Jinn's
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A jinni (also “djinni” or “djini”) is a member of the jinn (or “djinn”), a race of supernatural creatures. The word “jinn” literally means anything which has the connotation of concealment, invisibility, seclusion, and remoteness.
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In Islam the evil jinns are referred to as the shayātīn, or devils, and Iblis (Satan) is their chief. Iblis was the first Jinn who disobeyed God. According to Islam, the jinn are made of flame of fire (and mankind is made of clay).
According to the Qur'an, Iblis was once a pious servant of God, but when God created Adam from clay, Iblis became very jealous, and arrogant and disobeyed God.
Adam was the first man, and man was the greatest creation of God. Iblis could not stand this, and refused to acknowledge a creature made of "dirt" (man). God condemned Iblis to be punished after death eternally in the hellfire. God had created hell.
Iblis asked God if he may live to the last day and have the ability to mislead mankind and jinns, God said that Iblis may only mislead those whom have forsaken God. God then turned Iblis's countenance into horridness and condemned him to only have powers of trickery.
Adam and Eve (Hawwa in Arabic) were both together misled by Iblis into eating the forbidden fruit, and consequently fell from the garden of Eden to Earth.
The word genie comes from the Arabic jinn. This is not surprising considering the story of `Alā' ad-Dīn, (anglicized as Aladdin), passed through Arabian merchants en route to Europe.
Jinn in pre-Islamic era
Types of jinn include the ghul (“night shade”, which can change shape), the sila (which cannot change shape), the afrit , and “marid”. From information in The Arabian Nights, marid seem to be the strongest form of jinn, followed by afrit, and then the rest of the jinn.
Arabs believed that the jinn were spirits of fire, although sometimes they associated them with succubi (demons in the forms of beautiful women). The feminine form of jinn is “jinniyah” or “jinneyeh”. Jinns can possess people, by entering their body. These possessed people need to be seen by a (Maulvi in Urdu) an Islamic scholar. The scholar reads Arabic chants and blows on the person affected.
Jinn in Islam
The jinn are said to be creatures with free will, made from 'smokeless fire' by God (the literal translation being “subtle fire”, i.e., a fire which does not give itself away through smoke), much in the same way humans were made of clay. In Islam, unlike in Christianity and Judaism, Satan or Iblis is believed to be a jinn (which have free wills), which he became by his devotion and prayer to God (Jinn were created before humans).
Jinn have free choice, and Iblis exploited this in front of God by refusing to bow to Adam when ordered to do so by God. By refusing to obey God’s order he was thrown out of the Paradise and called “Shaitan” .
In the Qur'an, jinn are frequently mentioned and Sura 72 of the Qur'an named Al-Jinn is entirely about them. Another Sura (Al-Naas) mentions the Jinn in the last verse. In fact, it is mentioned in the Qur'an that Muhammad was sent as a prophet to both “humanity and the jinn”.
The jinn have communities much like human societies: they eat, marry, die, etc. They live in tribes and have boundaries. They follow the same religions as humans do, and follow the same ranks in armies as humans do. Jinns can settle in a vast area to a tiny hole, as they are massless and can be fit into any space they find sufficient for them.
They are invisible to humans, but they can see humans. Sometimes they accidentally or deliberately come into view or into contact with humans. Jinn are believed to live much longer than humans. They have seen Mohammad and still live till date, which verifies their long age.
Jinn can transform themselves into humans and can be summoned by humans. In Islam, humans trying to perform black magic call bad Jinn to perform black magic on humans which can only be undertaken by dark Jinn “Ifrit” or “Marid”. In many Islamic countries there are people who perform or supposedly perform black magic (usually for cursing other people, or using jinns to influence a marriage to end in divorce, etc) in exchange for money.
Jinn are beings much like humans, possessing the ability to be good and bad. An “Ifrit” is a type of strong and powerful jinn. Evil or malicious jinn are called “Marid”; usually, they are malicious due to their feeling that they have been usurped by humans, as in the case of “Shaitan”. To protect oneself against evil jinn, Muslims say the Arabic phrase, “A'oo Thu Billahi min Ash Shaitan Arrajim” (meaning: O God, I seek refuge in You, from Shaitan the rejected).
This phrase is not used exclusively to protect oneself from jinn. It is mostly used when beginning recitation of the Quran; the devil should be cast away before recitation; the phrase is used anytime one feels the need to keep the devil away.
One is also encouraged to recite different Surahs from the Quran – such as Surah Falaq, Surah Naas and Surah Baqarrah (Especially Ayat al-Qursi in Baqarrah). Many people say the four “Quls”, meaning Surah Falaq, Surah Naas, Surah Ikhlaas, and Surah Kafiroon. (Each surah starts with the Arabic word “Qul” which means “Say”.) In addition, reading at least 50 ayats (verses) of the Quran will protect against Jinn.
Jinn have the power to transform into other animals and humans, and they are known to prefer the form of a snake. Because they are made of fire, they can appear in any color. It is also known that they eat bones and their animals eat droppings; that is why it is forbidden to perform Istinja (washing) with those items.
According to the majority of Islamic scholars, the Qur'an states that the Shaitan or Iblis or Devil was not an angel (which is believed by Christians), but a jinn who was given higher honour and rank than angels.
According to Islam, angels are different physical beings, made from light and without the fiery nature of jinn. Angels are beings of goodness and cannot choose to disobey God since they do not possess free choice like humans and jinn – therefore, they do not possess the ability to do evil.
Evil beings from among the jinn are roughly equivalent to the demons of Christian lore. In mythology, jinn have the ability to possess human beings, both in the sense that they persuade humans to perform actions, and in that of the Christian perception of demonic possession.
In the Qur'an, Prophet Solomon (Arabic: Suleiman) had members of his army belonging to the race of jinn. Solomon had the ability to communicate with all creatures, which allowed him to communicate with the jinn as well.
Jinn in post-Islamic Arabic fiction
Evil Ifrit in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights are called “the seed of Iblis”.
The Spirit of the Lamp in the story of Aladdin was such a jinni, bound to an oil lamp. Ways of summoning jinn were told in The Thousand and One Nights: by writing the name of God in Hebraic characters on a knife (whether the Hebrew name for God, Yaweh, or the Arabic Allah is used is not specified), and drawing a diagram (possibly a pentagram) and strange symbols and incantations around it.
The jinn’s power of possession was also addressed in the fictional Nights. It is said that by taking seven hairs out of the tail of a cat that was all black except for a white spot on the end of its tail, and then burning the hairs in a small closed room with the possessed, filling their nose with the scent, this would release them from the spell of the jinn inside them
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