What are the Jinn?

with the popularity of movies like Disney's Aladdin the Jinn or Genie has become a Mainstay creature in the west they can be found in books films video games and all kinds of media these beings perhaps most famous from their frequent appearance in the Arabian nights or 1001 Nights have a long and interesting history in the Middle East one that is intimately connected with the religion of Islam and the pre-islamic folklore of the Arabian peninsula so for our 2020 edition of shocktober videos let's explore the Mysterious World of the gin [Music] [Music] known in the west

primarily as Genie the Gin are associated with humanoid but ghost-like creatures that emerge from Magic lamps and grant wishes and while there is some Merit to this view or portrayal of the Jinn the Gin are actually quite different in a lot of ways than what many of us assume the name Jin comes from Arabic and is actually in plural form the singular of which is usually Ginny making it closer to the genie used in English the meaning of the word is probably connected to the root form Jannah which has the primary meaning of to hide

or conceal makes sense as the Gin now primarily conceived the last creatures who are hidden from our regular senses and occupy a different dimension of the world they are sort of invisible creatures the Gin originates in Islamic and Arabic folklore they are mentioned in the Quran as one of three kinds of rational creatures that are created by God the Angels were created from light the human being was created from from clay and the Jinn were created from smokeless fire but these fiery invisible beings predate the religion of Islam and existed as a very prominent and

important part of the lives culture and religion of the pre-islamic Arabs Scholars are unsure about the actual origins of the Jinn and where they come from some speculate and think that they may have originally been gods in the Middle Eastern generally the Middle Eastern region polytheistic Gods who were then kind of dethroned as the theology in the region became a bit more complex and other gods took a more exalted positions in the hierarchy others argue that the Jinn were originally conceived of as malicious spirits who wandered the deserts and old ruins what is clear is

that they have a very long history some Scholars indeed argue that we find evidence of gin-like creatures already in ancient Mesopotamia in Palmyra which is modern-day Syria these kinds of creatures were sometimes called jinli I don't know if I pronouncing that correctly but this of course leads some to argue that the origins of the word may actually be Aramaic and that the Jinn were creatures who were prominent in other cultures and Middle East that it doesn't necessarily originate in Arabia itself but nonetheless the Jinn are most associated most strongly associated with the Arab people and

the Arabian peninsula in general they are mostly invisible Spirits similar to human beings in many ways but with powers beyond anything that humans are capable of they are connected to the deserts and may have represented a fear by the local population of the dangers of the deserts the Gin would hide and inhabit dark places in the desert among old ruins and cemeteries they can take on different shapes and forms including as different animals like snakes and can come into contact with influence and even possess human beings indeed the word for madman or a crazy person

in Arabic is usually majnun which translates to something like possessed by ajin to both these settled Arabs and the Bedouins the January prominent aspect The prominent part of life and their culture one that caused people to be careful when they ventured out into the desert or to sort of uninhabited dark places but it would be beneficial to dispel some common misconceptions at this point sometimes people tend to equate gin with our western or Christian conception of demons as these evil creatures who are out to hurt us or to do the bidding of the devil but

this is actually not necessarily true for Jinn at all at least not all of them the Gin are actually more similar to how demons or diamonds function originally in ancient Greece before Christianity made them an exclusively evil creature in other words the Gin are neither inherently bad or good they are just like human beings in fact they live in societies they have Kings they have friends they get married and have children they even have religions and just like human beings the Jinn can sometimes be friendly and helpful and other times they can be evil deceitful

and dangerous so the pre-islamic Arabs had a strong but varied relationship with the Jinn they could be feared and seen as dangerous creatures who inhabited desolate places but they could also be helpful and even a source of inspiration as many of you probably know poetry was an incredibly developed and cherished tradition to the ancient Arabs and the Jinn played an important part here it is said that many of The pre-islamic Poets were inspired by Jinn to write their verses almost like in a possession and here we also find further connection with the ideas of demons

or diamonds bones in ancient Greece the diamonds were often seen as the sources of of inspiration that that that could you could say be Messengers in between the Divine world and the human world and the Jinn kind of functioned in a similar way in in ancient Arabia they would function almost like middlemen between the gods and human beings being able to convey messages through possessing the recital of poetry this is also likely why some verses of the Quran claim that Muhammad's enemies accused him of being affected by Magic and things like this as gin possession

and divine recitations were a common place in the culture of the time and indeed with the coming of Islam through the prophet Muhammad's recitation of the Quran and the religions later vast spread the Jinn became not just a creature of local folklore but as an essential part of a world religion the Quran in fact talks about the Jinn on multiple occasions and even has a Surah a chapter named al-jin meaning the Jinn so the fact that they are talked about in the Quran seems to many to confirm their existence and also help to spread this

mythology to to vast areas across the Middle East and North Africa and many other places but it also placed them in a central role in the drama of the creation of the human being itself indeed the Quran seems to identify iblees the Islamic version of Satan as a Jinn now some verses seem to imply that he was a fallen angel like in the Christian narrative well others claim that he is a Jinn and the later interpretation has probably the most prevalent or at least some combination of the two Iblis was a great Jinn who led

Jinn armies in great battles against their enemies they fought for God but when God created Adam the first man and asked all the angels to bow to him Iblis refused and this is the central moment where Iblis is condemned for his Disobedience and becomes a shaytan or Satan so according to mainstream Islamic interpretation Iblis or Satan has a different function than in Christianity he is not a kind of deity or powerful adversary to God but he is the king of the evil Jinn who leads human beings astray it was quite easy for the spreading Muslims

to incorporate the idea of the Gen into different local beliefs and folklores the Jinn being invisible ghostly spirit-like creatures sheriffs of course just by that fact a lot of similarities with other similar creatures in different cultures and so the Jinn were often adapted and appropriated into these different cultures now they're said to be different kinds of gin not not only good gin and evolution but actually different categories of gin you could say in Robert liebling's excellent book on Jin called the legends of the fire Spirits he divides the Jinn into five categories important to remember

here is that the lines between these are not clear at all they are sometimes interchangeable as those of us who have read any literature involving the Gin will surely know but in a general sense John is the most general term referring to all kinds of Jinn at Large gin is used to refer to specific gin or specific tribes of families of Jinn and these can be either evil or good so both Jin and Jan are very general categories shaytan however are always evil thus Mor akin to Demons as they are the children or Servants of

the chief shaytan Iblis or Satan ifrits are generally more powerful than shaytan and are sort of more morally ambivalent but they are mostly evil we find the Ifrit a lot in the Arabian Nights they like to hang out around ruins they're often winged creature they can cause things like sandstorms and shape-shift into different animals and lastly the marriage are the most powerful kind of gin and again are mostly evil this is the kind of gin we are most familiar with the very large wish granting kind are often unmarried category of gin for context some interpret

that in the famous story of Aladdin there are two different kinds of Jinn in this story The Gin of the ring is a type of Ifrit and the Gin of the lamp was much more powerful is a kind of married so of course in the Disney version a lot of this isn't there but in the original version Aladdin has both a ring that has sort of magical powers and and of course the lamp and so the Gin of the ring is thought to be an Ifrit and the the Gin of the lamp is a modded

there are also further types of gin and names including the rule which is a type of gin that likes to inhabit cemeteries can shape-shift and even eat the Flesh of human beings very nasty kinds of creatures or nasty kinds of gin they are often said to appear as beautiful women to lure men to their deaths and yes in case you were wondering this is actually where the English English word ghoul comes from I actually didn't know this before I researched this video so this is very fascinating to me there are also many other kinds of

gin but not all of which I have time to go through here but simply put there are many different kinds of gin and the lines between these categories can be very blurry there are many different myths surrounding the Gin many of which were spread or written down in a coast quranic context one such tale tells how the Jinn tribe's original Homeland was a mountain called cough standing on the edge of the world as I've already mentioned gin are often connected to certain places they are said to guard Treasures or haunt all the ruins many places

around the Middle East that are thought to be infested with gin even today in modern-day Saudi Arabia there is a place called Mada in Saleh which are these old ruins from the nabataean kingdom this place has long been thought to be inhabited by the Gin there are even stories about how the prophet Muhammad himself used to Veil himself and walk quickly as they passed location telling his companions to avoid it at all costs because it was haunted obviously there is also the famous story of the city of ubar also known as Iran of the pillars

or Atlantis of the Sands so-called by T.E Lawrence this is thought to have been this great beautiful wealthy City in ancient Arabia that was buried in the sand hence the name Atlantis of the sands made famous by Lawrence of Arabia or T.E Lawrence who wanted to search for it as well as the 2011 video game Uncharted 3. the ruins and great Treasures of ubar are said to be guarded by the Jinn they're also very famous individual gin many of these probably appear as the mythology of the Gin spread to new places and local deities or

Spirits were incorporated into the mythology of the gin one such famous example is a journey called Aisha kandicha from Morocco she has the appearance of a beautiful woman with black hair the only difference being that she has the feet of a camel like the rule Jen she lures unsuspecting men into the desert to kill them many such stories of individual gin exist they can also as we have discussed possessed people and there are various ways to exercise a journey the sufis and holy men and Mystics often have a role to play in this to remain

in North Africa and Morocco for example one way to exercise a gin was to use ecstatic narwhal music so in our music is a kind of North African Sufi music so this was used often in exorcisms to to to get rid of evil Jinn incredibly interesting if we then turn to what is probably the most famous example of Jin stories which is of course the Arabian nights or more accurately the Thousand and One knights in Arabic called alph Layla walela here we find a whole host of different tales that includes the Jinn and some of

these Gins like the story of the fishermen and the Gin are clearly evil and dangerous While others can be helpful and friendly in fact a lot of our conceptions and ideas about the Jinn maybe most of it comes from the Arabian nights or a Thousand and One Nights this is a very important collection of stories for our understanding of Arabian or middle eastern folklore as the Jinn are thought to live in societies just like human beings the Jinn as I said also have religions there are stories about how some Jinn would listen to The Prophet

Muhammad as he preached and who later converted to Islam so there are Muslim Jinn they're also Christian Jinn there are Jewish Jinn and so on and the Jinn are subject to God's punishment at Judgment Day just like human beings are even today the Jinn are an important part of the culture of the Middle East we still sometimes hear stories about places that are infested with Jinn people who have been possessed there was even that Netflix show called Jinn which obviously wasn't very good at all but still there are also many today who are skeptical about

their existence as such many Islamic scholars for example into favor a metaphorical interpretation or reading of those quranic verses that talk about Jinn While others very much still believe in them as actual creatures and this is actually an important part of our discussion well the Jinn feature prominently in Arabic and Islamic history in different writings and in general just in the Islamic religion there has been a variety about how people have understood and interpreted these creatures while many have traditionally and today seeing the Gin as real actual beings who inhabit the world alongside human beings

others have read things quite differently there seems to have been some who use gin to refer to any phenomena or force that was not detectable by the senses and many of the more esoterically oriented schools of theology or philosophy found interesting ways of doing or esoteric interpretation on those quranic verses for example the 13th century Persian philosopher zakariah kazwini wrote that quote some consider the Jinn as unruly men but these persons are of them from this it seems that some thinkers in this case from the rationalistic matazida School of Theology interpret the Jinn metaphorically to

mean a kind of human being I'm not going to make things more complicated by discussing theology or complicated philosophies but this I just want to point out that the Jinn have been interpreted differently historically and today the situation is quite the same well I would go as far as to say that probably the majority of people in the Middle East still very much believe in the Jinn as actual creatures there has been as a result of different factors like western style education an increasing tendency to be skeptical towards such ideas and seeing it as a

Superstition and whatnot so it's important to keep that in mind of course to sum up the Jinn are for the most part invisible Spirits created from fire that are similar to human beings but also have very exceptional Powers they are intimately connected with the desert and the nomadic culture of the ancient Arabs and they come in a wide variety some can help you others will lure you to your death but all of them tickle our imagination and serves as a fascinating part of the culture of The Wider Middle East happy October and happy Halloween and

I'll see you next time