The Name of Allah Be Round About Us

Folklore from the Holy Land

The people of Palestine, Christians as well as Muslims, believe in the existence of a race if beings of preadamite origin, called by the general name of "Jinn." Whilst the angels dwell in the heavens and have various offices and forms differing according to their respective abodes (those in the lowest heaven, for instance, being shaped like cows; those in the second, like falcons; in the third, like eagles; in the fourth, like horses, and so on), the Jinn are said by the learned to be created out of the fire of the "simûm" which they describe as a fire lacking both heat and smoke.

They are said to dwell chiefly in or amongst the Jebel Kâf, the range of mountains which surrounds the earth. some of the Jinn are good Muslims, and do not injure their human co-religionists, but the greater number of them are unclean infidels who take up their abode in rivers, fountains, cisterns, ruined buildings, baths, cellars, ovens, caves, sewers, and latrines. Some of them choose as dwellings cracks in the walls or under the door-steps or thresholds of inhabited houses, so that it is very dangerous for people, especially females, to sit on a door step in the evening when these night -prowling evil spirits may do them grievous bodily injury.

The jinn are believed to be able to assume any shape they please and to change it at pleasure. Among the peasantry, there is current another story as to their origin. It is that our mother Eve, on whom be peace, used to bring forth forty children at a birth, But being unable to nurse more than half that number, she picked out the twenty best ones and threw the others away. She told Adam on each occasion that she had borne only twenty; but he did not believe her.

Adam therefore asked Allah to let any children she had thrown away live underground and go abroad at night when all men sleep. Thus the Jinn came into being.

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The Jinn are envious of us men and women, always on the watch for a chance to injure us; and unless we say, "Bismillah," whenever we begin any work or take anything out of our stores, they succeed in robbing us. There is, at the present day, a man living at Aïn Kârim who has experienced this to his cost. He has a silly, forward daughter, who, in spite of frequent warnings from her parents and neighbors, will not invoke the Name. he was a man of substance, and brought home provisions in plenty, yet the blessing of Allah did not rest upon his property.

At length, perplexed and discouraged, he had recourse to a great sheikh, who asked, "whom have you in the house?" 

"My wife and daughter."  

"Does your wife invoke the Name of Allah?"

"I would not have married her if she had not done so."

"Does your daughter also 'name'?"

"I regret to say she does not."

"Then," said the sheikh, "don't let her touch anything about the house, and get rid of her at once!"

The father acted on the sheikh's advice. And no sooner had he disposed of his daughter in marriage than the Jinn ceased to trouble him. But the bridegroom, till then a thriving man, has not now enough money to buy oil to keep a lamp burning through the night. [None but the poorest will sleep without a night light.]

Not only are the Jinn men and women like ourselves, but they can, and sometimes do, intermarry with other sons and daughters of Adam, often against the will of the latter, when these have neglected to ask the protection of Allah. In proof of this I will relate an incident that occurred some years ago.

There was a man of the village of El Isawìyeh, in the valley north of the Mount of olives, who, going down to reap his harvest in the neighborhood of Ushwah, near Artûf, was not heard of for nine years. It was said he had been devoured by a hyena. But in the end he reappeared and told his story. He was sleeping one night on the threshing floor to protect his store of dhurra when he was awakened about midnight by a sound of voices drawing near. Supposing it to be the tax-gatherer and his assistant "Khayâleh," he lay quite still for fear of being beaten.

But it was a party of Jinn, and, as, at lying down, he had neglected through weariness to invoke the protection of Allah, so now, sudden fear kept him from using that simple precaution, and left him at the mercy of the demons. he did not realize who they were till it was too late and had become their victim. All he knew at first was that a woman came and smote his forehead, and the blow bereft him of all strength of will. She made him follow her, and he obeyed blindly.

When they had gone some distance from the threshing floor she told him she was his wife, and that, unless he submitted to her desire, her brothers who had seen him follow her, would kill him horribly. Soon afterwards her brothers came up, when he saw that they were jinns. They told him he had become one of themselves, and would thenceforth be invisible to the eyes of men.

Nine years he belonged to the Jinn, and took part in all their depredations, till one day, when they were lying hid among some ruins, he noticed how his companions kept away from one of the walls on which was a luxuriant growth of feyjan or rue, and himself, out of curiosity went towards it. At a shriek from his jinnìyeh of "Don't go near those plants!" he ran and plucked whole handfuls from the wall. Then, looking roun, he saw that the Jinn had vanished, and he was free to return to his human family.

When the fellahìn, his neighbors, disbelieved this story, he asked after a woman named "Ayesha," and was told that her husband had repudiated her because she robbed him and gave his goods to her brothers. There was no other supposition that could account for the way things vanished from his house. Thus, one day, he had filled a large "khâbieh" or mudbuilt bin with barley, but when he opened it on the morrow it was empty, and, in spite of his wife's protestations, he believed her to be the thief.

The man who had been with the Jinn explained that he had asked for the woman on purpose to prove her innocence and his own truthfulness. he had been present when the barley was carried off by the Jinn, who knew that the Divine Name was not habitually called upon in that house. Other things that had been missed from the village while he was a way had been carried off in like manner. 

Since that time everyone has been careful to gather handfuls of the plant rue, and to keep it in his house. And no good man will begin a piece of work without invoking Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. And no respectable woman will take even a handful of flour from its receptacle without likewise calling on the Most High.

Source: Folklore of the Holy Land--Muslim, Christian, and Jewish by J.E. Hanauer. Edited by Marmadeke Picktall. London: Duckworth and Company, 1907, 1910.

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update 3 November 2006