age of 60. However, he did not fall over, and the jinn
assumed that he was still alive and watching them, so they continued
to work. The jinn worked until a worm gnawed through the wood of
Solomons staff and caused his corpse to fall to the ground. A jinn
traveled to the southern reaches of Solomons realm in Yemen,
informing the worker jinn there to shake off the dust of your labor and
go your way.(Lebling,
More modern instances of magicians wishing to control jinn are
more difficult to come by; Saudi shaykh Abd al-Salam Wahid Bali does
mention sorcery involving jinn in his book al-Sarim al-Battar fi altasaddi li-l-sahara al-ashrar(Al-Sarim hereafter, for brevity). Bali
considers sihr to always involve the assistance of malicious jinn, which
construes shirk in Islam, as the practitioner is invoking the help of an
entity other than Allah. Bali describes blasphemous methods a sorcerer

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may use in invoking and commanding jinn, such as the use of

menstrual blood(a taboo substance) in writing Quranic verses, writing a
sura of the Quran in reverse, and using the Quran as shoes to enter a
bathroom, after which idolatrous magic formulas are recited in order
to command the jinn. The sorcerer Bali mentions in this book is also
considered to be ritually impure as far as Islamic standards of ritual
purity(Kruk, 55-6). This is in contrast with other accounts of ritual
preparation for invoking jinn; generally, we see that there is more of an
emphasis on ritual purity - particularly telling when the aforementioned
tendency toward Sufi mystics interacting with jinn is taken into
account. There is, again, a kind of mirroring between historical
accounts of magic from European and Islamic perspectives: although
books have been written of ceremonial magicians invoking demons
through blasphemous reversals of Christianity, we see in grimoires
mentions of ritual cleanliness. (For example, the Liber Juratus Honorii
instructs the magician to Being bathed, and having upon you a clean
shirt or linen, having also white apparel, and being clean shaven from
the hairs of your body before he is to prepare the invocation.)
Bali goes on to describe the types of afflictions caused by sihr; all
of these afflictions are considered to be caused by jinn acting on the
sorcerers behalf. These afflictions are tafriq(causing discord),
tiwala(obsessive love sorcery), sihr al-takhyil(hallucination sorcery),
sihr al-junun(madness sorcery), sihr al-khumul(apathy sorcery), sihr al-

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hawatif(voices sorcery, which includes not only the afflicted person

hearing voices, but also having nightmares), sihr al-marad(illness
sorcery), sihr al-nazif(sorcery which causes bleeding outside of
menstruation), and sihr tatil al-zawaj(sorcery obstructing marriage)
(Kruk, 59-60). The symptoms of most of these afflictions can describe
various stages of mental illness - which brings us back to the
previously discussed roots of Arabic words relating possession and
epileptic fits, as well as jinn with madness; it also recalls the
aforementioned plights of the second-generation Bangladeshi women
who were subjected to faith healing for jinn possession before being
diagnosed by a physician or mental health expert. The notable
difference here is that the women were considered jinn-possessed, not
the victims of a blasphemous sorcerer who was magically manipulating
a jinn in order to cause the affliction.
Another notable observation is Balis lack of distinction of the
type of jinn supposed to bend to a magicians will; the only
characteristic given is evil, which could be as subjective a term when
applied to jinn as it is when applied to humans. As we have seen, jinn
are considered to have free will and thus be able to follow whichever
religion they desire; one could assume that so-called evil jinn would fall
under the category of pagan jinn, but as some Muslims are known to
wear Christian crosses as protection against Christian jinn, some
wariness as to the negative power of jinn regardless of their religious

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affiliation must exist. It is not even clear whether all of the jinn that
served Solomon were considered to belong to a particular religion,
since they were threatened with the fires of hell should they disobey
any orders from Solomon on the one hand, it would be difficult to
threaten a pagan jinn to conform or face a punishment that perhaps
their religion did not sanction, but why would otherwise believing
Muslim jinn be threatened with the fires of hell for failing to perform
under Solomons orders?
More common are tales of Sufis or other religious men
associating with jinn. Mikhail Rodinov writes of a man named Husayn
who has jinn deliver mail for him and pays them in cash to run
errands(Rodinov, 277).