On a recent television show, it was stated that the Arabic word for “genie” is the same word used for demon and in Arabic cultures, genies are evil tricksters, not benevolent blonds in harem attire eager to grant your every wish.
Is this true?
Thesaurus.com lists “demon” as a synonym for genie, but I don’t think most westerners would see a genie as a demonic character.
It is difficult to translate supernatural terms. I would say that “demon” is probably best rendered into Arabic by djinni, but that more context is needed to see if “djinni” should be put into English as “demon.”
Not an Arabic speaker, but I’ve read a lot of Arabic literature in translation featuring djinn.
I had understood that westerners think of genies as creatures that live in bottles and grant wishes (and may or may not be hot blondes in harem attire) because of the popularity of the original Aladdin story. But someone reading the story in its time would have understood that a genie was a powerful supernatural creature who would ordinarily not be found in such a situation and the lamp must be a very powerful artifact to be able to enslave such a creature.
It would be like if the lamp released a wish-granting angel or unicorn today.
In the Patrick O’Brien novels, the local nineteenth century Arabs believe djinni to be evil creatures that live in the desert.
My meager knowledge for what it is worth.
The only jinn I remember from the Thousand and One Nights was the one in Aladdin, and it certainly wasn’t a blond babe. Demon would be a closer description.
Going by the Wikipedia entries on Jinn and Demon, it looks like jinn is a somewhat larger group than Christian mythology’s demons. Djinn who serve Satan are known as “shayātīn”, but some do not. Those who do not could be nefarious, good, or somewhere in between. They’re basically free to live as they will.
It looks likely that they are remnants of older, pre-Islamic gods that were brought into Islamic literature in order to explain that these old gods are just “spirits”, not God, similar to the angels and demons of Judaism and Christianity. Presumably, the ones which were credible opponents to Islam were converted into evil demons in the service of the Devil and those which didn’t matter, but some villages felt really close to, were allowed to come in as benevolent spirits.
Even in modern popular culture the “you get X wishes” story is usually accompanied by a moral element that the wisher gets screwed somehow, the underlying message being “that which is easily gained is more trouble than it is worth.” The trickster element is still there, except in the most happy of productions like “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Aladdin.” And heck, even then, there’s an underlying danger to the power of the genie.
If you read the original Arabian Nights Entertainment, you’ll see that the Jinn are fire beings (that’s why they can be depicted as living in lamps) that are their own beings. Some of them in stories were bound in servitude. In the story of the Fisherman and the Jinn, the Jinn was sealed in a bottle by Solomon, and his attitude was not improved by this. Although at first he resolved to reward his rescuer (with wishes, as in other stories), later on he resolved to kill the first person he saw. The fisherman was only saved by his fast thinking I tricking the Jinn back into the bottle.
So, no, Jinn aren’t automatically wish-granting beings.
I should add that Jinn are mentioned in the Koran, and are thus believed in by devout Muslims, the same way that devout Christians used to believe in Unicorns, since they were mentioned in the Bible.
Anytime you start playing with myths and legends, you’re fiddling with somebody’s religion.
In 1001 Nights, there’s a story called “The City Of Brass” that tells some of the backstory. A band of adventurers go exploring to the West, and come upon a petrified city in which everything has been turned to brass. (I got the image that they went into the Western Maghreb, perhaps in the area of modern Mali, maybe even Timbuktu.) There, they find plates with ancient inscriptions telling the story.
It seems that in some ancient time, all the men and animals of the natural world came together there to join in apocalyptic battle against the evil Djinn. Lord Suleyman himself (King Solomon) came to lead them, arriving from Jerusalem flying aboard a magical flying carpet, hence the entrenched trope of people traveling by flying carpet. (ETA: This is the only appearance of the flying carpet in 1001 Nights.)
In other legends, Lord Suleyman was the only mortal who was powerful enough to subdue and control the Djinn. He defeated them and stuffed them into jars, covered and sealed in wax with Solomon’s signet seal – which the Djinn were powerless to break – and threw them into the sea. The Djinn of the Fisherman/Djinn story was one of those.
In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods one of the characters is a jinn who drives a cab in NYC. He wears mirrored sunglasses to hide the fire from his eyes.
My understanding of jinn is that they are made of smokeless fire and that they are highly sexual and lusty, not unlike the Greek gods. My anthropology professor who lived in Saudi Arabia for a time said that the very rural had been known to blame unwed pregnancies on jinn.
For a more modern, but totally tongue-in-cheek look at the Djinn, read the silly novel Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore.
No and bad fictions do not tell anyone about the actual question.
The Djinn are djinn. The idea of Demon in this sense is Shaitan (shaiyatine),
The Djinn can be good or evil or not really either in the Quranic traditions. Outside of that, there is different folklore, but djinn does not equal in meaning or idea demon.
Based on the above posts, Djinn seem to be more or less equivalent to fairies/elves/sidhe/etc. in Western Europe.
No, they’re really not. There are parallels: they are a separately created race of beings. They’re mentioned in the Koran, though, so they have a stronger place in the religious tradition than fairies to (even if fairies do sometimes get supplied a religious backstory). As said above, though, there are also parallels with demons, and with angels, and with a whole host of other things. There is no exact equivalent.
There were actually two even just in Aladdin itself. The lamp djinni and the lesser ring djinni.
The standard religious explanation for the sidhe is that they’re fundamentally the same sort of being as angels and demons, but that they refused to take sides during Satan’s rebellion. So the sidhe would also have parallels to angels and demons.
Yes, they do. You can probably find parallels between any two sets of supernatural creatures. The áes sídhe are neither angels nor demons, and they’re certainly not djinn, nor vice versa.
Why not have a look at the Koran?
[quotes about jinn]
(The Koran): click the header for the passages in context.
Where did Islam obtain the concept of the angel Satan rebelling?
From the other religions of the book, is that a serious question?
