various offices and forms differing according to their respective abodes (those in the lowest heaven, for instance, being shaped like cows; those in the second, like falcons; in the third, like eagles; in the fourth, like horses, and so on), the Jân are said by the learned to be created out of the fire of the “simûm” which they describe as a fire lacking both heat and smoke.[1] They are said to dwell chiefly in or amongst the Jebel Kâf, the range of mountains which surrounds the earth. Some of the Jân are good Moslems, and do not injure their human co-religionists, but the greater number of them are unclean infidels who take up their abode in rivers, fountains, cisterns, ruined buildings, baths, cellars, ovens, caves, sewers, and latrines. Some of them choose as dwellings cracks in the walls or under the door-steps or thresholds of inhabited houses, so that it is very dangerous for people, especially females, to sit on a door-step in the evening when these night-prowling evil spirits may do them grievous bodily injury. The Jân are believed to be able to assume any shape they please and to change it at pleasure. Among the peasantry, there is current another story as to their origin. It is that our mother Eve, on whom be peace, used to bring forth forty children at a birth, but being unable to nurse more than half that number, she picked out the twenty best ones and threw the others away. She told Adam on each occasion that she had borne only twenty; but he did not believe her. He therefore asked Allah to let any
- ↑ Mejr-ud-dìn, “Uns el Jelìl” (Cairo Edition), vol. i. p. 15.
