Summary
Supernatural beings of the Palestinian folk world as Muhawi and Kanaana present it: creatures of fire according to the Qur’an, capricious in nature, capable of goodness — some of them, people say, seen standing and praying like Muslims — and of possessing and killing a human being (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 565-732).
Details
- Because merely to mention the jinn in narrative time could bring them into being, a folktale narrator invokes the name of Allah; the common opening formula “Testify that God is One!” is itself read by the authors as an invocation to dispel the influence of jinn and ghouls before the narrative begins (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 215-312).
- The jinn stand at the supernatural end of the continuum of evil forces — evil eye, hyena and monkey, ghosts (asbah), demons (`afarit), the qarine — yet evil beings can bring good to human beings, and the same jinni can cause harm or do good, as in Tales 30 and 32 (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 565-732).
- In the tales, jinn and other supernatural beings take fully human roles — fathers, husbands, lovers, wives, mothers — and tellers do not use distancing devices for them, since the audience believes in their reality; women frequently appear in the tales in the guise of jinn (Tales 17, 30, 32, 37) (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 475-732).
- In Tale 5 the hero’s horse Ballan is a jinn horse (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, lines 733-1098).
- In the Introduction, bitjannin, “she will drive one mad”, is given as what people say of any beautiful woman, in a passage on beauty and sexual desire making people feel as if possessed by the jinn (Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, line 492).
Related pages
Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, Ghouleh, Palestinian folktale