By: Omar Ali

Musharraf Farooqi has a great article up at Lapham’s quarterly about Jinns and their various proclivities. A must read.

“ ….Encounters between the parties were not uncommon. One trait commonly ascribed to jinn is the desire to copulate with humans. Male jinn liked it so much that sometimes they would try and surreptitiously join in during sex between human men and women. One man witnessed his wife’s vagina emitting flames from a jinn making congress with her while she slept. And such interspecies unions bore fruit. When a child was born from a coupling between humans and jinn, it was termed khunnas. One born from a union between humans and demons was called amluq. Humans were less likely to pursue jinn, however, particularly females, as they were reputed to have violent tempers. One man who had married a jinn female received a good thrashing with a camel bone at her hands before she left him…”

Musharraf Ali Farooqi has also translated Dastan Amir Hamza into English (its a very good translation, btw, I have it and its tremendous fun to read in the toilet). He has also started on Tilsim e Hoshruba. (he also wrote a novel recently that I have not yet read).

Aamer Ahmed Khan (who replaced Mohammed Hanif as head of BBC Urdu)  tried to start a series of Tilsim E Hoshruba comics in Lahore, but these ideas seem to whither and die in Pakistan. After the “Islamic welfare state” deal is finally done with, maybe some remaining people  will rediscover the real treasures of medieval Islamicate culture (Jinns, Arabian Nights, Tilsim e Hoshruba) and make comics and video games and movies out of them in the land of the Indus man (for now, it seems they do it best once they get out); all sorts of creative possibilities exist…

My theory is that all these creative possibilities tend to get overwhelmed in Pakistan (the actual Pakistan, not the imaginary one..hint hint, wink wink) because we need Jinns to produce literal rather than metaphorical electricity.

Continue reading Everything you always wanted to know about Jinns.. →