Contents / Sommario 177

CONTENTS / SOMMARIO

THEME SECTION / SEZIONE MONOGRAFICA

Angels, Watchers, Giants Reimagined in Early Judaism, Christianity and

Islam
Kelley Coblentz Bautch and Jonathan Kaplan (eds.)

Kelley Coblentz Bautch - Jonathan Kaplan, Introduction ..................... 181

Kyle Roark, First Enoch 8 and the Origins of Civilization ........................... 188

Carson M. Bay, Demons in Flavius Josephus ................................................ 204

Bradley N. Rice, From the Watchers to the Sethites to the Magi. Reinterpre-
tations of Genesis in the Syriac Revelation of the Magi .................................. 226

Joshua Falconer, Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān. Retracing the Origins of

the Jinn ............................................................................................................ 243

ARTICLES / ARTICOLI

Christopher T. Holmes, A Tradition for the Throne’s Establishment on Earth.

A Note on the Tradition-Historical Relationship of Four Throne Theophanies . 265

Romina Vergari, The Shadow Metaphors in Ancient Hebrew Literature and

Their Semitic and Greek Backgrounds ............................................................ 277

BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONI

P. Mollo, The Motif of Generational Change in the Old Testament: A Literary and
Lexicographical Study [Dominik Markl SJ], p. 297 - L. Niesiolowski-Spanò - J.
West - C. Peri (eds.), Finding Myth and History in the Bible: Scholarship, Scholars
and Errors [Paola Mollo], p. 298 - F. Wilk (ed.), Das Vaterunser in seinen antik-
en Kontexten. Zum Gedenken an Eduard Lohse [Milena Beux], p. 301 - J. Unsok
Ro, Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah [Alexei M.
Sivertsev], p. 304

IN MEMORIAM
Pierre Lenhardt (1927-2019) [Alberto Castaldini], p. 311

Hen 41(2/2019)
178 Contents / Sommario

CONTRIBUTORS / COLLABORATORI

Carson M. Bay, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany: cmb14k@my.fsu.edu

Kelley Coblentz Bautch, St. Edward’s University, Austin, USA: kelleyb@stedwards.edu
Milena Beux, Einsiedeln, Switzerland: jaeger-beux@bluewin.ch
Alberto Castaldini, Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Romania: acastaldini@libero.it
Joshua Falconer, The Catholic University of America, Washington, USA: 76falconer@cua.edu
Christopher T. Holmes, First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, USA: cholmes@firstpresatl.org
Jonathan Kaplan, The University of Texas at Austin, USA: jonathan.kaplan@austin.utexas.edu
Dominic Markl SJ, Pontificio Istituto Biblico, Roma, Italy: markl@biblico.it
Paola Mollo, Università di Pisa, Italy: paola.mollo1984@gmail.com
Bradley N. Rice, McGill University, Montreal, Canada: bradley.rice@mail.mcgill.ca
Kyle Roark, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA: karoak@gmail.com
Alexei M. Sivertsev, DePaul University, Chicago, USA: asiverts@depaul.edu
Romina Vergari, Università di Firenze, Italy: romina.vergari@unifi.it

Advisory Board: Luca Arcari (Università di Napoli Federico ii); Jonathan Ben-Dov (University
of Haifa); Katell Berthelot (cnrs, Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales); Alberto Campla-
ni (Sapienza Università di Roma); Alessandro Catastini (Sapienza Università di Roma); James H.
Charlesworth (Princeton Theological Seminary); Esther Chazon (Hebrew University); Sabino Chia-
là (Comunità di Bose); Shaye J.D. Cohen (Harvard University); John J. Collins (Yale University);
James R. Davila (University of St Andrews); Marcello Del Verme (Università di Napoli Federico ii);
Devorah Dimant (Emerita, University of Haifa); Mariano Gómez Aranda (csic, Instituto de Lenguas
y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo); Charlotte Hempel (University of Birmingham);
Ronald Hendel (University of California at Berkeley); Giorgio Jossa (Emerito, Università di Na-
poli Federico ii); Adam Kamesar (Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati); Armin Lange (Universität
Wien); Thierry Legrand (Université de Strasbourg); Alessandro Mengozzi (Università di Torino);
Matthias Morgenstern (Universität Tübingen); Enrico Norelli (Emeritus, Université de Genève);
Andrei Orlov (Marquette University); Romano Penna (Emerito, Pontificia Università Lateranense);
Mauro Perani (Università di Bologna); Mauro Pesce (Università di Bologna); Ursula Ragacs (Uni-
versität Wien); Tessa Rajak (Emerita, University of Reading); Alexander Rofé (Emeritus, Hebrew
University); Liliana Rosso Ubigli (Università di Torino); Marina Rustow (Princeton University);
Stéphane Saulnier (Newman Theological College); Lawrence Schiffman (New York University);
Michael Segal (Hebrew University); Joseph Sievers (Emerito, Pontificio Istituto Biblico); Annette
Steudel (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen); Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (Ecole Pratique des Hautes
Etudes); Kevin Sullivan (Illinois Wesleyan University); David W. Suter (Saint Martin’s University);
Giuliano Tamani (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia); Lucio Troiani (Emerito, Università di Pavia);
Eugene Ulrich (University of Notre Dame); James C. VanderKam (University of Notre Dame); Sid-
nie White Crawford (Emerita, University of Nebraska - Lincoln).
 FAMILIAR SPIRITS IN THE QURʾĀN
Retracing the Origins of the Jinn*
Joshua Falconer, The Catholic University of America

Engaging the imaginations of both polytheistic Arab tribes and “the Peo-
ple of the Book”1 in their Late Antique Near East environment, 2 the Qurʾān
often invoked and recast familiar biblical characters and themes in the con-
text of a new message. Not the least of these biblical counterparts are the
angels and demons, ranging from Jibril (Gabriel) to Iblis (the devil).3 In the
same dramatis personae, the enigmatic class of spiritual beings known as the
jinn (or, “genies”) take center stage in the Qurʾān.4 The fact that the Qurʾān
recounted the jinn in medias res implies that its early audience needed no
introduction to them, just as there was no need to introduce angels. While it
seems clear that certain preconceptions about the jinn were prevalent in the
milieu of the Qurʾān during the early seventh century CE, what remains less
clear is whence these preconceptions principally derived, whether from bib-
lical traditions,5 Arabian folklore, or some combination of both.

*
I would like to thank all those who helped with the revision of this essay, especially
Kelley Coblentz Bautch and Jonathan Kaplan, for their tireless support and valuable feedback.
I also wish to thank those who commented on earlier drafts, including Aaron Butts, Philip Jen-
kins, Michael Jenkins, Isaac Oliver, Tommaso Tesei, the two anonymous reviewers, and my
fellow participants at the 2016 Enoch Graduate Seminar and the Arabic Christianity Summer
School at the University of Münster.
1
In the Qurʾān, “the People of the Book” usually referred to Jews and Christians, and may
have also referred to Sabeans and Zoroastrians. For the present discussion, the expression is pri-
marily limited to Judeo-Christian traditions. The literature on the Qurʾān’s engagement with the
People of the Book is immense; for an important example, see J.B. Witztum, The Syriac Milieu
of the Quran: The Recasting of Biblical Narratives (diss., Princeton University, 2011), pp. 1-4.
2
Recent scholarship has focused increasingly on the Late Antique context of the Qurʾān.
See e.g. A. Neuwirth et al, The Quran in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
3
Scholars have appraised the foreign origins of a number of angelic and demonic characters
in the Qurʾān, owing to their technical and religious role in biblical traditions, including angel
(malak), Gabriel (jibrīl), the devil (iblīs or šayṭān), and other loanwords, especially in Aramaic
and Ethiopic. See M. Carter, “Foreign Vocabulary,” in A. Rippin (ed.), Blackwell’s Companion
to the Qurʾān (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 132f.
4
“Jinn” and cognate terms appear forty-eight times in the Qurʾān. See p. 744 in A.T. Welch,
“Allah and Other Supernatural Beings: The Emergence of the Qur’anic Doctrine of Tawḥīd,”
JAAR xlvii (1980), pp. 733-758. For a brief overview of the representation of jinn in the
Qurʾān, see J. Chabbi, “Jinn,” Encyclopedia of the Qurʾan, vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 43-
49; J.J. Waardenburg, Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2002), pp. 36-37.
5
By “biblical traditions,” the broadest sense is intended, including pseudepigraphic and
exegetical traditions, among both Jews and Christians, whether oral or written.

Hen 41(2/2019) ISSN 0393-6805

244 Joshua Falconer

In this article, I will first point out some of the problems that arise from
leaning too heavily on Arabian folklore as a source of pre-Islamic beliefs
in the jinn; these include the possibility of textual contamination from the
Qurʾān, a shortcoming of corroborating evidence from epigraphic and apot-
ropaic literature, and some features in the Qurʾānic account that are difficult
to explain on the basis of Arabian folklore alone. Next, turning to the non-Ar-
abic sources that can be reliably dated, I will argue that no source in this
survey reflects a closer semantic and thematic continuity with the Qurʾānic
concept of the jinn than the Book of Jubilees, retellings from which circulated
in both Syriac and Ethiopic traditions prior to Islam.6 Finally, I will discuss
the implications of this finding in terms of the Qurʾān’s creative engagement
with the People of the Book.
When tracing these preconceptions, I have made no attempt to recover
the “original” sense of the term through an etymologizing approach,7 nor to
challenge the originality of the Qurʾānic message by emphasizing concep-
tual origins per se.8 The purpose of the present inquiry is rather to tune into
the discursive context to which the Qurʾān responded, and to discern the
Qurʾān’s distinctive voice in the conversation.

Methods and Sources

The basic approach adopted in the present study is to evaluate the se-
mantic and thematic continuities and discontinuities between the jinn of the
Qurʾān and their counterparts in the “pre-Islamic” (jāhilī)9 corpus and other
Semitic sources.10 Particular attention will be given to cognates of the Semit-
ic root *g-n-n, from which “jinn” derives, along with the various usages and
narrative roles that they came to include. The central thesis consists in a neg-
ative argument to challenge the previously assumed background, followed
by a positive argument to reconstruct the Qurʾānic preconceptions of the jinn.

6
While there is insufficient evidence for the existence of a Syriac version of Jubilees,
certain retellings deriving from it are attested in Syriac sources, as discussed below.
7
On the etymology of “jinn,” see, above all, the review of the discussion in F. Meier, “Ein
Arabischer Bet-Ruf,” Asiatische Studien 33 (1979), pp. 189-198. Cf. J. Henninger, “Beliefs in
Spirits among the Pre-Islamic Arabs,” pp. 1-53 in E. Savage-Smith (ed.), Magic and Divination
in Early Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 43-49. For a critique of “etymological fallacies,”
see J. Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961)
and its application to Qurʾānic studies in W.A. Saleh, “The Etymological Fallacy and Qurʾanic
Studies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity,” in Neuwirth et al, The Quran in Context,
pp. 649-698.
8
On the case for originality in the Qurʾān, see T. Kronholm, “Dependence and prophetic
originality in the Koran,” Orientalia Suecana 31-32 (1982), p. 60.
9
This study will refer to “pre-Islamic literature,” “jāhilī corpus,” and “Arabian folklore”
interchangeably throughout the following discussion. “Jāhilī” refers to the “age of ignorance”
(jāhiliyya) prior to the Islamic revelation.
10
This method is partly modeled after Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Quran.
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 245

Of course, mere similarities cannot establish historical links between tra-

ditions, any more than jinn-like beings in disparate world traditions, such
as Shinto kami, Avestan daevas, or Celtic faeries can be historically linked
to the Islamic jinn.11 Parallels can be explained by coincidence, polygene-
sis, or shared retention, among other possibilities. Nor do parallel features
indicate directionality, as the exchange of sociolinguistic features can shift
over time.12 To give one pertinent example of this difficulty, the Arabic jinn
and the Ethiopic gānēn attest to a high degree of overlap in their synchronic
semantic range, but their diachronic development and etymological relation-
ship remain obscure.13
In order to establish connections, it would be ideal to look for something
like common variants or indicative errors (Leitfehler), as in source criticism,
but given the fluid nature of oral transmission, these are not always accessi-
ble or clearly defined. It seems therefore that the best alternative is to accu-
mulate what I shall call “semantic clusters” and “thematic clusters.” In other
words, a few similarities and differences in terms of meaning and narrative
are insignificant on their own, but as they begin to accumulate, a coherent
picture slowly emerges, and the case for continuities and discontinuities can
become more compelling.14
To focus this study, sources will be limited to those that are most likely
to reflect the preconceptions of the Qurʾānic milieux, in light of their geog-
raphy, chronology, and sociolinguistic contact. These reflect oral and written
traditions that were circulating in the Arabian Peninsula and its environs by
the early seventh century CE. In accordance with the chronological schema
proposed by Witztum, sources fall under three headings: those which are
indisputably pre-Qurʾānic, those which are apparently post-Qurʾānic, and
those whose dating is still debated.15 The focus will be on the first category,
while mentioning the latter two categories when relevant to the discussion.
To begin, let us now consider the “pre-Islamic” representation of the jinn
as a reference point for the following survey of epigraphic, apotropaic, and
literary sources in the Semitic languages.16

11
On such similarities, see El-Zein, Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn. The
archetypal nature of this concept points to polygenesis, in this case.
12
Prior to Islam, Classical Arabic adopted a number of Gəʿəz loanwords (e.g. A. Jeffery,
The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān [Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938], pp. 72, 77f., 88,
100, 102, 106, 116, 121, 140, 151, 190, 192-194, 200, 203, 221, 255f., 266, 272), but in the
wake of Islam, the directionality reversed as Ethiopic acquired many Arabic loanwords,
including, remarkably, the Amharic “gin” (W. Leslau, Arabic Loanwords in Ethiopian Semitic
[Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1990], p. 24).
13
On this problem, see especially Meier, “Ein Arabischer Bet-Ruf,” pp. 189-198.
14
For a similar approach, see e.g. Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Quran, p. 153. Cf. the
articles by Griffith, Van Bladel, and Kropp in G.S. Reynolds (ed.), The Qurʾān in its Historical
Context (London: Routledge, 2008).
15
Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Quran, p. 5.
16
The limitation to Semitic languages is based on the well-attested precedent of sociolin-
guistic contact between speakers of Classical Arabic and other Semitic languages, as is evident
in the borrowed terms in the Qurʾān itself. Zammit notes that of the 322 words in Jeffery’s
246 Joshua Falconer

Arabian Folklore and Pre-Islamic Beliefs

The jinn feature prominently in the “Meccan” suras of the Qurʾān,17 cul-
minating in the “Late Meccan” period that, according to Islamic tradition, co-
incides with the emigration of the prophet’s companions to Ethiopia ca. 615
CE.18 In the suras traditionally known as “Medinan,” explicit references to
the jinn fall out of the picture.19 Following the diffusion and standardization
of the Qurʾān, literature on the jinn proliferated, ranging from folk legends
to fatwas. Their legacy garnered a widespread reception within the Islamic
world, as evinced by their appearance in the tafsīr and ḥadīṯ traditions,20 and
beyond the Islamic world, through the popular lore of genies, as in The Thou-
sand and One Nights.21 All of this can be traced back to the rising influence
of the Qurʾān in the advent of Islam.
Scholarship on the Qurʾānic representation of the jinn is hardly new, but
for the most part, prior studies have approached the problem in terms of the
Qurʾānic development of preexisting Arabian beliefs.22 Such an approach,

Foreign Vocabulary, 75% of nouns and adjectives are of “Northwest Semitic origin,” 13% are
of “South Semitic” origin, and 12% are of outside origin: M.R. Zammit, A Comparative Lexical
Study of Qurʾānic Arabic (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 59. Cf. Carter, “Foreign Vocabulary,” p.
124f.; S. Weninger. “Aramaic-Arabic Language Contact,” in S. Weninger et al., (eds.), Semitic
Languages: An International Handbook, (Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2011), pp. 747-755.
17
Qurʾān references are abbreviated as “Q.” There are seven direct references to the jinn
in the “Early Meccan” suras (51:56; 55:15, 33, 39, 56, 74; 114:6), ten in the “Middle Meccan”
suras (Q 37:158 [twice]; 15:27; 72:1, 5, 6; 17:88; 27:17, 39; 18:50), and fifteen in the “Late
Meccan” suras (Q 41:25, 29; 11:119; 32:13; 34:12, 14, 41; 7:38, 179; 46:18, 29; 6:100, 112,
128, 130), for a total of thirty-two direct references, in addition to sixteen instances of cognates.
18
Ibn Isḥāq records the traditional account (sīra) of the First Hijra of about eighty-
three companions of the prophet to Abyssinia and their encounters with Ethiopian Orthodox
Christians: A. Guillaume (ed.), The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīrat
Rasūl Allāh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 146-149.
19
See Welch, “Allah and Other Supernatural Beings,” p. 744. Alternatively, Bell considers
Q 34:41 and 6:112 to be early Medinan suras (ibi).
20
For a guide to the tafsīr and ḥadīṯ collections, including citations from Buḫārī, Muslim,
Abū Dāʾīd, Al-Tirmiḏī, Al-Dārimī, Ibn Saʿd, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Al-Ṭayālisī, and Ibn Hišām,
see under “Djinn” in A.J. Wensinck, A Handbook of Early Muhammadan Tradition (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1960), p. 59f. Cf. E. Racius, “Islamic Exegesis on the Jinn: Their Origin, Kinds and
Substance and Their Relation to Other Beings,” Studia Orientalia 85 (1999), pp. 127-138.
21
For an introduction to the jinn in the context of The Thousand and One Nights, see U.
Marzolph - R.V. Leeuwen - H. Wassouf, The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara:
ABC CLIO, 2004), pp. 534-537.
22
For a summary of the scholarly discussion, see especially J. Henninger, “Beliefs in Spirits
among the Pre-Islamic Arabs,” pp. 1-53 in E. Savage-Smith (ed.), Magic and Divination in
Early Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 26-27. Other notable studies include S. O’Meara,
“From Space to Place: The Quranic Infernalization of the Jinn,” in C. Lange (ed.), Locating
Hell in Islamic Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 56-73; E.H. Tengour, L’Arabie des djinns.
Fragments d’un imaginaire (Bruxelles-Fernelmont: EME, 2013); A. El-Zein, Islam, Arabs,
and the Intelligent World of the Jinn (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009); A. El-
Zein, The Evolution of the Concept of the Jinn from Pre-Islam to Islam (diss., Georgetown
University, 1995), pp. 30-150; D.B. MacDonald, “Djinn,” p. 547 in B. Lewis, C. Pellat, and
J. Schacht (eds.), Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1991); T. Fahd, “Anges, Démons et
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 247

however, depends ultimately on the premise that the “pre-Islamic” literature

can be taken at face value as a reliable witness to Arabian cultural beliefs
prior to the first appearance of jinn in the pre-Badr suras of the Qurʾān.23
However, as we shall see, this is far from certain.
It is generally acknowledged that the “pre-Islamic” corpus of poetry was
memorized and transmitted orally from the time of the sixth-seventh cen-
turies CE but set down in writing only after the emergence of Islam, i.e. in
the eighth-ninth centuries CE.24 The Islamic tradition maintains the authen-
ticity and pristine transmission of this corpus, but such claims have been
challenged, largely because of its post-hoc composition. What’s more, some
“pre-Islamic” poets swear by Allah and even occasionally quote the Qurʾān.25
Consequently, many scholars have doubted the authenticity of this corpus,
ranging from Ḥussein and Margoliouth, who regarded the corpus as an early
Islamic forgery, to Arberry and others, who have attempted to dismantle these
accusations. While the issue remains divisive and not entirely resolved, more
moderate scholars following Blachère tend to agree that even if the jāhilī
corpus was partially or totally forged, it probably reflects the style and ideas
of an earlier and authentic model, stemming from its requisite verisimilitude.
In any case, it remains doubtful that the transmission of this corpus was
altogether free from textual contamination, given the fluidity of the oral tra-
dition and the powerful influence of the Qurʾān on subsequent literature. For
this reason, arguments that depend on jāhilī poetry to explain the Qurʾānic
background of the jinn run the risk of circular reasoning (or assuming the
consequent), to the extent that the former was likely to assimilate to the lat-
ter. In light of these problems, some have rightly bracketed or postponed
the historicity of the “pre-Islamic” poetry altogether, yet the study of this
corpus continues, “without asking if this representation is a true record of
any historical reality,” in the words of O’Meara.26 Thus, for more historically
reliable data, there seems to be little alternative but to look beyond the jāhilī
corpus. But first let us examine the content of this corpus and the scholarly
discussion that has developed around it.
Following the assumption that the Qurʾān further developed preexisting
Arabian beliefs, the scholarly debate has gravitated toward settling the dis-
crepancies between the autochthonous cult of the jinn and the strict monothe-
istic message of Islam. Thus, some argue that the Qurʾān deepened the notion

Djinns en Islam,” pp. 153-214 in Génies, Anges et Démons (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971),
pp. 186-214.
23
On the dating, see Welch, “Allah and Other Supernatural Beings,” pp. 744-746.
24
See e.g. M.J. Zwettler, The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry (Columbus: OSU
Press, 1978), pp. 3-14.
25
Key interlocutors in this discussion include Ṭ. Ḥussein, D. Margoliouth, A.J. Arberry,
and R. Blachère: see the recent overview and bibliography in J.T. Monroe, “Oral Composition
in Pre-Islamic Poetry,” pp. 1-5 in S.P. Stetkevych (ed.), Early Islamic Poetry and Poetics
(London, Routledge, 2009).
26
O’Meara, “From Space to Place,” p. 56.
248 Joshua Falconer

of the jinn as intelligent beings,27 while others emphasize the “demonization”28

or “infernalization”29 of the jinn in the Qurʾān, reflecting their diminished sta-
tus and chthonic fate, in addition to a number of other interpretations. Yet, as
already mentioned, each of these theories depends on a picture of preexisting
Arabian beliefs that could have fallen under the influence of the Qurʾān. More-
over, modern reconstructions of the pre-Islamic jinn have not escaped further
contamination from anachronistic sources. For instance, although the first part
of El-Zein’s dissertation is entitled “Introduction to the Jinn in Pre-Islam,” the
majority of the sources cited therein actually belong to early Islamic tradition
and modern historiography.30 Likewise, Henninger’s article, “Beliefs in Spirits
among the Pre-Islamic Arabs,” considers “pre-Islamic” sources in conjunction
with Islamic traditions and present-day Arab beliefs.31 In order to establish the
profile of the jinn in the jāhillī corpus, then, it is necessary to briefly recapitu-
late its major points, some of which has been previously overlooked.
According to the jāhilī literary tradition, the jinn were spirits, usually hid-
den in solitary places, that could take various manifestations, including ani-
mals such as snakes, cats, and dogs, or they could take forms comparable to
male or female human beings. They came to be associated with several other
kinds of spirits, including ğūls and ifrits.32 The jinn possessed superhuman
powers or attributes, such as savage brutality in a male jinnī and extraordi-
nary allure in a female jinnī.33 They rivaled humans in arts including mu-
sic and swordcraft, as well as sciences including agriculture and medicine.34
Like humans, the jinn were also subject to good and bad fortune, happiness
and sorrow.35 Owing to their superhuman qualities, they were also venerated,
appeased, and invoked.36 Capable of harming and possessing humans to the
point of madness, the jinn were naturally to be feared, but there were also
cases of benevolent jinn who helped, protected, and inspired humans, espe-
cially poets and seers.37 The jinn could also fall in love with humans, marry
them, and bear their offspring in the world.38

27
See especially El-Zein, The Evolution of the Concept of the Jinn and id, Islam, Arabs,
and the Intelligent World of the Jinn.
28
See the discussion in Welch, “Allah and Other Supernatural Beings,” pp. 744-749;
Henninger, “Beliefs in Spirits among the Pre-Islamic Arabs,” pp. 35-40; El-Zein, The Evolution
of the Concept of the Jinn, p. 81; Tengour, L’Arabie des djinns; J.P. Chelhod, Les Structures du
Sacré chez les Arabes (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1964).
29
See O’Meara, “From Space to Place,” pp. 68-69.
30
El-Zein, The Evolution of the Concept of the Jinn, pp. 30-150.
31
Henninger, “Beliefs in Spirits among the Pre-Islamic Arabs,” pp. 1-53.
32
E.g. A. Jones, Early Arabic Poetry: Select Odes (Ithaca: Oxford, 1992), p. 115.
33
E.g. ibi, p. 197 and 210.
34
El-Zein, World of the Jinn, p. 28. Cf. the traditions preserved in Enochic literature.
35
E.g. Jones, Early Arabic Poetry: Select Odes, p. 105.
36
E.g. N.A. Faris (ed.), The Book of Idols, Being a Translation from the Arabic of the Kitab
al-Asnam by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 47.
37
E.g. Poems 40:100, trans. Lyall, qtd. in Jones, Early Arabic Poetry: Select Odes, p. 241f.
Cf. ibi, p. 4, 242f. Cf. the daimones in Greek poetry.
38
Henninger, “Beliefs in Spirits among the Pre-Islamic Arabs,” p. 28, n. 137.
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 249

The tradition thus depicted the jinn as elusive spiritual-corporeal creatures,

sharing attributes with humans and participating in their affairs, while deviat-
ing from the Qurʾānic presuppositions of the jinn in several notable respects.
As has already been shown by other scholars, some deviations are difficult to
explain on the basis of the jāhilī corpus alone, but as shall be argued, these
details can be more easily explained with reference to their Judeo-Christian
precedents.39 The most striking discrepancy to consider at this point is that
between the jāhilī literature and the epigraphic and apotropaic record.

Epigraphic and Apotropaic Evidence

If the preconceptions of the jinn could be accounted for on the basis of

the “pre-Islamic” corpus, we would expect to find them to be compatible, at
the very least, with the inscriptions and incantation literature left behind by
the Arab tribes in the Hijaz and its environs prior to the Qurʾān. After all, if
spiritual beings are going to turn up in any medium, the most likely prospects
would include dedicatory inscriptions and apotropaic devices, since these
frequently include invocations to tutelary deities and bans of foul demons,
along with a plethora of names for spiritual beings. To give a common exam-
ple, the Arabic word for “angel” (malak, pl. malāʾika-, possibly an Ethiopic
loanword), is well-attested in pre-Islamic, North Arabian inscriptions.40
Fortunately for this study, there is no shortage of evidence. Thousands of
pre-Qurʾānic inscriptions and incantation bowls survive in Semitic languag-
es, including North Arabian, South Arabian, Ethiopic (Gəʿəz), and several
Aramaic dialects including Palmyrene, Hatran, Nabatean, Syriac, Jewish
Babylonian Aramaic, and Mandaic. This is partly due to the fact that hard
materials such as stones, clay bowls, and metal amulets tend to have a far
higher chance of survival than soft materials like papyrus and parchment.
While these initial soundings are far from comprehensive, they represent
large corpora from up-to-date editions.
In fact, what we find in the epigraphic record is nearly the opposite of
what we might expect from the jāhilī literature, given their prominent role
in the latter. If there ever were a large number of explicit references to the
jinn in the North Arabian or South Arabian41 inscriptions during or prior to
the seventh century CE, their traces seem to have utterly vanished from the
record. While forms deriving from *gnn are attested in ancient Arabian lan-
guages such as Safaitic and Sabaic, these appear almost always as personal

39
E.g. Waardenburg, Islam, p. 36.
40
See A. Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān, p. 270, n. 2. Jeffery argues that
the source of the Arabic word is the Ethiopic malʾak, pl. malāʾǝkt, and that it was borrowed
long before the time of Muḥammad, given its prior appearance in Northern Arabian inscriptions
and the fact that the Qurʾān assumes an awareness of them.
41
This classification follows M.C.A. MacDonald, “Reflections on the Linguistic Map of
Pre-Islamic Arabia,” Arab. Arch. Epig. 11 (2000), pp. 28-79.
250 Joshua Falconer

names, either preceding or following bn “son of.”42 There are a few potential
exceptions, but these are far from certain.43 As it turns out, gānēn, the Ethio-
pic cognate of jinn, also happens to be absent from the corpus of Epigraphic
Gəʿəz, but this comes as no surprise, given the relatively meager size of the
corpus.44
The corpus of apotropaic devices reveals a similar picture. Dating ap-
proximately to the sixth to seventh century CE, the corpora of incantation
bowls and amulets in the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Mandaic, and Syriac
languages yield a rich variety of terms for spirits. Apparently, none of these
correspond to lexemes deriving from the *g-n-n root, at least according to the
recently published editions of JBA, Mandaic, and Syriac magic bowls.45 As
for the vast corpus of Gəʿəz healing scrolls, these contain thousands of in-
stances of the word gānēn, drawing on traditions that go at least as far back
as the fifteenth century, if not earlier.46 However, since the vast majority of
these scrolls date to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries CE, they must be
disregarded given the criteria for reliable evidence in the present study.47
It is necessary to mention here a number of Aramaic inscriptions in the
Palmyrene48 and Hatran dialects.49 Albright proposed an etymological link
between the lexeme gnyʾ and “jinn,” based on “a slight modification of Ar-

42
E.g. Sigla H 143, W 224 (312 and 577) in F.V. Winnet, Safaitic Inscriptions from Jordan
(Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1957). Twenty-five more instances of gnn as Ṣafaitic names
were found at The Online Corpus of Ancient North Arabian Inscriptions (http://krcfm.orient.ox-
.ac.uk/fmi/webd#ociana). For the Sabaic inscriptions, see The Digital Archive for the Study of
Pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (www.dasiproject.eu). The following index was also consult-
ed: G.L. Harding, An Index and Concordance of Pre-Islamic Arabian Names and Inscriptions
(Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1971).
43
For instance, the verb ngn with the possible meaning “he went mad” also appears in
Ṣafaitic, e.g. MAHB 2 in A. Al-Jallad, An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions
(Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 272.
44
Only about 200 inscriptions are extant in the corpus of Epigraphic Gəʿəz. For these in-
scriptions, the following publications were consulted: E. Bernard - A.J. Drewes - R. Schneider
(eds.), Recueil des inscriptions de l’Ethiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite Tome i. Les
documents. Tome ii. Les planches. (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1991);
L. Ricci, “Iscrizioni rupestri dell’Eritrea,” Rassegna di Studi Etiopici [published in four parts,
respectively] 42; 43; ns 1; ns 2 (1998; 1999; 2002; 2003), pp. 71-88; 133-151; 63-84; 51-76.
45
The following editions were consulted: S. Shaked et al., Aramaic Bowl Spells: Jewish
Babylonian Aramaic Bowls (Leiden: Brill, 2013); M. Moriggi, A Corpus of Syriac Incantation
Bowls: Syriac Magical Texts from Late-Antique Mesopotamia (Leiden: Brill, 2014); E.M. Ya-
mauchi, Mandaic Incantation Texts (American Oriental Series, 49: New Haven, 1967); J.B.
Segal, Catalogue of the Aramaic and Mandaic Incantation Bowls in The British Museum (Lon-
don, British Museum Press, 2000). For recent bibliography of incantation bowls, see Segal,
Catalogue, p. 21.
46
The use of Gəʿəz healing scrolls is attested in the “Epistle of Humanity” (ṭomarä tǝsbǝʾt)
by Emperor Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob (1434-1468 CE): G. Haile (ed.), The Epistle of Humanity of Zärʾa
Yaʿǝqob (CSCO 522-523; Leuven: Peeters, 1992).
47
See J. Mercier, Ethiopian Magic Scrolls (New York: G. Braziller, 1979), p. 7.
48
D.R. Hillers - E. Cussini, Palmyrene Aramaic texts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1996), p. 354. Cf. the discussion in Waardenburg, Islam, pp. 30-34.
49
B. Aggoula, “Remarques sur les inscriptions hatréennes,” Syriac Studies 67 (1990), p. 413.
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 251

amaic gǝnê, ‘hidden,’ plural gǝnên, ‘hidden things,’ and emphatic plural
gǝnayyâ.”50 Albright’s theory has been rightly challenged by Levi della Vida
and Fritz Meier, since the third-weak root *g-n-y, from which these Aramaic
terms derive, is evidently unrelated to the geminate root *g-n-n, from which
the Arabic “jinn” derives.51 In any case, if we concede that the terms could
have been conflated, perhaps by way of phono-semantic matching52 or mor-
phological reanalysis,53 this would hardly entail a fully formed, autochtho-
nous Arabian belief in the jinn prior to Islam. Rather, the evidence merely
points to Aramaic notions of “idols,” “deities,” and “images,” in lexemes
derived from *g-n-y.
Although this brief survey of epigraphic and apotropaic sources cannot be
considered as comprehensive, its initial soundings point to an argument from
ignorance54 that can be reformulated as follows: If beliefs in the jinn were as
widely known and defined in pre-Islamic Arabian culture as the jāhilī corpus
suggests, then the epigraphic and apotropaic evidence would probably reflect
this knowledge. Careful searches of thousands of inscriptions, bowls, and
amulets yielded no direct references to the Arabic lexical concept “jinn.”
Therefore, there is insufficient material evidence to corroborate the hypoth-
esis that in pre-Islamic times, the term had developed into the fully-fledged
concept that the jāhilī corpus represents. Yet the Qurʾān evidently assumes a
prior knowledge of the jinn by at least some of its audience, as already stated.
So, if not the polytheistic Arab tribes, then who had this prior knowledge, and
how did it enter the Qurʾān?

50
W.F. Albright, “Reviewed Work: The Excavations of Dura-Europos. Preliminary Report
of Sixth Season of Work, October, 1932-March, 1933 by M. I. Rostovtzeff, A. R. Bellinger, C.
Hopkins, C. B. Welles,” JAOS 57 (1937), p. 320.
51
See Meier, “Ein Arabischer ‘Bet-Ruf,’” pp. 191-192.
52
Phono-Semantic Matching (PSM) is defined as “etymythological nativization in which a
foreignism is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar preexistent autochthonous
lexeme/root” (G. Zuckermann, “‘Etymythological Othering’ and the Power of ‘Lexical
Engineering’ in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, pp. 237-258 in T. Omoniyi and J.A. Fishman
[eds.], Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion [Amsterdam: John Benjamins,
2006], p. 239).
53
In historical linguistics, “morphological reanalysis,” refers to the superimposition of a
morphological pattern of one root onto a different root to produce new forms when a speaker
misanalyzes a root and thereby produces new morphological forms. With their shared lexical
range and overlapping phonetic and morphological features, these roots could qualify as can-
didates for this phenomenon. See J. Huehnergard. “Reanalysis and New Roots: An Akkadian
Perspective,” in L. Edward - J. Huehnergard (eds.), Proceedings of the Oslo-Austin Workshop in
Semitic Linguistics, Oslo, May 23-24, 2013, (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), pp. 9-27.
54
Despite its negative associations with the fallacy by the same name (argumentum ad
ignorantiam), formulations of this type of argument are considered unproblematic when viewed
probabilistically. The argument presented above attempts to qualify as one such formulation.
See M. Oaksford and U. Hahn, “A Bayesian Approach to Arguments from Ignorance,”
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 58 (2004), pp. 75-85.
252 Joshua Falconer

Retelling Biblical Retellings

The Book of Jubilees is a targumic retelling55 of Genesis and Exodus 1-12

that was probably written in Hebrew after c. 164 but before 100 BCE.56 It
was translated from Hebrew into Greek, and from Greek into Ethiopic and
Latin.57 While fragments survive in Hebrew (from Qumran), Greek, Latin,
and Syriac,58 the only complete version survives in Ethiopic biblical codices
dating as early as the fourteenth century CE.59
Jubilees belongs to a rich tapestry of Jewish pseudepigraphic and apoca-
lyptic literature including Genesis Apocryphon (third to first century BCE),
Enochic texts (third to first century BCE), and the Apocalypse of Abraham
(70-150 CE). Following a broader pattern of lowering the status of angelic
and demonic beings in rabbinic circles, such texts were repressed in the Tal-
mudic and Mishnaic sources subsequent to the second century CE.60 As early
as the fifth century CE, these traditions began to resurface in Aggadic Mid-
rashim in Hebrew and Aramaic, in addition to pseudepigraphal, exegetical,
and historiographical retellings in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources.61

55
“Retelling” is meant to highlight “conceptual and discursive continuities,” following
the model in A.Y. Reed, “Retelling Biblical Retellings: Epiphanius, the Pseudo-Clementines,
and the Reception-History of Jubilees,” pp. 304-321 in M. Kister et al. (eds.), Tradition,
Transmission, and Transformation from Second Temple Literature through Judaism and
Christianity in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Cf. “rewritten scripture” in M.M. Zahn,
“Genre and Rewritten Scripture: A Reassessment,” JBL 131 (2012), p. 286. Here, “retellings”
denotes both oral and written forms of transmission. On Jubilees traditions as “retelling biblical
retellings,” cf. M. Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and
Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 4-5.
56
While the chronological limits of the composition of Jubilees remain uncertain, the
general consensus favors the second century BCE. For the discussion, see J. VanderKam, The
Book of Jubilees (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 17-22.
57
For an overview of the versions, see J. VanderKam (ed.), The Book of Jubilees: A Critical
Text (CSCO 511; Leuven: Peeters, 1989), pp. vi-xxxiv.
58
Apart from an eighth century CE Syriac fragment (British Library Add. 12,154)
containing periphrastic material related to Jubilees, there is insufficient evidence for the
existence of a complete Syriac translation of Jubilees, pace E. Tisserant, “Fragments syriaques
du Livre des Jubilés,” RB 30 (1921), pp. 55-86, 206.
59
In addition to the twenty-seven exemplars reported in VanderKam’s 1989 critical edition
(ibi, pp. xiv-xv), more than twenty additional manuscripts have since been identified, including
the most ancient codex containing Jubilees, Gunda Gundē 162, dating to the late fourteenth
century CE: see T. Erho, “New Ethiopic Witnesses to Some Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,”
Bulletin of SOAS 76/1 (2013), pp. 75-97.
60
R. Adelman (The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha
[Leiden: Brill, 2010], pp. 109-208) argues that such texts witnessed a revival of interest after
centuries of prior repression in Rabbinic circles.
61
Reed notes, “there is an even larger gap in the evidence for the Jewish Nachleben of
[Jubilees], with traditions clearly connected to Jubilees not reappearing until the early Middle
Ages in works like Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, Bereshit Rabbati, etc.,” A.Y. Reed, “Retelling
Biblical Retellings,” p. 312.
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 253

The earliest Syriac Nachleben62 of traditions from Jubilees includes the

Cave of Treasures (mid-sixth-early seventh century CE),63 and Jacob of Edes-
sa’s (d. 708 CE) Letter 13 to John of Litarba, and Scholion 10 by the same au-
thor.64 Later sources include the Catena Severi (compiled in 861 CE), the Ar-
abic chronicle of Agapius of Mabbug (d. 941-2 CE; based on Syriac sources),
and the Syriac chronicles of Michael the Great (d. 1199 CE), Barhebraeus
(d. 1286 CE), and the Anonymous Chronicle until 1234.65 The earliest Jewish
Nachleben of Jubilees in Hebrew and Aramaic texts include Bereshit Rabba
(ca. 5th century CE) and Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (ca. 9th century CE).66
As this brief survey indicates, Jubilees retold stories from Genesis and
parts of Exodus, and in turn, the exegetical and historiographical sources
listed above retold stories from Jubilees. If the Qurʾān also participated in
retelling such stories, then it would have carried forward a widely known
precedent of retelling biblical retellings, a pattern that is also suggested by
the cases for the Qurʾānic recasting of specific themes deriving from Syriac
and Ethiopic biblical traditions.67 It remains to be seen if this contingency
also applies to the case at hand.

Counterparts of the Jinn in Jubilees

Jubilees recast the familiar stories of Genesis and parts of Exodus from
the perspective of one of the angels of presence speaking to Moses on
Mount Sinai. It addressed the old problem of evil in the actions of Cain and
the angelic beings, as described in Genesis. If one were to ask how evil could
exist in a world created by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent
God, the answer provided in Jubilees is that human and angelic beings fell
into sin together and brought suffering into the world.68 This went against the
62
Nachleben, literally “afterlife,” refers to the survival or continuity of motifs between an
earlier source and a later source.
63
S. Minov, “Date and Provenance of the Syriac Cave of Treasures: A Reappraisal,”
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 20:1 (2017), pp. 129-229.
64
Jacob of Edessa drew on the Book of Enoch and a source he called “Jewish (hi)stories”
(tašʿyātā yudāyātā), a work related to Jubilees. It is unclear whether this latter work was a
Hebrew and/or Aramaic version of Jubilees by another name, or some other text. See W. Adler,
“Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Jacob of Edessa’s Letters and Historical Writings,” pp. 49-65 in
Bas ter Haar Romeny (ed.), Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day (Leiden: Brill,
2008), p. 50. Cf. S.P. Brock, “Abraham and the Ravens: A Syriac Counterpart to Jubilees 11-12
and Its Implications,” JSJ 9 (1978), p. 142.
65
Cf. J. VanderKam (ed.), The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text, pp. 328-368; A. Hilkens,
The Anonymous Syriac Chronicle up to the Year 1234 and its Sources (diss., Universiteit Gent,
2014), pp. 61-66.
66
On the dating of these texts, see Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Quran, p. 5.
67
For the Syriac traditions, see, e.g., ibi, passim. For the Ethiopic traditions, see, e.g.
M. Kropp, “Beyond single words: Māʾida - Shayṭān - Jibt and Ṭaghut: Mechanisms of
transmission into the Ethiopic (Geʾez) Bible and the Qurʾānic Text,” in G. Reynolds (ed.), The
Qurʾān in its Historical Context (Routledge: London, 2011), pp. 204ff.
68
On the traditions of celestial beings in Enoch and Jubilees, and especially fallen angels,
254 Joshua Falconer

original purpose of the spirits, “to teach mankind and to do what is just and
upright upon the earth” (J 4:15).69
Such spiritual beings are depicted as morally ambivalent creatures,
sometimes acting for the benefit of people, and other times as the source
of seduction and suffering.70 Angels (malāʾǝkt) and spirits (manāfǝst) may
thus positively intervene in the lives of righteous men and women in order
to protect them, or they may inspire in order to bless others through them.
The narrator-angel describes how he stood ready to intervene as Abraham
was about to slay his son, “then I stood in front of [Abraham] and in front
of Prince Mastema” (J 18:9). On two occasions, a spirit inspires good bibli-
cal characters for the purpose of blessing. In the first instance, the spirit of
righteousness descends into Rebecca’s mouth and blessed Jacob (J 25:14).
Later on, a spirit of prophecy enters the mouth of Jacob and blesses Levi
(J 31:12).
Despite these positive ends, some of these watchers were tempted by the
beauty of the daughters of men and gave way to sin: “The watchers sinned
with the daughters of men” (J 4:22; cf. J 5:1ff.). As a consequence, watchers
and humans gave birth to a new hybrid species, identified as “giants” in one
place, but agānǝnt in another place. The angels of the Lord identified as
watchers (tǝguhān) descend to earth (J 4:15), at which point the narrative fol-
lows the Book of the Watchers: “the angels of the Lord saw that the daughters
of men were beautiful to behold; they married them, and they gave birth to
giants (raʿāyt)” (J 5:1). In Chapter Ten, the watchers are reported to be the fa-
thers of the agānǝnt (J 10:5).71 The purpose of the spirits in the tenth chapter
expands from this point on to include testing, tempting, accusing, punishing,
and ultimately destroying humankind. Through them, God issued cosmic jus-
tice, while being exonerated for human suffering. This is clear, for example,

see F.V. Reiterer, T. Nicklas, K. Schopflin (eds.), Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature.
Yearbook 2007: The Concept of Celestial Beings – Origins, Development and Reception
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007); A.Y. Reed, “Enochic and Mosaic Traditions in Jubilees: The
Evidence of Angelology and Demonology,” pp. 353-368 in G. Boccaccini and G. Ibba (eds.),
Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); A.K.
Harkins - K. Coblentz Bautch - J.C. Endres (eds.), Fallen Angels Traditions: Second Temple
Developments and Reception History (Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2014); L.T.
Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New
Testament Texts (Heidelburg: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
69
Henceforth, Jubilees references are abbreviated as “J.” This account of the original
purpose of instruction follows the narrative given in the Book of the Watchers about the
different kinds of knowledge. The angelic narrator identifies as one of these watchers in
Chapter Ten (J 10:12f.).
70
On the connection between suffering and evil spirits in Jubilees, see especially
A.T. Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Liter-
ature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015).
71
This would open the possibility that the giants would be conflated with the agānǝnt in
reception history. These giants are said to be responsible for compounding the wickedness
upon the earth, which in turn incurred the deluge as a punishment.
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 255

when Abraham is commissioned to sacrifice his son Isaac by the petition of

Prince Mastema, the leader of the spirits who is identified as Satan.72
The agānǝnt are said to fulfill such functions alongside other aerial be-
ings, such as angels, watchers, spirits, devils, and even birds.73 Some of these
spirits are endowed with superhuman powers over natural forces, such as the
“angels of the spirits of fire” (malāʾǝkt manfas ǝssāt; J 2:2). The agānǝnt are
described from a human perspective as “filthy” (rǝkusān; J 10:1) and “sav-
age” (ḍawwāgān; J 10:5). They mislead, cause to go mad, lead astray, pos-
sess, rule over, and kill human beings (J 10:3, 8; 15:31f.; 19:28; cf. 1 Enoch
15-16). When they act their part, they are both fulfilling their created purpose
for divine judgment and to take the blame away from God for the grievance
of human suffering. When they go astray, humans suffer more for it, and they
are punished in turn.
There are generally two ways in which the biblical characters respond to
these intermediary spiritual beings. The first is to deal directly with them,
either by venerating or offering sacrifices (even their own children) to them.
This approach is expressly and repeatedly forbidden in the same context as
the prohibition of veneration of idols and sacrifices to the dead. The agānǝnt
are presented as “spirits of the savage ones” who lead people to venerate
molten images, idols, statues, images, and unclean things (J 11:4; cf. 1 Enoch
19).74 The nations of the world are said to “offer sacrifices to the dead and
worship demons” (J 22:17). Further reference to the dead is also found where
Noah distinguishes between the spirits who are alive and the spirits who are
dead (J 10:5f.).
The other method is to ask God to curb them from exercising their domin-
ion over humankind, after the model given by Noah, Abram, and Rebecca. In
a formal petition, Noah prays for protection against the evil spirits (J 10:5-
11). Abram prays, “Save me from the power of the evil spirits who rule the
thoughts of people’s minds. May they not mislead me from following you,
my God” (J 12:20). In like manner, when Rebecca blesses Jacob, she prays,
“May the spirits of Mastema not rule over you and your descendants to re-
move you from following the Lord” (J 19:28). Therefore, petitioning to God

72
This identification is in J 10:11. Compare the challenge of Mastema in J 17:16 to that of
Satan in Job 1:6-12. On this identification between Mastema and Satan, see the references to
literature on the fallen angels traditions in the note above.
73
This analysis is based on the critical edition of VanderKam. Key passages for the study
of the agānǝnt include J 1:11; 10:1-13; 20:7; and 22:17. On the birds, see especially J 11:11
and 47:4.
74
Incidentally, idols, molten images, and statues are prohibited “because they are some-
thing empty and have no spirit in them” (J 20:7f.). While this passage perhaps reflects a com-
mon belief that idols had spirits that dwelt within them, the narrative contrasts the emptiness
and uselessness of idols against the real power of demons and the world of spirits. Cf. P. Crone,
“The Book of Watchers in the Qurʾān,” pp. 16-51 in H. Ben-Shammai - S. Shaked - S. Stroum-
sa (eds.), Exchange and Transmission Across Cultural Boundaries: Philosophy, Mysticism
and Science in the Mediterranean World, (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities, 2013), p. 34.
256 Joshua Falconer

for protection from evil spirits is presented as the most efficacious method,
as God hears these prayers and holds the power to order that they be bound.
Consequently, the angelic narrator says, “He told us to tie them up in the
depths of the earth” (J 5:6; cf. 1 Enoch 9:16). Even satan (sayṭān) and the
evil one (ǝkuya) will eventually be “put away” (J 23:29). In the life of Joseph,
no satan or evil one was permitted to approach him throughout his lifetime
(J 46:2). At the time of the first Passover, Mastema urges on the Egyptians to
pursue and kill Moses and the Israelites, while he is bound and locked up so
that he could not accuse the Israelites (J 48:15), nevertheless he is sent to kill
every firstborn in Egypt (J 49:2). In a prayer, Noah invokes “the Lord of the
Spirits that are in All Flesh,” to bind the evil spirits. The Lord’s response is
mediated in turn by the prayer of Mastema, who invokes “the Lord Creator”
to leave some of them under his authority so that he can continue to exercise
his authority to destroy and mislead human beings, as part of the punishment
that is due to them for their evil deeds (J 10:8). As a result of these two pe-
titions, God orders nine-tenths of the evil spirits to be bound and sent down
to the place of judgment, while a tenth are left to remain on earth (J 10:9).
Throughout, it is clear that spirits can only act with God’s permission and
that they are ultimately subject to divine punishment when they go astray.75
In the following, we will briefly examine some of the distinctive agreements
between Jubilees and the Qurʾān.

Points of Comparison with the Qurʾānic Jinn

To assess the proximity between the Qurʾānic jinn and the agānǝnt in Ju-
bilees,76 let us now review some of the thematic clusters that emerge, while
noting some differences. First of all, it is the Lord who created the agānǝnt of
Jubilees and the jinn of the Qurʾān (J 10:8; Q 6:100). By divine sanction, they
accuse, deceive, and lead humankind astray with their scheming, as punish-
ment for the evil of humanity (J 10:8; Q 6:128; 51:56; 72:5). The jinn in
the Qurʾān were created from fire, while spirits and fire are also associated
as “angels of the spirits of fire” in Jubilees (J 2:2; Q 15:27; 55:15; 6:128).
In both accounts, there is a leader among the spirits, known as Iblis in the
Qurʾān and Mastema in Jubilees. Both are associated with Satan and suffer a
similar fate (J 10:11; Q 18:50).
In Jubilees, both humans and spirits have gone astray, the former by wor-
shipping the latter, and the latter by seducing the former and having inter-
course with them. Since both jinn and humans have sinned in these ways,
they are equally sentenced to the place of punishment beneath the feet of
the living, a feature that could provide the most parsimonious account for

75
Cf. the example given in the Book of Watchers as discussed in ibi.
76
To facilitate comparison, the term “jinn” refers to both the Qurʾānic jinn and their coun-
terparts, the agānǝnt of Jubilees.
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 257

the infernalization of the jinn in the Qurʾān.77 The “place of judgement” is

apparently a chthonic reference identified with Sheol, and punishment by
fire is emphasized several times in the Qurʾān (J 10:9; Q 7:38; 7:179; 11:119;
41:29).78 In both traditions, the relationship between human and spiritual be-
ings is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. The Qurʾānic jinn are
lovers, laborers, and protectors of humankind, in some of the same roles as
those in Jubilees (Q 6:128; 27:17; 34:12; 72:6). Elsewhere, the evil spirits
seduce, wreak destruction, and kill human beings (J 10:3, 8; 15:31f.; 19:28;
Q 114:6). Perhaps answering to such positive and negative roles, both the
Qurʾān and Jubilees describe idols as lifeless, having no spirit and being
powerless either to benefit or harm human affairs. In several instances, ven-
eration of the jinn or associating them with God is considered idolatry.
A few motifs mentioned in the Qurʾān are conspicuously missing from
the narrative of the agānǝnt in the Ethiopic version of Jubilees. Certain
themes may be responding to prior traditions, perhaps including the narra-
tive of the jinn who served King Solomon.79 Others stand further apart from
the precedents considered in this study. For instance, the Lord sends prophet-
ic messengers to warn both jinn and humans, lest they be found guilty and
punished.80 Some of the jinn hear the Qurʾān, convert, and are saved from
hellfire.81 In this way, the call to heed the message of the Prophet and submit
to one God is addressed not only to humans, but also to the jinn. As Welch
has noted, this call reflects a general tendency of the Qurʾān to further polar-
ize the spirits and lesser deities, while submitting them under one God.82 At
the same time, as El-Zein has noted, the Qurʾān has effectively raised up the
status of the jinn to be comparable in many ways to other intelligent beings.83
These particular aspects emerge as some of the clearer examples of how the
Qurʾān differentiated itself from earlier traditions that must have been famil-
iar to “the People of the Book,” but further research is needed to develop this
line of inquiry.

Channels of Transmission

The question now arises as to how the narrative traditions associated with
Jubilees could have reached the Arabic-speaking Qurʾānic milieu. Possible
locations include the Horn of Africa, Syro-Mesopotamia, and the Arabian

77
On the infernalization of the jinn from another perspective, see O’Meara, p. 56.
78
For related passages, cf. Q 6:128; 18:50; 32:13; 34:12; 37:158; 46:18.
79
Cf. Q 34:12-14, 27:38-44. For a possible parallel to this story in Targum Sheni to Esther
(ca. 4th-7th century CE, according to Grossfeld), see, e.g. p. 31 in B. Grossfeld, The Targum
Sheni to the Book of Esther: A Critical Edition Based on MS. Sassoon 282 with Critical
Apparatus (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1994).
80
Cf. Q 6:130
81
Cf. Q 72:1-3; 46:29-32.
82
Welch, “Allah and Other Supernatural Beings,” pp. 744-749.
83
El-Zein, The Evolution of the Concept of the Jinn, pp. 364-383.
258 Joshua Falconer

Peninsula. Then there is the language barrier between native Arabic speakers
and speakers of Ethiopic and Aramaic, including Syriac. There is also the
question of the means of communication, whether via oral or written trans-
mission. Such factors are of particular relevance to the present inquiry, since
they could clarify our understanding of the Qurʾān’s engagement with the
People of the Book and the scriptural traditions they encountered.
The availability of Jubilees traditions in the languages attested above yield
three possible modes of transmission, broadly speaking, which are not to be
taken as mutually exclusive: Ethiopic-speaking Christians, Syriac-speaking
Christians, and Aramaic-speaking Jews. Points of contact between the Arab
tribes of early Islam and each of these groups are well-attested, and any com-
bination of influences is possible. For the case at hand, several factors seem
to favor the first option as an especially probable point of contact. These fac-
tors include availability of versions, canonicity, and standard representations
of spiritual entities, to be discussed briefly here.
Scholarly consensus favors the view that Jubilees was translated into
Ethiopic shortly after the Octateuch was translated in the fifth-sixth century
CE, and before the beginning of the decline of the Axumite Dynasty that
coincided with the rise of Islam.84 On these grounds, the Ethiopic version of
Jubilees was evidently in circulation by the advent of Islam. In contrast, there
is insufficient evidence to suggest that Syriac or Hebrew/Aramaic85 versions
were known at the same time in the Near East.
Although one must exercise caution when referring to the “canon” of the
Ethiopic Bible, it is significant to note its relatively fluid and broad inclusion
of books when compared to other biblical canons.86 It contained a number of
the Jewish pseudepigraphal works mentioned above, including both Enoch
and Jubilees.87 Thus, these texts comprised an essential part of the Ethiopic
scriptural tradition, while they were excluded from other biblical canons. In
this case, the distinction between “canonical” and “non-canonical,” while
subtle, may help to explain the role and influence that these texts exercised
in their respective societies.

84
For the ante-sixth century dating of the Ethiopic Bible, see A. Bausi, “Ethiopian
Christianity, Bible in,” in D.C. Allison (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR)
Online, Volume 8: Essenes - Fideism (Berlin - Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2013), p. 149f. For
the dating of Jubilees, see VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, p. xviii. For the translation of the
Bible from primarily Greek Vorlagen into Ethiopic with later redactions based on the Syriac
and Arabic versions, see M.A. Knibb, Translating the Bible: The Ethiopic Version of the Old
Testament (London: British Academy, 1999), passim.
85
See the notes above on the Syriac fragment and the possibly Hebrew/Aramaic source
used by Jacob of Edessa. In any case, Jubilees is not extant in these languages today.
86
There are various accounts for the number of books in the Ethiopic Bible, given the
disputed status of several books, such as the Ascension of Isaiah and the Kəbrä Nägäśt.
87
On the question of inclusion of Enoch and Jubilees in the “canon” of the Ethiopian Or-
thodox Church, see L. Baynes, “Enoch and Jubilees in the Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church,” pp. 799-818 in E.F. Mason (ed.), A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of
James C. VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 259

Inevitably there will be some conceptual overlap between representations

of spiritual entities in each scriptural tradition, and these concepts mutually
inform one another. In the Syriac Pešiṭtā Old Testament (second-third centu-
ry CE)88 and Aramaic Targumim,89 terms for spiritual beings have a number
of generic features in common with the semantic range of jinn, e.g. šidā,
daywā, malakā, ruḥā, and ʿirā, etc. Yet there is no cognate for jinn in the
Aramaic dialects including Syriac. Aramaic lexemes deriving from *g-n-y
refer to objects of veneration, including non-Israelite deities, idols, images,
and sacrifices, e.g. genyāṯā. With very few possible exceptions, the usages of
these terms appear to fall outside of the semantic range of spirits, and, in any
case, they are etymologically unrelated to the root *g-n-n.90
In contrast, the Ethiopic cognate of jinn appears as one of the most prom-
inent types of spiritual entities in the Ethiopic Bible. The usual rendering
of daimon (demon, spirit) is gānēn (pl. agānǝnt).91 Since the term is widely
attested in the earliest and best manuscripts, including the famous Ǝnda Abba
Gärima Gospels (c. 600 CE?),92 it is unlikely that it was a post-Islamic redac-
tion. Beyond its usual usage for demons with negative connotations, the term
is also applied to spirits that have both positive and negative roles in books
such as Enoch and Jubilees, as we have seen.
To sum up these points: it was only the Ethiopic-speaking Christian tradi-
tion that accepted Jubilees as part of its Bible at the time of the early seventh
century CE. It was only in the Ethiopic translation of the Bible that a cognate
term for “jinn” is attested as a generic translation for demons, with more par-
ticular senses to be found in Jubilees. Again, it is only in the Ethiopic version
of Jubilees that this term is used for morally ambivalent spirits. Thus, if the
Arabic-speaking Qurʾānic milieu ever encountered traditions from Jubilees,
it is difficult to imagine a more likely conduit of these traditions than the
Ethiopic-speaking Christians, given the combined evidence of these details.

88
On the dating of translation of the Pešiṭtā Old Testament, see esp. Chapter 4 in M.P.
Weitzman, The Syriac version of the Old Testament: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
89
On the various dates for these Targumim, see M. McNamara, Targum and Testament
Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), passim.
90
These include Syriac and Hatran genyāṯā “non-Israelite gods,” “idols;” and Mandaic,
ginyā, “sacrifice made to idols.” According to Albright, there are also instances of JBA gǝnē
in the sense of “(evil) spirit;” and Mandaic gynʾt, gynʾ in the sense of “spirits,” but regrettably,
he did not further specify these instances. Cf. W.F. Albright, “Islam and the Religions of the
Ancient Orient,” JAOS 60 (1940), p. 292.
91
Most, if not all, of the Ethiopic Bible was initially translated from Greek Vorlagen, and
was later redacted toward Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew readings.
92
See e.g. MS AG 2, f. 14ra (Matt. 8:31), where daimones is rendered as agānǝnt (www.
vhmml.com). Two samples from this manuscript have been radiocarbon-dated to 330-650 and
430-650 CE; however, their dating is still disputed. See J. Mercier, “La peinture éthiopienne
à l’époque axoumite et au xviiie siècle,” Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 144 (2000), pp. 35-71.
260 Joshua Falconer

Conclusions

When brought together, the combined evidence suggests that the Qurʾān
was responding to a world of spiritual beings that comes closer to that of tra-
ditions associated with Jubilees than anything we have seen so far, whether
in Arabic or any of the other Semitic sources outlined above. By comparing
the concept of the jinn to the concept of the spirits in Jubilees, we can also
get a sense of what the term could have denoted and connoted to the earliest
audience of the Qurʾān. If this line of argument can be maintained, then it
would imply that the Qurʾānic account of the jinn invoked traditions associ-
ated with the Book of Jubilees in order to appeal to those who were familiar
with these traditions and thereby develop its own distinctive rasulology.93

ABSTRACT

The fact that the Qurʾān made no attempt to introduce the jinn suggests
that its initial audience was already familiar with them in some way. Yet
it remains unclear as to who this audience was, what preconceptions they
might have had, and whence they derived them. Scholarship on this problem
has tended to assume that the early audience of the Qurʾān knew about the
jinn from pre-existing beliefs held by the polytheistic Arab tribes, as reflected
in the so-called pre-Islamic corpus of poetry. Thus, the scholarly debate has
focused on the assumed shift from the autochthonous cult of the jinn to the
strict monotheistic message of Islam. However, this line of argument is cir-
cular, given the fact that the “pre-Islamic” corpus shows signs of subsequent
influence and redaction from the Qurʾān itself. If the polytheistic Arab tribes
were as familiar with the jinn as claimed by modern scholarship, then this
would certainly be reflected in the abundant references to spiritual beings in
the epigraphic and apotropaic sources in the Semitic languages that can be
reliably dated prior to the Qurʾān. But the opposite is the case: there seems
to be no awareness of the jinn as such in these sources. So one must look else-
where for the pre-Qurʾānic origins of the jinn. By comparing the Qurʾānic

93
As Tryggve Kronholm observed, “the relation between the Koran and the Hebrew Bible
and the Christian New Testament respectively is not adequately described as a dependence
proper, since the Koranic presentation of the various Biblical elements commonly deviates
much from their role in the Biblical context,” Kronholm, “Dependence and prophetic originality
in the Koran,” p. 53. He concludes that the foreign elements in the Qurʾān are “employed and
transformed by Muḥammad into obedient servants of his prophetic originality,” ibi., p. 65.
Sidney Griffith develops a similar approach: “The Qur’an recalls only such biblical stories
as fit the paradigm of its prophetology, and it edits the narratives where necessary to fit the
pattern,” S.H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the ‘People of the Book’ in the
Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 3. For the term rasulology
used here as opposed to the more common term prophetology, see M. Durie, The Qur’an and
its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2018), p. 123f.
Familiar Spirits in the Qurʾān 261

profile of the jinn with contemporaneous Jewish and Christian scriptural

traditions in the broadest sense, one may recognize a number of thematic
continuities with an ambivalent class of spiritual beings presented in certain
retellings of the book of Genesis, especially the Book of Jubilees, which was
translated into Ethiopic no later than the seventh century CE. Such tradi-
tions, whether indirect or direct, were evidently familiar to Ethiopic-speak-
ing Christians around the time the Qurʾān was promulgated, and probably
Syriac-speaking Christians as well, although this is less certain. Therefore, it
is likely that the Qurʾān was invoking related traditions that must have been
familiar to “the People of the Book” and their milieux.