flowers to give the dose a taste. It seems quite possible, therefore, that a jinn, having temporarily assumed the form of a bat, is believed to have caused the illness."[1]
Some complaints attributed to the presence of jenoun are treated by expelling these demons with the aid of texts from the Koran, which, in the case of headaches, are written with a needle upon a fragment of a gourd and worn inside the sheshia, or red woollen cap, by the natives of Aïn Touta. These texts can be prepared by anyone who can write, and are not exclusively written by professional scribes. The Shawia are in the habit of burning short texts written on paper in order that a person suffering from fever may be fumigated in the smoke.[2]
I was given three such texts by an old Shawi from the slopes of the Amar Khaddou range, who told me that if the first one should fail to cure me of an attack of fever I was to burn the second, while it would have to be a very severe attack indeed which would resist all three. These texts, too, can be efficiently prepared by anyone who can write them.
The people of Aïn Touta and, I think, the Ouled Ziane consider it unlucky to mention the word "rhozal" (gazelle) in the presence of a child on account of its resemblance to "rhoziel," the name of a complaint (possibly convulsions) to which children are liable; some other word must be used for the dorcas gazelle instead of "rhozal." The cure for this complaint, which consists in giving the child an iron key to grasp, may indicate that it is a jinn which causes the malady and which is attracted upon hearing a word so like its own name.
- ↑ "Ginnees are believed to assume, or perpetually to wear, the shapes of cats, dogs and other brute animals." Lane, Modern Egyptians ("Everyman's Library" ed.), p. 230.
- ↑ A form of treatment mentioned by Westermarck, "Nature of the Arab Ğinn" (Joun. Anth. Inst., xxix., p. 258), and by Doutté (Magie et Religion dans l'Afrique du Nord, p. 232), who states, with Suyuti as his authority, that the charms should be written on three olive leaves.
