The sayings of the earlier philosophers of Islam concerning the jinn

The Sayings of the Earlier Philosophers of Islam Concerning the Jinn

« Ibn Sīnā and al-Fārābī »

Ibn Sīnā, may God have mercy on him, said in Kitāb al-ḥudūd: the jinn is an airy animal (ḥayawān hawāʼī), rational (nāṭiq), transparent in body, whose nature it is to take on diverse shapes. (He said:) This is not its description (rasm) but rather the meaning of its name. Thus far. Abū al-Baqāʼ said in his Kulliyān: that is, this is a clarification of what this expression signifies, with no regard to its applying to an extramental reality — whether it be nonexistent externally, or existent while its existence therein is not known — for the nominal definition is never otherwise, unlike the real definition, which is an expression for the conceiving in the mind of a thing that has an extramental reality. (Then Abū al-Baqāʼ said:) The generality of the masters of the religious communities (milal) who credit the prophets have acknowledged its existence, and a great company of the ancient philosophers acknowledged it as well.

And in an epistle of the Second Teacher, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad al-Fārābī, in answer to questions put to him, there is the like of this:

(He was asked) concerning what certain of the common people held about the meaning of the jinn, and was questioned about its quiddity (māhīyah). (He said:) The jinn is living, non-rational, non-mortal; and this is according to what the division requires by which the definition of man, as known among men, becomes clear — I mean the living, rational, mortal. For of the living, one kind is rational and mortal, and that is man; one kind is rational and non-mortal, and that is the angel; one kind is non-rational and mortal, and that is the beasts; and one kind is non-rational and non-mortal, and that is the jinn. The questioner said: What is in the Qurʼān contradicts this, namely His saying, "A company of the jinn listened, and they said: We have heard a wondrous recitation" — and that which is non-rational, how does it listen and how does it speak? He said: That is no contradiction, for hearing and speech may belong to the living inasmuch as it is living, since speech and utterance are other than the discrimination which is rationality (nuṭq); and you see many of the beasts that have no speech, though they are living. And the human voice with these articulations is natural to him inasmuch as he is living with this species; just as the voice of every species of the living resembles the voice of no other species, so this voice with these articulations that belong to man differs from the voices of the other species of animal. As for our saying "non-mortal", the Qurʼān indicates it in His saying, exalted be He: "My Lord, grant me respite until the day when they are raised up. He said: You are among those granted respite." Thus far.

« Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī »

He said in Qūt al-qulūb, in the thirtieth chapter, on the detailing of the passing thoughts (khawāṭir) of hearts, the like of this, after adducing verses: And He said, exalted be He, "O man, what has deluded you concerning your generous Lord, who created you, then fashioned you, then proportioned you?" And He said, exalted be He, "We have indeed created man in the finest stature." And He said, "And of everything We created a pair, that perhaps you may remember." So from the fashioning, the proportioning, the pairing and the shaping come the instruments of the outward and the accidents (aʻrāḍ) of the inward, which are the senses of the body and of the heart. The instruments of the body are the outward attributes, and the accidents of the heart are the inward meanings: God, exalted be He, has proportioned them by His wisdom, fashioned them according to His will, and shaped them with mastery in His craft and with firmness in His making. (The first of them) are the soul (nafs) and the spirit (rūḥ), and these two are places for the encounter of the enemy and of the angel, and they are two persons casting in wickedness and godfearing. (Among them) are two ends established in two places, namely the intellect (ʻaql) and caprice (hawā), proceeding from two rulings within the will of a ruler, namely enabling (tawfīq) and seduction (ighwāʼ). (Among them) are two lights blazing in the heart by a singling out from the mercy of a merciful one, namely knowledge and faith. These, then, are the instruments of the heart, its senses, its absent meanings and its tools; and the heart is in the midst of these instruments like a king and these are his troops rendering to him, or like a burnished mirror with these tools about it, so that they appear in it and it sees them, and they strike within it and it finds them.

(Then he said:) When God, exalted be He, wills to bring forth a good out of the treasury of the spirit, He stirs it, and it blazes as a light in the heart and leaves its trace. Then the angel looks upon the heart and sees what God, exalted be He, has brought about in it, and so a place appears and he settles in it, after the likeness of the enemy's action in the treasury of evil, which is the soul. The angel is constituted for the love of guidance and stamped with the love of obedience, just as the enemy is constituted for misguidance and stamped with the love of disobedience. So the angel casts in inspiration (ilhām), which is his passing upon the heart by the striking of its thoughts: he commands that this be bound fast, makes it seem good to him, and urges him to it; and this is the inspiration of godfearing and right direction.

(Then he said:) An account of the division of the passing thoughts and the detailing of their names. As for the naming of the passing thoughts as a whole: what falls into the heart of the doing of good, that is (inspiration, ilhām).

And what falls of the doing of evil, that is (insinuation, waswās).

And what falls into the heart of fears, that is (apprehension, al-ḥassās).

And what is of the appraising of good and the hoping for it, that is (intention, nīyah).

And what is of the managing of permitted affairs, the expecting of them and the craving for them, that is (wishing and hope, umnīyah wa-amal).

And what is of the remembrance of the hereafter and of the promise and the threat, that is "recollection and reflection" (tadhakkur wa-tafkīr).

And what is of the beholding of the unseen with the eye of certainty, that is "witnessing" (mushāhadah).

And what is of the soul's speaking with itself about its livelihood and the ordering of its states, that is "care" (hamm).

And what is of the passing thoughts of habits and the impulses of appetites, that is "touch" (lamm).

And all of this is called "passing thoughts" (khawāṭir), because it is the passing of a soul's aspiration, or the passing of an enemy upon a body, or the passing of an angel with a whisper. Thus far, in summary.

« al-Ghazzālī »

He said in al-Maḍnūn al-kabīr: The angels, the jinn and the satans are substances (jawāhir) subsisting in themselves, differing in their realities with a difference such as obtains between species. An example of this is power, which differs from knowledge, and knowledge differs from power, and the two of them differ from color; and color, power and knowledge are accidents subsisting in something other than themselves. In just this way there is a difference between the angel, the satan and the jinn, and yet each one of them is a substance subsisting in itself. A difference has been established between the jinn and the angel, but it is not known whether it is a difference between two species, like the difference between the horse and man, or a difference in the accidents, like the difference between the deficient man and the complete. So too the difference between the angel and the satan, namely that the species be one and the difference fall in the accidental attributes, like the difference between the good man and the evil, and the difference between the prophet and the friend of God. What is apparent is that their difference is by species, and the knowledge of it rests with God, exalted be He. And these substances mentioned are not divisible — I mean that the locus of the knowledge of God, exalted be He, is one and indivisible, for a single knowledge inheres only in a single locus, and the reality of man is likewise. Thus knowledge and ignorance of one and the same thing in one locus are contraries, while in two loci they are not contraries. As for whether this substance is indivisible, and whether it occupies space (mutaḥayyiz) or not, this discourse goes back to the knowing of the part that is divided: if the part that is not divided is impossible, then this substance is neither divisible nor space-occupying; and if the part that is not divided is not impossible, then it is possible that this substance occupies space. — And some have said that it cannot be indivisible and non-space-occupying, since God, exalted be He, is indivisible and non-space-occupying, so what is it that distinguishes this from that? But this is not demonstrated, for the two may well be distinct in the reality of their essence even if divisibility, space-occupancy and spatial matters be denied of them both; for those are negations, and the reckoning is by realities, since what is denied of realities is like two accidents differing in definition and in reality yet inhering in a single locus: the affirming of their need for a locus and of their being in a locus does not yield their likeness, and just so the denying of the need for a locus and for place does not yield that the two things share anything. And it is possible that these substances be witnessed — I mean the substances of the angels — even though they are not objects of sense; and this witnessing is of two kinds. Either by way of representation (tamthīl), as in His saying, exalted be He, "and he took for her the form of a well-proportioned man," and as the Prophet, upon him be blessing and peace, used to see Jibrīl in the form of Diḥyah al-Kalbī (1); and the second kind, that some of the angels have a sensible body — just as our souls are not objects of sense and yet have a sensible body which is the locus of their acting and the world proper to them, so too some of the angels; and it may be that this sensible body depends upon the shining of the light of prophecy, just as the objects of sense of this world of ours depend, in being perceived, upon the shining of the light of the sun. And so likewise with the jinn and the satans. Thus far.

And al-Ghazzāl said in al-Iḥyāʼ, in the exposition of the satan's mastery over the heart by insinuation, after laying down a preamble, the like of this: The beginning of actions is the passing thoughts; then the thought moves desire, and desire moves resolve, and resolve moves intention, and intention moves the limbs. And the passing thoughts that move desire divide into what summons to evil — I mean what harms in the final outcome — and what summons to good — I mean what profits in the abode of the hereafter. So they are two differing thoughts, and therefore two differing names were needed: the praiseworthy thought is called inspiration, and the blameworthy thought, I mean that which summons to evil, is called insinuation. Then you know that these thoughts are originated, and that every originated thing must have an originator, and that whenever originated things differ, that indicates a difference of causes. This is what is known of God's custom, exalted be He, in the ordering of effects upon causes. So whenever the walls of the house are lit by the light of the fire while its ceiling grows dark and blackens with smoke, you know that the cause of the blackening is other than the cause of the illumination. And likewise the lights of the heart and its darkness have two differing causes: the cause of the thought that summons to good is called (an angel), and the cause of the thought that summons to evil is called (a satan) (2). And the subtle favor by which the heart is made ready to receive the inspiration of good is called (enabling), and that by which it is made ready to receive the insinuation of the satan is called (seduction and abandonment) — for differing meanings need differing names. And (the angel) is an expression for a creature whom God, exalted be He, created, whose office is the bestowal of good, the bestowal of knowledge, the disclosure of the truth, the promise of good and the command of what is right; He created him and subjected him to that. (And the satan) is an expression for a creature whose office is the contrary of that, namely the promise of evil, the command of indecency, and the frightening with poverty when one is minded to do good. So insinuation stands over against inspiration, and the satan over against the angel, and enabling over against abandonment. And to this points His saying, exalted be He: (And of everything We created a pair).

« Ibn Ḥazm »

He said, may God have mercy on him, in Kitāb al-Faṣl, in the discussion of the jinn, the insinuation of the satan, and his sandal upon the one seized (al-maṣrūʻ): We have not apprehended them by the senses, nor have we known by the necessity of reason that their being in the world is necessary, nor likewise that it is necessarily impossible; but we have known by the necessity of reason the possibility of their being, since the power of God, exalted be He, has no limit and He, mighty and majestic, creates what He wills. And there is no difference between His creating a creation whose element is dust and water and settling them in the earth, the air and the water — and His creating a creation whose element is fire and air and settling them in the air, the fire and the earth; rather all of that is alike and possible within His power. But since the messengers, whose truthfulness God, mighty and majestic, attested by what He brought forth at their hands of nature-overturning miracles, informed us, by God's explicit statement, mighty and majestic, of the existence of the jinn in the world, knowledge of their creation and their existence became necessary of necessity. And the text has come with that, and with their being a community possessed of intellect and discrimination, ramified, promised and threatened, propagating, and dying; and all the Muslims are agreed upon that — yes, and the Christians, the Magians, the Sabians and most of the Jews. And they see us and we do not see them. God, exalted be He, said: "He sees you, he and his tribe, from where you do not see them." So it is established that the jinn are the tribe of Iblīs; God, mighty and majestic, said: "except Iblīs — he was of the jinn." And since God, mighty and majestic, has informed us that we do not see them, whoever claims that he sees them or has seen them is a liar, unless he be of the prophets, upon them be peace, for then it is a miracle for them — as the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, stated that the satan sprang upon him to cut short his prayer; he said: So I seized him, and I remembered the supplication of my brother Sulaymān, and had it not been for that he would have been left bound for the people of al-Madīnah to see — or as he said, upon him be peace. And likewise in the report from Abū Hurayrah, what he saw was but a miracle for the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace. And there is no way to the existence of a sound report of anyone's seeing a jinnī after the death of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace; these are only broken transmissions, or come from one in whom there is no good.

And they are bodies (ajsām), thin, clear and airy; they have no colors, and their element is fire just as our element is dust. With that the Qurʼān has come: God, mighty and majestic, said, "And the jinn We created before, of the fire of the scorching wind." Fire and air are two elements that have no colors; color arises in the kindled fire among us only because of its mingling with the moistures of what it burns in — firewood, flax, oils and the rest. And had they colors, we would see them by the sense of sight; and were they not clear, thin, airy bodies, we would apprehend them by the sense of touch.

And the text is sound that they insinuate in the breasts of men, and that the satan runs in the son of Adam as the blood runs; so it is obligatory to credit all of that as reality. And we have known that God, mighty and majestic, has appointed for them a power by which they reach to casting what they insinuate into souls. The proof of that is the saying of God, exalted be He: "from the evil of the slinking insinuator, who insinuates in the breasts of men, of the jinn and of men." And we observe a man seeing one against whom he holds a blood-claim, and he is thrown into agitation and his accidents, his form and his traits are altered and his fieriness is roused; and he sees one whom he loves, and another state is roused in him, and he rejoices and expands; and he sees one whom he fears, and another state comes about in him, of pallor, trembling and faintness of soul. And he makes signs to another man by which he transforms his natures, so that he angers him at one time, shames him at another, rebukes him at a third and pleases him at a fourth; and likewise he transforms them also by speech into all these states. So we have known that God, mighty and majestic, has appointed for the jinn powers by which they reach to altering souls and to casting into them what they summon them to — we seek refuge with God from the accursed satan and his insinuation, and from the evil ones among men. And this is the running in the son of Adam as the blood runs, as the poet said:

Time was I would course within their inmost parts — as the water of a spring courses in the stalks of the myrtle.

(As for epilepsy, al-ṣarʻ) God, mighty and majestic, said, "like one whom the satan has thrown into confusion by touch." So He mentioned, mighty and majestic, that the satan's effect in epilepsy is only by touching (mumāsah); so it is not permitted to anyone to add anything to that, and whoever has added anything to this has spoken of what he has no knowledge of, and this is forbidden and not lawful. He said, mighty and majestic, "And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge." And these matters cannot possibly be known at all except by a sound report from him, may God bless him and grant him peace, and there is no report from him, upon him be peace, other than what we have mentioned; and with God is the enabling. So it is established that the satan touches with a touch the man over whom God gives him mastery, as has come in the Qurʼān, stirring up thereby some of his black natures and the vapors that rise to the brain — as every one seized reports of himself, with no disagreement among them — and God, mighty and majestic, then originates for him the epilepsy and the convulsion, as we observe. This is the text of the Qurʼān and what observation requires; and what goes beyond this is fables of the engendering of the conjurers and the liars. And by God, exalted be He, are we supported. Thus far the words of Ibn Ḥazm.

« al-Fakhr al-Rāzī »

He said in the discussions on seeking refuge, in the early part of his commentary: All are in accord that the jinn and the satans are not an expression for dense corporeal persons that come and go like men and beasts; rather the considered position on it is of two kinds. (The first) is that they are airy bodies able to take on diverse shapes, and that they have intellects and understandings and a power for hard and toilsome works. (And the second position) is that many people have affirmed that they are existents that do not occupy space and do not inhere in what occupies space, and have held that they are existents free of corporeality (mujarradah ʻan al-jismīyah). (They said:) And these spirits may be luminous, divine, good and felicitous, and these are the ones named the righteous among the jinn; and they may be turbid, low and evil, and these are the ones named the satans. (Then he said:)

And know that a group of the philosophers (al-falāsifah) have impugned this doctrine, holding that the immaterial (al-mujarrad) cannot perceive particulars, and that immaterial things cannot be the agents of particular acts. This is void for two reasons. (The first) is that we are able to judge of this determinate individual that he is a man and not a horse; and he who judges of two things must have the two objects of judgment present to him. Here, then, there is one thing that is the perceiver of the universal, namely the soul; so it follows necessarily that the perceiver of the particular is the soul. (The second) is: grant that the immaterial soul is not strong enough to perceive particulars at the outset; still there is no dispute that it is able to perceive particulars by means of corporeal instruments. Why then may it not be said that those immaterial substances named the jinn and the satans have corporeal instruments from the sphere of ether (kurat al-athīr) or from the sphere of intense cold (kurat al-zamharīr), and that then, by means of those corporeal instruments, they are strong enough to perceive particulars and to act within these bodies?

As for those who held that the jinn are airy or fiery bodies, they said: bodies are equal in bulk and magnitude, and these two meanings are accidents, so bodies are equal in receiving these accidents; and things differing in quiddity are not prevented from sharing in some of their concomitants. Why then may it not be said that bodies differ according to their proper essences and their determinate quiddities even though they share in receiving bulk and magnitude? And when this is established, we say: why may it not be said that one of the species of bodies is bodies subtle and penetrating, living of themselves, intelligent of themselves, capable of toilsome works of themselves, and not receptive of dispersal and rending? And if the matter is so, then those bodies are capable of shaping themselves into diverse shapes, and further, the raging winds do not rend them and dense bodies do not disperse them. Have not the philosophers said that the fire which is released from thunderbolts penetrates in a subtle instant into the interiors of stones and iron and comes out the other side? Why then should it not do the like in this case? And on this reckoning the jinn are capable of penetrating into the interiors of men and of acting within them, and of remaining alive, active and preserved from corruption until the appointed term and the appointed time. All these conditions, then, are evident possibilities, and the proofs have not been established to void them; so it was not permitted to go over to the position that they are void.

(Then al-Rāzī said:) Know that when a man sits in solitude and the passing thoughts come one after another upon his heart, he may come to be as though he heard within his heart and his brain faint sounds and faint letters, as though a speaker were speaking with him and an addresser addressing him. This is a matter of immediate experience which everyone finds in himself. Then people have differed about those thoughts. The philosophers said that those things are neither letters nor sounds, but are only imaginings (takhayyulāt) of letters and sounds; and the imagining of a thing is an expression for the presence of its name and its likeness in the imagination. This is just as, when we imagine the forms of mountains, seas and persons, the very entities of those things are not present in the intellect and the heart; rather what is present in the intellect and the heart are their forms, their likenesses and their traces; and these, by way of representation, run as does the form imprinted in the mirror: for when we sense in the mirror the form of the sphere, the sun and the moon, that is not because the essences of these things have become present in the mirror, since that is impossible; rather what comes to be in the mirror is only the traces of these things, their likenesses and their forms. And when you have understood this in the imagining of visible things, know that the case in the imagining of letters and heard words is likewise. This, then, is the position of the generality of the philosophers,

And one may say: this which you have named the imagining of letters and words — is it equal to the letter and the word in quiddity or not? If equality obtains, then the discourse has returned to the position that what comes to be in the imagination are the realities of the letters and the sounds, and that what comes to be in the imagination when one imagines the sea and the sky is the reality of the sea and the sky. — And if the truth is the second, namely that what comes to be in the imagination is something else differing from visible and heard things, then at that point the question returns, namely: how do we find in ourselves the forms of these seen things, and how do we find in ourselves these words and expressions, by a finding in which we do not doubt that they are letters following one upon another in the intellect and utterances succeeding one another in the mind? This, then, is the furthest reach of the discourse in the position of the philosophers.

As for the very greatest body of the people of knowledge, they conceded that these successive, consecutive passing thoughts are real letters and sounds.

And know that those who hold this position said: the agent of these letters and sounds is either that man, or another man, or some other spiritual thing, distinct, able to cast these letters and sounds to this man — whether that speaker be said to be the jinn and the satans or the angel; or else it is said that the creator of those letters and sounds is God, exalted be He. (As for the first division,) namely that the agent of these letters and sounds is that man himself, this is a void position, because that which comes to be by man's choice he is able to leave off; so had the occurrence of these thoughts been by the man's act, then, when he wished to repel them or to leave them off, he would have been able to do so. And it is known that he is not able to repel them, for whether he attempts to do them or attempts to leave them off, those thoughts keep arriving upon his nature and succeeding one another in his mind without his choice.

(And as for the second division,) namely that they came to be by the act of another man, its corruption is evident. And when these two divisions are void, there remains (the third), namely that they are from the act of the jinn or the angel, or from the act of God, exalted be He. (As for those who say) that it is not permissible that God, exalted be He, do foul things, what befits their doctrine is that they say these wicked thoughts are not from the act of God, exalted be He; so it remains that they are of the discourse of the jinn and the satans. And as for those who say that nothing is foul on God's part, there is in their doctrine no obstacle that prevents them from ascribing these thoughts to God, exalted be He.) Thus far.

« al-Māwardī »

He said in his book Aʻlām al-nubūwah: The jinn are of the rational, discriminating world; they propagate and they die, and their persons are veiled from sight, even if they are marked out by acts and traces, unless God single out for the seeing of them whom He wills. Mankind came to know them only from the divine books and from what they have conceived of their hidden traces,

(Then he said:) And they differed concerning the satans. One group held that they are the unbelievers among the jinn, propagating and dying; others held that they are other than the jinn and that they are of the progeny of Iblīs. And those who held this differed about their propagation and their dying: one party of them went to the view that they propagate and die, while others went to the view that they are like Iblīs, not dying except with him, and that their propagation was cut off by the respite granted to Iblīs until the day when they are raised up. And if a group deny the creation of the jinn and do not believe in the divine books, the proofs of the intellects and the arguments of analogy overcome them. (Then he expatiated upon that, may God have mercy on him.)

« al-Qāshānī »

He said in his commentary on the verse "And when We turned toward you a company of the jinn," in Sūrat al-Aḥqāf, the like of this: The jinn are earthly souls embodied in subtle bodies compounded of the subtle parts of the elements; the sages of the Persians named them (the suspended forms, al-ṣuwar al-muʻallaqah). And because they are earthly, embodied in elemental bodies, and share with mankind in that, the two were named the two burdened ones (al-thaqalān). And just as it was possible for men to be guided by the Qurʼān, it was possible for them. And the accounts of them, from the verifiers and from others, are more than that all of them could be rejected, and plainer than that they should admit of interpretation:

And he said in his commentary on Sūrat al-Jinn: It has already passed that there are in existence earthly souls, strong, not in the grossness of the predatory and bestial souls and their density and their scant perception, nor upon the configurations of human souls and their preparednesses, such that their attachment to dense bodies over which earthiness predominates would be entailed — nor in the purity of the immaterial souls and their subtlety, that they should be joined to the upper world and become immaterial or be attached to some of the celestial bodies; rather they are attached to subtle elemental bodies over which the airy, the fiery or the smoky predominates, according to the difference of their states. Some of the sages named them (the suspended forms). And they have sciences and perceptions of the kind of our sciences and our perceptions; and since they are by nature near to the celestial kingdom, it is possible for them to receive from their own world something of the unseen. So do not hold it far-fetched that they should rise to the horizon of heaven and steal a hearing of the speech of the angels, that is, of ⟨...⟩the immaterial souls. — And since they are earthly and weak in relation to the celestial powers, they were affected by the influence of ⟨...⟩those powers, and so were pelted by their influence away from attaining their reach and grasping their range of the sciences. And do not deny that their smoky bodies ⟨...⟩catch fire by the rays of the stars, so that they burn and perish, or are checked from rising to the ⟨...⟩celestial horizon and so sink low; for these are matters not outside the possible. Thus far.

« al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʻlā ibn al-Farrāʼ »

al-Safārīnī transmitted from him that he said: The jinn are composed bodies and persons given form, and it is admissible that they be ⟨...⟩subtle and that they be dense, contrary to the Muʻtazilah in their saying that they are subtle bodies and that because of their subtlety we do not see them ⟨...⟩ he said): And the satans have no power to change their own creation or to pass over into forms; rather it is admissible that ⟨...⟩God teach them a manner of the manners of acting such that, when they do it, God transfers them from one form to another — so that it is said that he is capable ⟨...⟩of forming and of making appear to the imagination, in the sense that he is capable of a matter which, when he does it, God transfers him from one form to ⟨...⟩another, by the running of custom. As for his forming himself, that is impossible, for his passing from one form to another ⟨...⟩comes about only by the dissolving of the structure and the separating of the parts; and when it passes over, life ceases and the occurrence of the act ⟨...⟩from the whole becomes impossible — and how should it transfer itself? (He said:) And the position on the shaping of the angels is like that. (And there will come in ⟨...⟩the first part of the conclusion a detailed discussion of the manifestation of the spiritual.)

« Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymīyah »

al-Safārīnī transmitted from him that he said: Not one of the sects of the Muslims has differed about the existence of the jinn, and likewise the generality of the unbelievers, because their existence is borne by the reports of the prophets in a mass transmission (tawātur) known by compulsion, which ⟨...⟩the elite and the common people recognize. (He said:) And none have denied the jinn but a small band of the ignorant among the philosophers and their like. (And he said:) The jinn are not like mankind in definition and in reality, so what they are commanded and what they are forbidden is not equal to ⟨...⟩what is upon mankind in definition and in reality; but they share with them in the genus of obligation, by command and prohibition and permitting and forbidding, with no dispute that I know of among the scholars. (And he said in his commentary on Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ:) The discourse of the philosophers in divine matters and in the intellectual universals is a very deficient discourse, and in it is much confusion; they speak well only in sensible, natural matters and in the universals of these, so that their discourse in them is for the most part good. But as for the unseen of which the prophets inform, and the intellectual universals that comprehend all existents and divide existents by a sound division, these they do not know at all; for this belongs only to one who has encompassed the kinds of existents, whereas they know only a little of the existents, and what the sons of Adam do not witness of the existents is by far greater in measure and in attribute than what they do witness. For this reason these men who knew what the philosophers knew, when they heard the reports of the prophets about the angels, the Throne, the Footstool, the Garden and the Fire, while they supposed that there is no existent but what they and the philosophers knew, became perplexed, interpreting the words of the prophets according to what they knew, even though there is no proof for this; nor do they have knowledge by this denial, for the absence of knowledge is not knowledge of absence. Rather this denial of theirs ⟨...⟩ is like the physician's denial of the jinn, since there is nothing in the craft of medicine that indicates the affirming of the jinn — and otherwise, there is nothing in ⟨...⟩ medicine that denies the existence of the jinn. And thus you find that whoever knows a kind of knowledge and is distinguished by it above the common people who do not know it remains, in his ignorance, a denier of what he does not know. And the sons of Adam: their going astray in what they have rejected and denied without knowledge is more than their going astray in what they have affirmed and credited. He said, exalted be He: "Rather they cried lies to that whose knowledge they did not encompass, and whose interpretation had not yet come to them." ⟨...⟩

And he expatiated, may God have mercy on him, in his book al-Furqān — the printed one — upon what pertains to the jinn and the satans; so let it be consulted.

« Ibn al-Qayyim »

He said, may God have mercy on him, in Zād al-maʻād, on the treatment of epilepsy, the like of this: Epilepsy is of two kinds: an epilepsy from the wicked earthly spirits, and an epilepsy from corrupt humors (akhlāṭ). The second is the one the physicians ⟨...⟩ treat of as to its cause and its cure. As for the epilepsy of the spirits, their leading men and their men of intellect acknowledge ⟨...⟩ that its cure is by setting the noble, good, upper spirits over against those evil, wicked spirits, so that they repel ⟨...⟩ their effects and oppose their acts and void them. Buqrāṭ stated this in some of his books: he mentioned some treatment of epilepsy and said, this profits only in the epilepsy whose cause is the humors and the matter, but as for the epilepsy ⟨...⟩ that comes from the spirits, this treatment does not profit in it. As for the ignorant among the physicians, they deny the epilepsy ⟨...⟩ of the spirits and do not grant that the spirits have an effect in the body of the one seized; and they have nothing but ignorance — otherwise, there is nothing in the craft of medicine that repels this, and sense and experience bear witness to it. And their referring that to the predominance ⟨...⟩ of some of the humors is true in some of its divisions, not in all of them. And the ancients among the physicians used to name this ⟨...⟩ epilepsy the divine disease, and said that it is from the spirits. As for Jālīnūs and others, they interpreted this naming of it ⟨...⟩ and said: they named it the divine disease only because this affliction occurs in the head and so harms ⟨...⟩ the pure divine part whose dwelling is the brain. And this interpretation arose for them from their ignorance of these ⟨...⟩ spirits, their laws and their effects. And the freethinkers among the physicians came and affirmed nothing but the epilepsy of the humors ⟨...⟩ alone; and whoever has intellect and acquaintance with these spirits and their effects laughs at the ignorance of these physicians ⟨...⟩ and the weakness of their intellects.

(Then Ibn al-Qayyim said:) So it is; and were the covering lifted, you would see most human souls seized along with these wicked spirits, in their captivity and their grasp, driving them wherever they will, and unable to refuse them or to oppose them. And in them is the greatest epilepsy, from which its possessor does not recover until the parting and the beholding; and there he verifies that it was he who was in truth the one seized.

And the treatment of this epilepsy is by the joining of sound intellect to faith in what the messengers brought, upon them be peace.

« The Master Imām, Shaykh Muḥammad ʻAbduh »

He said in his commentary on His saying, exalted be He, "who insinuates in the breasts of men, of the jinn and of men": the insinuators are of two classes. The class of the jinn, who are the veiled creation whom we do not know and of whom we find in ourselves only a trace ascribed to them; and every one of men has a satan, which is a power drawing toward evil, from which there come about in his soul the thoughts of ill:

And he said in another place: (1) The inspiration to good and the insinuation to evil are among what has come on the tongue of the possessor of revelation, may God bless him and grant him peace, and the two have been ascribed to these unseen worlds. And the thoughts of good, which are named inspiration, and the thoughts of evil, which are named insinuation — the locus of each of the two is the spirit. The angels and the satans, then, are spirits that join themselves to the spirits of men. So it is not sound for us to represent the angels by the bodily likenesses known to us, because if these joined themselves to our spirits they would join them only by way of our bodies; and we sense nothing joining itself to our bodies, neither at the time of insinuation nor at the time of feeling the summoner to good from the soul. They are therefore, decisively, of a world other than the world of bodies.

(Then he said:) Everyone who has reflected upon himself, and weighed his thoughts against one another when he is minded to do a thing in which there is an aspect of truth or of good and an aspect of falsehood or of evil, feels that in his soul there is a contention, as though the matter had been laid before a council of consultation within it: so this one brings forward and that one pushes back, and one says "do" and another says "do not," until one of the two sides wins out and one of the two thoughts prevails. This thing, then, which has been deposited in our souls and which we name a power and a thought — while in reality it is a meaning whose essence is not grasped and a spirit whose reality is not fathomed — it is not far-fetched that God, exalted be He, should name it an angel and name its causes angels, or whatever names He wills; for naming is not restricted upon men, so how should it be restricted upon Him who has absolute will, penetrating authority and wide knowledge? Thus far. The like of it has preceded in the words of al-Ghazzālī, and there will come in the conclusion, from al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, what corroborates it.

— Notes —

[36] ( 1 ) And al-Ghazzālī said before that, in the discussion of vision: And the manifestation of Jibrīl in the form of Diḥyah al-Kalbī is not in the sense that the essence of Jibrīl was turned into the form of Diḥyah al-Kalbī, but that that form appeared to the Messenger as a likeness conveying from Jibrīl what he revealed to him. And likewise His saying, exalted be He, "and he took for her the form of a well-proportioned man." Thus far.

[36] ( 2 ) It is corroborated by the verse "from the evil of the insinuator"; and (al-wasāwis) is properly the verbal noun, which is insinuation (al-waswasah). And what al-Ghazzālī has here resembles the saying of him who said that the satan is a power among the human powers; and thus said al-Rāghib: every blameworthy power of man is a satan.

[44] ( 1 ) al-Manār transmitted it, volume 11, page ( 588 )