Jinn Posession

At the end of the last century, tribal poets in Yemen shared the concepts of hāǧis and ḥalīla—two ǧinn of poetry or embodiments of the poet’s faculties. This inspiration-related convention has common features with that of the early Arab poets, who also seem to have been relying on the assistance of ǧinn. In both cases, a male-gendered muse was treated by the poet as a friend in need, while connection with daemons meant a strong talent and exceptional creative energy that distinguished a true poet. In both cases, however, it would be hardly possible to understand with certainty whether poets believed in a kind of daemons or simply referred to inspiration in a conventional way. Since premodern Yemeni poetry in vernacular as well as medieval tribal poetry of later than the eighth century have not been preserved, it would be impossible to substantiate a direct link between the conventions. Focusing on the early Arabic tradition, the study aims at providing insights into the origins of the phenomena evident in the parallels between them.

In this article I apply film theory as an analytic prism through which to examine the ritual mechanisms of a particular kind of Islamic exorcism (al-ruqya al-sharʿiyya). I show how these exorcisms operate as a ritual montage that conjures the absent presence of al-ghayb—a hidden world of power that only God can see in its totality and to which the possessed patients and the jinn spirits must succumb. These exorcisms thus provide healing, not in the sense of immediate "well-being" or "relief from pain" but in the sense of moral witnessing, an opportunity to testify to the limits of human seeing and action and to the ways in which invisible and divine forces give shape to the tangible world.

Mental health stigma in Muslim communities may be partly due to a commonly held belief among some Muslims about the supernatural causes of mental illness (i.e. jinn-possession brought on by one's sinful life). A thematic analysis was carried out on four English translations and the Arabic text of the Qur'an to explore whether the connection between jinn-possession and insanity exists within the Muslim holy book. No connection between spirit-possession and madness or mental illness was found. Pagans taunted and labelled people as jinn-possessed only to ostracize and scapegoat. Linking the labelling of people as jinn-possession to a pagan practice may be used to educate Muslims, so they can reassess their community's stigma towards the mentally ill.

In the late pre-Islamic and early Islamic period, jinn imagery was employed by poets as a conventional artistic means to refer to creative energy in the context of challenge. The examples provided by the medieval literary-historical tradition on the one side, and by contemporary ethnographic data on the other, indicate that, generally in the Islamic period, with respect to the issues of inspiration and talent, poets remained within the paradigm presenting the relationship between man and spirit as assistance offered to the poet by his loyal ‘brother’ in the moment of need.

Este trabajo se enmarca dentro del interés por las epistemologías locales, aquellas que se pueden conocer a través del trabajo de campo etnográfico, y aquellas que son cognoscibles a través del ejercicio de la Antropología histórica, mediante el estudio de la información etnográfica que transmiten las fuentes históricas.

Mental health stigma in Muslim communities may be partly due to a commonly held belief among some Muslims about the supernatural causes of mental illness (i.e. jinn-possession brought on by one's sinful life). A thematic analysis was carried out on four English translations and the Arabic text of the Qur'an to explore whether the connection between jinn-possession and insanity exists within the Muslim holy book. No connection between spirit-possession and madness or mental illness was found. Pagans taunted and labelled people as jinn-possessed only to ostracize and scapegoat. Linking the labelling of people as jinn-possession to a pagan practice may be used to educate Muslims, so they can reassess their community's stigma towards the mentally ill.