Introduction: what the philosophers of language said about the jinn

(20) What they relate of the fires of the siʻālī and the jinn. (21) The philosophy of what the Arabs (aʻrāb) claim about the humming of the jānn (ʻazīf al-jānn) and the shape-shifting of the ghouls (taghawwul al-ghīlān).

(As for the second aim) it is on the views of the philosophers of Islam concerning the jinn: (1) Ibn Sīnā; (2) Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī; (3) al-Ghazzālī; (4) Ibn Ḥazm; (5) al-Fakhr al-Rāzī; (6) al-Qāshānī; (7) al-Māwardī; (8) al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʻlá Ibn al-Farrāʼ; (9) Ibn Taymīyah; (10) Ibn al-Qayyim; (11) the Master, the Imām, Shaykh Muḥammad ʻAbduh. The doctrines (madhāhib) of the Arabs have been followed by what is transmitted from the imāms on this question only as a passage over into what is serious in its investigations, since the first aim is more like repose and diversion, on account of the sleights (makhārīq) and illusions that are mingled with what is serious in it. And I closed the study with miscellanies from the strays of this question, to complete its benefits and to bear out its aims.

We have no merit in what we have transmitted beyond the picking out of what matters from what we have read, and the arranging of it in this manner.

We ask Him, exalted be He, to favour us with the illumination of hearts, and to bring us in among His servants who believe in the things unseen.

The Introduction

On what the philosophers of language said about the jinn

al-Rāghib al-Iṣbahānī said in his Mufradāt, in the article on the root j-n-n: the root sense of jinn is the covering (satr) of a thing from the sense-faculty. One says jannahu al-layl and ajannahu, the night covered him; and the janān is the heart, because it is covered from the sense-faculty; and the jannah is any garden that covers the ground with its trees. (Then he said:) And jinn is used of the spiritual beings (al-rūḥānīyūn) that are covered from the senses altogether, as the counterpart of mankind (al-ins). The remainder of his words will come below.

And al-Zamakhsharī said in Asās al-balāghah: jannahu, he covered it, and so it was covered over (fa-ijtanna); and istajanna bi-jummah, he screened himself with a shock of hair; and ijtanna al-walad fī al-baṭn, the child lay covered in the belly, and ajannat-hu al-ḥāmil, the pregnant woman covered it over; and wārāhu jinān al-layl, the covering of the night hid him — that is, its darkness; and, of a man, that he is weak of janān, and that is the heart; and jannat al-arḍ bi-al-nabāt, the earth was covered over with growth; and lā jinna bi-kadhā, that is, there is no concealing it. Suwayd said:

and there is no concealing hatred, nor the sidelong look

And the Imām Ibn Jarīr transmitted, in Sūrat al-Baqarah, in his commentary on the verse “And when We said to the angels: Prostrate yourselves before Ādam, and they prostrated themselves, save Iblīs”, that his being excepted from the angels indicates that he was one of them; and, from Ibn Isḥāq, that the Arabs (al-ʻArab) say: the jinn are nothing but everyone who is covered over and so is not seen; that the verse “save Iblīs; he was of the jinn” means that he was of the angels, and that is because the angels are covered over and so are not seen; and that the verse “and they have set up a kinship between Him and the jinn” is a pointer to the saying of Quraysh that the angels are the daughters of God. (He said:) And al-Aʻshá said — Aʻshá