Jinn

“ The species of Jinn is said to have been created some thousands of years before Adam. According to [27] a tradition from the Prophet, this species consists of five orders or classes; namely, Jánn (who are the least powerful of all) , Jinn, Sheyṭáns (or Devils) , ́Efreets, and Márids. The last, it is added, are the most powerful; and the Jánn are transformed Jinn, like as certain apes and swine were transformed men. ”

“ He immediately made the necessary preparations, and summoned an evil Jinni named Mukhtatif (Ravisher) who inquired, "What do you require of me?" "Go quickly to the city of King Afrakh, and contrive that the inhabitants shall leave it." In that age men had intercourse with the more powerful Jinn, and each attained their ends by means of the other. The Jinn did not withdraw themselves till after the advent of the Prophet. The magician continued, "When the inhabitants have left the city, they will ask you what you want. ”

“ Then man fell upon man and Jinn upon Jinn and the armies of the Prophet charged down upon us, with the wild beasts and lions on their right hand and on their left, rending our horses and tearing our men; whilst the birds hovered overhead in air pecking out our eyes with their claws and beaks and beating our faces with their wings, and the serpents struck us with their fangs, till the most of our folk lay prone upon the face of the earth, like the trunks of date-trees. Thus defeat befel our King and we became a spoil unto Solomon. ”

“ Answered the Blue King, “O Shahyal, thou art a Jinni and I am a Jinni and is’t on account of a mortal who slew my son that thou hast done this deed; yea, the murtherer of my son, the core of my liver and solace of my soul. How couldest thou work such work and spill the blood of so many thousand Jinn?” He replied, “Leave this talk! Knowest thou not that a single mortal is better, in Allah’s sight, 5than a thousand Jinn? [3] If he be alive, bring him to me, and I will set thee free and all whom I have taken of thy sons and people; but an thou have slain him, I will slaughter thee and thy sons.” ”

“ But Mubarek laughed at him and said to him, “Fear not, O my lord; this whereat thou art affrighted is that which we seek; nay, it is a presage of good to us. So take heart and be of good cheer.” After this there came a great clearness and serenity and there breathed pure and fragrant breezes; then, presently, behold, there appeared the King of the Jinn in the semblance of a man comely of favour, there was none like unto him in his goodliness, save He who hath no like and to whom belong might and majesty. He looked on Zein ul Asnam and Mubarek with a cheerful, smiling countenance ”

“ After that the Princess cunningly led the conversation to the Jinn's approaching slumbers, and wondered tearfully what she should do alone in the walled garden. At this the good-hearted Jinn became greatly troubled, until at last he declared that the best plan would be to marry her to some young nobleman, but, he added, a worthy husband was hard to find, especially as it was necessary he should be as handsome, as a man, as Princess Pepperina was beautiful amongst women. ”

“ The following traditions from the Prophet are the most to the purpose [34] that I have seen.—The Jinn are of various shapes; having the forms of serpents, scorpions, lions, wolves, jackals, etc. [36] The Jinn are of three kinds: one on the land, one in the sea, and one in the air. [37] The Jinn consist of forty troops; each troop consisting of six hundred thousand. [38] —The Jinn are of three kinds: one have wings and fly; another are snakes and dogs; and the third move about from place to place like men. [39] Domestic snakes are asserted to be Jinn on the same authority. ”

“ Jiniwin (Mrs.) , a widow, the mother of Mrs. Quilp. A shrewd, ill-tempered old woman, who lived with her son-in-law in Tower Street.—C. Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) .
Jinker (Lieutenant Jamie) , horse-dealer at Doune.—Sir W. Scott, Waverley (time, George II.) .
Jinn, plu. of Jinnee, a sort of fairy in Arabian mythology, the offspring of fire. The jinn propagate their species like human beings, and are governed by kings called suleymans. Their chief abode is the mountain Kâf, and they appear to men under the forms of serpents, dogs, cats, etc., which become invisible at pleasure. ”

“ Jing′oism. [Often fearlessly derived from Basque Jinkoa, Jainko, God; no doubt conn. somehow with St Gengulphus (died May 11, 760) .]
Jink, jingk, v.i. (Scot.) to move nimbly, to dodge.—v.t. to elude: to cheat.—n. a quick, illusory turn.
Jinn, jin, n.pl. (sing. Jin′nee) a class of spirits in Mohammedan mythology, formed of fire, living chiefly on the mountains of Káf which encircle the world, assuming various shapes, sometimes as men of enormous size and portentous hideousness.—Also Djinn, Ginn. The jinn are often called genii by a confusion. A plural Jinns is sometimes erroneously used. ”

“ Moreover, he spread before each of them a sash of white silk and bringing forth of his pocket precious stones and perfumes, such as ambergris and aloes-wood, [set them on the edges thereof; [66] ] after which they sat down, each on his sash, and Mubarek taught Zein ul Asnam these words, which he should say to the King of the Jinn, to wit: “O my lord King of the Jinn, we are in thy safeguard.” ”

“ The good Jinn acquit themselves of the imperative duties of religion; namely, prayers, alms-giving, fasting during the month of Ramaḍán, and pilgrimage to Mekkeh and Mount 'Arafát: but in the performance of these duties they are generally invisible to human beings. Some examples of the mode in which good Jinn pay the alms required of them by the law, I have given in a former work.84
Of the services and injuries done by Jinn to men, some account must be given.
It has been stated, that, by means of talismans, or certain invocations, men are said to obtain the services of Jinn ”

“ Yet it is related that 'Áisheh, the Prophet's wife, having killed a serpent in her chamber, was alarmed by a dream, and, fearing that it might have been a Muslim Jinnee, as it did not enter her chamber when she was undressed, gave in alms, as an expiation, twelve thousand dirhems (about £300) , the price of the blood of a Muslim.76
The Jinn are said to appear to mankind most commonly in the shapes of serpents, dogs, cats, or human beings. In the last case, they are sometimes of the stature of men, and sometimes of a size enormously gigantic. ”

“ It is said that God created the Jánn (or Jinn) two thousand years before Adam (or, according to some writers, much earlier) , and that there are believers and infidels, and every sect, among them, as among men. [26] Some say that a prophet, named Yoosuf, was sent to the Jinn; others, that they had only preachers or admonishers; others, again, that seventy apostles were sent, before Moḥammad, to Jinn and men conjointly. ”

“ The Jinn were the pre-Adamite rulers of the world, and for their sins were overcome by the angels, taken prisoners and driven to distant islands. They appear as serpents, lions, wolves or jackals. One kind rules the land, another the air, a third the sea. ”

“ The injuries related to have been inflicted upon human beings by evil Jinn are of various kinds. Jinn are said to have often carried off beautiful women, [41] whom they have forcibly kept as their wives or concubines. ”

“ Saying this, the king whipped his horse and rushed after it. The beast led him on and on for some distance, as it did his father, and then stopping, shook itself, resumed its original shape, and prepared to spring. In his distress the king called earnestly on the great God to save him; and God sent an angel to direct him how to fight with the jinn.
"This is a most powerful jinn," said the angel. "Should a drop of his blood fall to the ground, while life is in him, another jinn will be quickly formed therefrom, and spring up and slay you. [2] But fear not. ”

“ Now as the hairs had been found in the river, the wise woman guessed they must have floated down stream from some place higher up, so she set off in a grand royal boat, and the boatmen rowed and rowed until at last they came in sight of the Jinn's magical marble palace.
Then the cunning wise woman went alone to the steps of the palace, and began to weep and to wail. It so happened that as Prince Lionheart had that day gone out hunting, the Princess was all alone, and having a tender heart, she no sooner heard the old woman weeping than she came out to see what was the matter. ”

“ Some of the Jinn are obedient to the will of God, and believers in the Prophet, answering to the Peries of the Persians; others are like the Deevs, disobedient and malignant. Both kinds are divided into communities, and ruled over by princes. They have the power to make themselves visible and invisible at pleasure. They can assume the form of various animals, especially those of serpents, cats, and dogs. When they appear in the human form, that of the good Jinnee is usually of great beauty ”

“ O my lord Zein ul Asnam,” added he, “an the King of the Jinn receive us with a cheerful favour, he will without fail ask thee and say to thee, ‘Seek of me that which thou willest and thou shalt forthright be given [it] .’ [68] So do thou seek of him and say to him, ‘O my lord, I crave of Thy Grace the ninth image, than which there is not in the world a more precious ”

“ That the evil Jinn are believed still to ascend sufficiently near to the lowest heaven to hear the conversation of the Angels, and so to assist magicians, appears from the former quotation, and is asserted by all Muslims. The discovery of hidden treasures before alluded to, is one of the objects for which divination is most studied. The mode of divination called Ḍarb el-Mendel is by some supposed to be effected by the aid of evil Jinn; but the more enlightened of the [86] Muslims regard it as a branch of natural magic. ”

“ When Ibn el Hâdjdj et-Tlemsânî relates how the jinn yielded up their secrets to him, he says, ‘I once met the seven kings of the jinn in a cave and I asked them to teach me the way in which they attack men and women, causing them to fall sick, smiting them, paralysing them, and the like. ”

“ Meantime the sultan of the Jinn sent for the Jinniyah, for his son was ill, and could only be cured by a cup of water from the Sea of Emeralds, and this could only be obtained by a daughter of mankind. So the Jinniyah borrowed Dalal's daughter again, and took her to the sultan, who gave her a cup, and mounted her on a Jinni, warning her not to wet her fingers. But a wave touched the hand of the princess, which turned as green as clover. Every morning the Sea of Emerald is weighed by an officer to discover whether any has been stolen ”

“ A European, in fact, is to the rustic a strange inscrutable personage, gifted with many occult powers both for good and evil, and there are numerous extraordinary legends current about him. We shall return to this in dealing with the wonderful Momiâî story. Here it may be noted that he has control over the Jinn. There was a place near Dera Ghâzi Khân so possessed by them that passersby were attacked. A European officer poured a bottle of brandy on the spot and no Jinn has been seen there ever since. ”

“ And he said to the Jinn, “O my brother, what is the name of this spring?” The Jinnee answered, “It is called the Spring of the Women: no woman drinketh of it but she becometh a man; therefore praise God, and thank Him for thy restoration, and mount thy courser.” So the king’s son prostrated himself, thanking God (whose name be exalted!) . Then he mounted, and they journeyed with diligence during the rest of the day until they had returned to the land of the Jinnee, and the young man passed the night in his abode in the most comfortable manner ”

“ The Jinn in most of the tales of The Thousand and One Nights resemble the Shedim or Mazikeen of the Jews; but the beautiful and gracious beings spoken of in such stories as Janshah and Hasan are human, except in their supernatural power, and more closely resemble the peris of Persia and the fairies of Italian romance, the Ifrits and Morids being represented as their subjects or slaves. The Deevs of Persia have more resemblance to the devils of the Middle Ages than to the evil Jinn of the Arabian Nights. ”

“ Similarly in Egypt at the present day the jinn are believed to swarm so thickly that it is necessary to ask their permission before pouring water on the ground, lest one should accidentally be soused and vent his anger on the offending human being. ”

“ Their favourite place of residence is below the front doorsteps, for which reason women are not allowed to sit there. The jinn, or genii, are supposed to be an organized body, having a sultan, a court, and regular officials. They keep guard on the food stores and are on the whole fairly good fellows. They are said to be fond of human company. It is even whispered that they sometimes assume human shape and marry mortals. They are believed to be most common in Egypt. ”

“ Malicious or disturbed Jinn are asserted often to station themselves on the roofs or at the windows of houses, and to throw down bricks and stones on persons passing by. When they take possession of an uninhabited house, they seldom fail to persecute terribly any person who goes to reside in it. They are also very apt to pilfer provisions, etc. Many learned and devout persons, to secure their property from such depredations, repeat the words "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful!" ”

“ They bounded, reared, wrestled, danced, pranced, flew wildly at tangents: some escaped towards the town, and everywhere men screamed, scurried, bellowed, waved hands, or brandished sticks. Nip, his head equally lost, seemed to be doing every one of these things at once, whether ovine or human. And Jinny, in her anxiety to capture him, to remove him, unseen, from the Witches’ Sabbath she feared he had called into being, forgot all about the other possible, if inferior, horses. By the time she had refastened Nip and returned to the sale, the stick had fallen for the last bid. ”