Tags
Coast to Coast, djinn, genie, Islam, Lara Hentz, postaday2012
blue-j23.deviantart.com
By Kallie Szczepanski, About.com Guide
(djinns, islam, zoroastrianism, middle east)
A djinn issues from a magical lamp. Djinns are supernatural beings in Arab folklore.
Definition:
Djinn: A spirit from Arabic mythology that can be either good or evil.
The djinn are less powerful than angels, but can assume the shapes of humans, animals or whirlwinds. Belief in djinns has been wide-spread throughout the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia; the spirits are even mentioned in the Koran. In fact, Satan often is believed to be the most prominent of the djinns.
Belief in djinns may well predate both Christianity and Islam. In Zoroastrian Persia, before the coming of Islam, evil female spirits called jaini were thought to cause disease and misfortune.
The word djinn comes from the Arabic “jinni,” or demon. Its root is janna, meaning “to cover or conceal.” In English, the word is often translated at “genie.”
Pronunciation: “jihn” – the initial “d” is nearly silent
Also Known As: genies
Alternate Spellings: djin, jinn, jinni, djinni, dhinny, jinnee
Examples:
“According to traditional Islamic belief, the djinn are creatures made of ‘smokeless flame,’ which have free will.”
They might be blue or green, have clans, and shapeshift!
Listen to this about the djinn: http://youtu.be/WW7hvMe9Sa8
Just a few things….the Disney image is obnoxious! Disney’s reduction of everything to stereotypes is really annoying. Just saying. The reference to the etymology is correct, although it is a declension of the verb that makes more sense: “to be possessed”; “to become frantic”; “to drive insane”. In colloquial Arabic, the root is usually heard when you call someone “crazy”: majnoun [literally, possessed], or on the radio when describing a 70%-off sale: majanin! ["Crazy!"]. There is something interesting culturally speaking in the idea that insanity is not “of” a person but is a sign of being taken over. I’ve known many people “getting over” problems much more readily after visiting a sheikh and discussing the jinn they believe possess them, compared with other people I know who’ve spent a lifetime in therapy….
I think a greater expansion on the “beings of fire” part is required to make sense of this aspect of the jinn. In the Qur’an, humans are beings of mud and water; jinn are beings of fire and smoke. There are intersections within these realms, and the experience is not necessarily fear-inducing: Often it is a starting point for introspection and self-analysis. The video link is trying to make it into some kind of Ghostbusters deal, but within the day-to-day, there is a constant acknowledgment of the jinn if you will—always addressing a “salam” in the plural, for example, even if only to one person—but this isn’t out of fear or dread, but is instead an awareness that what we know is much less than what we don’t know.
A former colleague of mine wrote a book on the jinn of Egypt that you might be interested in:
http://www.saqibooks.com/book/living-with-djinns/
Thank you so much Daniel – this subject matter was all new to me!