The Jinn are supernatural beings that were part of the pre-Islamic religions and mythology of the Arabian Peninsula, and were incorporated into Islam by means of the Koran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Scholars have argued that Jinn belief may have emerged from the worship of ancestor spirits, or may have developed out of ancient belief in deities associated with the powers of nature (Waardenburg 2002, 24). Drawing from the Qur’an, Muslim teachers describe the Jinn as a separate order of creation apart from humans and angels, which possess free will and are capable of good and evil actions. They are thought to have the power to remain invisible and appear instantaneously anywhere, as well as the ability to “possess” and torment human beings.
Winged Jinn. Detail of a relief from the palace of Assyrian king Sargon II, 722–705 BCE, found in the collection of Musée du Louvre, Paris. Jinn are derived from pre-Islamic supernatural beings that may have developed from the veneration of ancestors or ancient beliefs in nature deities. Although known to many contemporary Americans in the popular form of genies, true Jinn folklore is an important element of Pakistani American culture. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
The concept of Jinn is most often rendered in contemporary American English as a “genie.” For centuries, readers around the world knew of Jinn through the compilation of fantastic stories commonly known as the Arabian Nights. In the twentieth century, the “genie” became a staple folkloric fixture in the popular consciousness of the United States through the actress Barbara Eden, who played the eponymous sprite in the late 1960s cult classic I Dream of Jeannie. More recently, the notion of the genie was given vibrant voice and unforgettable life by the late, great Robin Williams in Disney’s 1992 animated hit Aladdin. Most contemporary Americans therefore would associate the term genie with an otherworldly creature of Middle Eastern origin with prodigious magical powers, which is trapped in an old-fashioned oil lamp and which will grant three wishes to the person who frees it from this prison. Far fewer Americans could trace the mythic lineage of such a creature back through the various versions of The Thousand and One Nights to explicit references in the Qur’an. Moreover, only a relative handful of Americans might associate the genie they know and love with the folklore of the Pakistani diaspora, which in fact provides a wellspring of modern-day stories concerning Jinn.
Indeed, many people today believe in the existence of Jinn, and the stories about them at times have more in common with tales of horror concerning demons and poltergeists than with children’s bedtime stories or cartoon fantasies. Medieval Arabic texts discuss Jinn at length and in detail, and clearly regard them as real beings, creatures of flame and mutable form that inhabit a spiritual realm, which is not unlike the human world in its structures and social hierarchies. In contrast to angels, Jinn are creatures of fire rather than of pure light. Jinn also can be either good or bad, acting as faithful Muslims or satanic unbelievers. Indeed, a number of literary works purport to offer what might be termed do-it-yourself Jinn enslavement techniques through which the successful master will become able to harness the incredible otherworldly power of the Jinn, although the hazards of such endeavors are also detailed at length. Even some old Arabic legal codes refer to Jinn. Moreover, it is of special significance that even the Qur’an itself mentions the Jinn, warning that these potent spiritual creatures are not to be worshipped as gods as they were in ancient times.
It is not only in medieval Arabic records that we find explicit references to Jinn. Indeed, even a cursory Internet search in English will uncover a plethora of websites, wikis, chat rooms, and even YouTube videos dedicated to the proposition that Jinn are indeed real and that they abide among humans even in the modern world. It is particularly interesting to note that significant references to Jinn appear on media dedicated to totally different topics, such as cricket, and that a popular Pakistani rapper takes his name from the Jinn. Some contemporary popular accounts of Jinn read like ghost stories or cautionary tales, while others are based on faithful belief in the Qur’an and appear to non-Arabic readers to be very serious indeed. A perhaps disproportionate number of such references in English pertain to Pakistani or Pakistani American sites, and some even raise the question of why such a correlation should appear to exist.
Contemporary Pakistani Americans often are careful to distinguish themselves from other Americans of South Asian ancestry, and especially from those of Hindu Indian origin, with whom they might be confused by their less astute American neighbors. It is therefore important to categorize Jinn as a type of spiritual creature entirely distinct from what we would commonly term a ghost, and to note that belief in Jinn is not a form of ancestor veneration. Jinn are properly understood to be spirit-beings given credence by the ultimate Islamic authority. Many younger and more urbane members of the Pakistani diaspora community, however, might feel pressure to distance themselves from what some could see as old-fashioned folkloric and legendary beliefs. Yet, the fact that the spirit world has long been a consistently popular topic of mainstream entertainment in America mitigates against young Pakistani Americans’ reluctance to acknowledge belief in Jinn. The emergence of Jinn as a topic of popular mainstream entertainment as well as the subject of a great deal of online speculation provides evidence that this is one facet of traditional Pakistani folklore that has found fertile soil within immigrant communities.
In 2014, Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad, a Pakistani American director, brought this ancient mythic being to life in Jinn the Movie. The basic plot of the film seems drawn from a primer of horror movie (or, indeed, ancient mythic) archetypes: a happy young couple’s blissful life together is threatened when they discover that the husband’s family has long borne an ancient curse. Although at first the couple dismisses the very idea of such danger, events soon persuade them that the modern world is suffused with ancient creatures and potent magic beyond their imaginations. They find shaman-like guides who help the husband to confront the reality of his family legacy and thus to prepare himself adequately to meet the supernatural challenges he must face. It is in the details, however, that this film reflects the ancient lore of the Jinn. Indeed, the Michigan-born Ahmad made it his stated goal to update the popular American vision of the Jinn to reflect more accurately the understanding of these beings in Pakistani culture, and the mythology of the film is drawn from Qur’anic and folkloric sources. While humans were made of clay and angels of light, we are told, the Jinn are wrought of fire; and while the Jinn have lived for eons in the shadows just beyond our knowledge, they in fact abide among us, and we ignore this reality at our peril. Thus Jinn the Movie seeks to update the notion of what Jinn are in the popular American consciousness, evoking standard horror movie techniques to engage a wide mainstream audience and to grant that audience a peek into Pakistani American folklore, which illustrates amply that the Jinn are far more than the television or cartoon stereotypes many Americans have been conditioned to expect.
C. Fee
See also Nazar; South Asian American Folklore and Folktales
Further Reading
El-Zein, Amira. 2009. Islam, Arabs, and Intelligent World of the Jinn. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Fee, Christopher. 2011. Mythology in the Middle Ages: Heroic Tales of Monsters, Magic, and Might. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
“Jinn, Ancestor, Ghost, and Spirit in Pakistani-American Folklore.” 2011. In Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife, edited by Kathleen M. Nadeau and Jonathan H. X. Lee. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Waardenburg, Jean Jacques. 2002. Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
“The World of Jinn and Its Secrets.” 2015. IslamAwareness website. http://www.islamawareness.net/Jinn/fatwa_secrets.html. Accessed November 4, 2015.
Jinn—Primary Document
Selections from the Autobiography of Omar ibn Said (1831)
The Islamic faith arrived in the Americas in the earliest period of colonization, among the African slaves forcibly transported from their homelands to plantations across the Atlantic. One such slave, Omar ibn Said (1770–1864; spelled “Seid” in the following selection), was a prominent Muslim scholar in Senegal before he was captured in 1807 and sold into slavery in the United States. While a slave, he wrote more than a dozen manuscripts in Arabic as well as a short autobiography. Ibn Said converted to the Christian faith in 1820, but continued to practice the Islamic faith until his death.
My name is Omar ibn Seid. My birthplace was Fut Tûr, between the two rivers. I sought knowledge under the instruction of a Sheikh called Mohammed Seid, my own brother, and Sheikh Soleiman Kembeh, and Sheikh Gabriel Abdal. I continued my studies twenty-five years. Then there came to our place a large army, who killed many men, and took me, and brought me to the great sea, and sold me into the hands of the Christians, who bound me and sent me on board great ship and we sailed upon the great sea a month and a half, when we came to a place called Charleston in the Christian language. There they sold me to a small, weak, and wicked man, called Johnson, a complete infidel, who had no fear of God at all. Now I am a small man, and unable to do hard work so I fled from the hand of Johnson and after a month came to a place called Fayd-il. There I saw some great houses (churches). On the new moon I went into a church to pray. A lad saw me and rode off to the place of his father and informed him that he had seen a black man in the church. A man named Handah (Hunter?) and another man with him on horseback, came attended by a troop of dogs. They took me and made me go with them twelve miles to a place called Fayd-il, where they put me into a great house from which I could not go out. I continued in the great house (which, in the Christian language, they called jail) sixteen days and nights. One Friday the jailor came and opened the door of the house and I saw a great many men, all Christians, some of whom called out to me, “What is your name? Is it Omar or Seid?” I did not understand their Christian language. A man called Bob Mumford took me and led me out of the jail, and I was very well pleased to go with them to their place. I stayed at Mumford’s four days and nights, and then a man named Jim Owen, son-in-law of Mumford, having married his daughter Betsey, asked me if I was willing to go to a place called Bladen. I said, Yes, I was willing. I went with them and have remained in the place of Jim Owen until now.
Before [after?] I came into the hand of Gen. Owen a man by the name of Mitchell came to buy me. He asked me if I were willing to go to Charleston City. I said “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I am not willing to go to Charleston. I stay in the hand of Jim Owen.”
O ye people of North Carolina, O ye people of S. Carolina, O ye people of America all of you; have you among you any two such men as Jim Owen and John Owen? These men are good men. What food they eat they give to me to eat. As they clothe themselves they clothe me. They permit me to read the gospel of God, our Lord, and Saviour, and King; who regulates all our circumstances, our health and wealth, and who bestows his mercies willingly, not by constraint. According to power I open my heart, as to a great light, to receive the true way, the way of the Lord Jesus the Messiah.
Before I came to the Christian country, my religion was the religion of “Mohammed, the Apostle of God—may God have mercy upon him and give him peace.” I walked to mosque before day-break, washed my face and head and hands and feet. I prayed at noon, prayed in the afternoon, prayed at sunset, prayed in the evening. I gave alms every year, gold, silver, seeds, cattle, sheep, goats, rice, wheat, and barley. I gave tithes of all the above-named things. I went every year to the holy war against the infidels. I went on pilgrimage to Mecca, as all did who were able.—My father had six sons and five daughters, and my mother had three sons and one daughter. When I left my country I was thirty-seven years old; I have been in the country of the Christians twenty-four years.—Written A.D. 1831. …
Formerly I, Omar, loved to read the book of the Koran the famous. General Jim Owen and his wife used to read the gospel, and they read it to me very much,—the gospel of God, our Lord, our Creator, our King, He that orders all our circumstances, health and wealth, willingly, not constrainedly according to his power.—Open thou my heart to the gospel, to the way of uprightness.—Thanks to the Lord of all worlds, thanks in abundance. He is plenteous in mercy and abundant in goodness.
For the law was given by Moses but grace and truth were by Jesus the Messiah.
When I was a Mohammedan I prayed thus: “Thanks be to God, Lord of all worlds, the merciful the gracious, Lord of the day of Judgment, thee we serve, on thee we call for help. Direct us in the right way, the way of those on whom thou has had mercy, with whom thou hast not been angry and who walk not in error. Amen.”—But now I pray “Our Father”, etc., in the words of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.
I reside in this our country by reason of great necessity. Wicked men took me by violence and sold me to the Christians. We sailed a month and a half on the great sea to the place called Charleston in the Christian land. I fell into the hands of a small, weak and wicked man, who feared not God at all, nor did he read (the gospel) at all nor pray. I was afraid to remain with a man so depraved and who committed so many crimes and I ran away. After a month our Lord God brought me forward to the hand of a good man, who fears God, and loves to do good, and whose name is Jim Owen and whose brother is called Col. John Owen. These are two excellent men—I am residing in Bladen County.
Source: Reproduced from 2. Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831. The American Historical Review (1925) 30 (4): 787–795. By permission of Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association.