Читать книгу A Dictionary of Islam. Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion онлайн

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“It is held,” says al-Qazwīnī, “that the Jinn are aerial animals, with transparent bodies, which can assume various forms. People differ in opinion respecting these beings; some consider the Jinn and Shait̤āns as unruly men, but these persons are of the Muʿtazilahs [a sect of Muslim freethinkers], and some hold that God, whose name be exalted, created the angels of the light of fire, and the Jinn of its flame [but this is at variance with the general opinion], and the Shait̤āns of its smoke [which is also at variance with the common opinion]; and that [all] these kinds of beings are [usually] invisible to men, but that they assume what forms they please, and when their form becomes condensed they are visible.” This last remark illustrates several descriptions of genii in the Arabian Nights, where the form of the monster is at first undefined, or like an enormous pillar, and then gradually assumes a human shape and less gigantic size.

It is said that God created the Jānn [or Jinn] two thousand years before Adam [or, according to some writers, much earlier], and that there are believers and infidels and every sect among them, as among men. Some say that a prophet named Yūsuf was sent to the Jinn; others, that they had only preachers or admonishers; others, again, that seventy apostles were sent, before Muḥammad, to Jinn and men conjointly. It is commonly believed that the preadamite Jinn were governed by forty (or, according to some, seventy-two) kings, to each of whom the Arab writers give the name of Sulaiman (or Solomon); and that they derive their appellation from the last of these, who was called Jānn ibn Jānn, and who, some say, built the Pyramids of Egypt.