The Djinn of the Desert

Before there were genies in lamps, before there were wishes at the rubbing of a ring, there were the djinn. They were made, according to the Quran, of “smokeless fire,” and they walked the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula long before the Prophet Muhammad, long before the Sabaeans and the Nabataeans, and long, long before the European collectors who turned the older spirits of the Bedouin into the servile servants of Aladdin and the Arabian Nights.

The djinn are not, in the strict sense, demons. They are a people — a parallel creation, with their own prophets, their own communities, their own moral choices, and their own fall from grace. The folkloric djinn of the North African desert, however, are a richer and more various crowd than the Quran alone would suggest: the ghoul who eats the traveller, the ifrit of great power and great pride, the marid of the high seas, the jann of the household wall.

The Quranic Djinn and the Folkloric Djinn

The Quran, in the thirty-fourth surah, gives the outline. The djinn were created by God from the fire of the samum, a wind without smoke. They had once inhabited the earth and worshipped God, but Iblis, the father of the djinn, refused to bow to Adam, and was cast down. The djinn were given a chance to hear the Quran, and a community of them — the Jinn Muslimun — accepted it. From that day forward, the djinn are present alongside humanity, an unseen host, sometimes helpful and sometimes harmful, sometimes Muslim and sometimes not.

The folklore of the desert filled in the picture. The folkloric djinn are the djinn of the Qisas al-Anbiya and the Alf Layla wa-Layla (the Thousand and One Nights), of the storytellers of the caravanserai and the Bedouin poets, and of the saints’ lives of the Maghreb. They inhabit a landscape of dunes, of ruined forts, of salt-flats and empty wadis. They are the spirits of the barzakh, the isthmus between the world of the angels above and the world of the dead below.

The most important of the folkloric djinn are:

The Ghoul — a desert-dwelling demon who can change shape, who leads travellers off the path, and who, in the older stories, eats them. The ghoul is the source of the European word “ghoul,” borrowed in the nineteenth century by way of French.
The Ifrit — the most powerful of the djinn, often described as black, with a great horned head. The ifrit appears in the Quran itself, in the story of Solomon, and in the Thousand and One Nights as a being of terrifying strength and pride.
The Marid — the djinn of the high seas and the deep water, often called the marid al-bahr. The marid is the source of the bound jinn of the Aladdin story, of the sailor Sinbad, and of much of the romance of the Thousand and One Nights.
The Jann — the small, hidden, household djinn, the spirit of the hearth, the well, the wall, the field. The jann is the most intimate and most familiar of the desert spirits, and the one most often encountered in folk-tale.

The Geography of the Djinn

The djinn inhabit a geography as detailed as the map of the caravan routes. Every ruin, every well, every old tree, every crossroads in the desert is the home of a djinn, and the names of the great djinn are local to the villages. In the Algerian Sahara, the Shayṭān al-Wād rules the dry river-beds. In the Egyptian Western Desert, the Mara of the oases is a female djinn of the springs. In the Libyan Fezzan, the ‘Ifrīt of the black mountains is a being of iron and stone.

The saints of the Maghreb are the great defenders against the djinn. The marabout of a village, the man who carries the baraka of his ancestor, is the one who can speak to the djinn and bind them. In the cult of Moulay Idriss and the great saint-burials of the Maghreb, the saint is the one who has power over the desert spirits, and the village’s annual moulid is the festival in which this power is renewed.

Protection Against the Djinn

The literature of djinn-protection is among the most elaborate in the world. It includes:

Salt. Throwing salt is the most common of all defences. Salt is the enemy of the jann, and a small heap of salt at the doorway of a tent will keep the desert spirits out.
Iron. A knife under the pillow, a sword above the door, a horseshoe on the lintel. The iron is the metal of the earth’s bones, and the jann cannot bear it.
The Throne Verse. Ayat al-Kursi, the 255th verse of the second surah of the Quran, is recited at bedtime, at the moment of travel, and at the entrance to a new house. The recitation is the seal of the seven heavens, and no djinn can cross it.
The Names of God. The ninety-nine names of God are written in a small leather pouch, the hirz, and hung around the neck of a child or above the door of a house.
The smell of certain plants. Rue, myrtle, the burning of the resin of the murr, the smoke of the wild southernwood. The desert is full of plants whose smoke is unfriendly to the djinn.

The Djinn in the Thousand and One Nights

The frame-story of the Thousand and One Nights — Shahrazad telling stories to Shahriyar to delay her death — is itself a story of djinn and their kings. The great tales embedded in the frame are full of them. The fisherman in “The Fisherman and the Jinni” releases a djinn from a bottle and only escapes being eaten by guessing the truth of the djinn’s imprisonment. Aladdin, in the version known to the West, is a poor boy who is given a ring and a lamp by a Maghribi sorcerer; the ifrit of the lamp is the bound servant of the ring, and the wish is the contract.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a story of a different kind. The thieves are the masters of a secret, and the secret is the password of the door of the cave: Khul’ ya simsim, “Open, sesame!” The opening sesame of the door of the cave is a desert password, and the story itself is the record of a world in which the safe-keeping of goods depends on the secrecy of the word.

The Djinn in the Modern World

The djinn have never been retired. In the modern North African city, the belief in them is robust. In Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt, a fqi (a Quranic teacher) may be called to a new house to “smoke the jinn out” of the foundations, and the ruqya — the recitation of protective verses — is still an ordinary part of the religious life. In Cairo, the shrines of the great saints are still bound to the desert spirits they once controlled.

In cinema, the djinn have been the great subject of the Egyptian horror film. The Egyptian film Al-Khoroug an-Nour (The Dark Light) and the Tunisian Bab al-Khal are full of the shaytān in the cellar, the ‘ifrīt in the wall. The Arab-American writer Saladin Ahmed has used the djinn as the central figures of his Hugo-winning novel Throne of the Crescent Moon.

In the wider world, the djinn are now part of the global vocabulary of horror and romance. The most striking of the recent popular adaptations is the desert-set The djinn of the desert of the 2010s, which recasts the ancient spirit as a hero of the climate-changed Maghreb.

Sources and Further Reading

Hughes, Patrick. A Dictionary of Islam. Asian Educational Services, 2009.
El-Zein, Amira. Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn. Syracuse University Press, 2009.
El-Tom, Abdullahi Osman. Drinking the Divine: The Jinn, the Mystic and the Derwish. Syracuse University Press, 2020.
al-Wardi, Ali, and Wilson, M. C. The Jinn and the Devil in the Islamic Tradition (original Arabic studies, multiple).