The Qur’an’s ambiguity about the place of the jinn in the Muslim worldview prompted medieval intellectuals to compose stories to explain their origin and history. In the tenth century, an obscure group of Muslim scholars known as the Brethren of Purity composed dozens of learned epistles on topics ranging from mathematics to the natural sciences to religious opinion. In a treatise couched as an allegorical fable entitled The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn (Epistle 22), they addressed the ethics of humankind’s dominion over the animal kingdom. A digression in this work narrated a short history of the jinn that explained their place in the cosmos. According to this origin story, the jinn populated the earth before the creation of Adam, but they were corrupt in many ways. Angels sent by God vanquished them and adopted one of their captives, a young jinn named Lucifer, as their own. After the flood, humans and jinn lived together on earth, but their relationship was sometimes fraught. King Solomon controlled the jinn, but some rebelled against him; these he punished with imprisonment. Since then many jinn heeded the message of Jesus and Mohammad and embraced the faith, which accounts for the harmonious relationship between humans and jinn at the present time.
“In ancient times,” the wise jinni said, “before the creation of Adam, forefather of the human race, we jinn were the earth’s denizens. It was we who covered the earth, land and sea, mountain and plain. Our lives were long and filled with blessings in profusion. We had kings, prophets, faith, and law. But we grew wanton and violent, ignored our prophets’ precepts, and ever worked corruption on earth, until finally the earth and its denizens joined in crying out against our wrongs.
“When that era was drawing to a close and a new age was dawning, God sent a host of angels down from heaven to settle the land, and they scattered the vanquished jinn to the far corners of the earth. Many they took captive—among them, the accursed Satan Lucifer, Adam’s pharaoh, then still a callow lad. Raised among the angels, Lucifer acquired their knowledge. Outwardly he resembled them, and inwardly he adopted their nature and stamp. As the ages passed he became a chief among them, and for aeons they followed his commands and bans. But that era too came to an end, and a new age began. God revealed to those angels that were on earth: ‘I shall place a vice-regent on earth in place of you; and you shall I raise to the heavens.’ The earth angels were loath to leave their familiar homeland and answered: ‘Wilt Thou place there one who will work corruption there and shed blood,’ as did the race of jinn, ‘while we celebrate Thy praises and sanctify Thee?’ God said, ‘I know what you know not; for I have sworn an oath upon Myself that in the end, after the age of Adam and his seed, I shall leave not one—angel, jinni, human or any living creature—on the face of the earth.’
“When God created Adam, fashioned him, breathed of His spirit into him, and from him formed Eve, his mate, He ordered the angels on earth to bow down before the two and submit to their command. All obeyed except Satan. For he was haughty and arrogant. A savage, jealous frenzy seized him when he saw his dominion ending and knew that he must follow and be a leader no more.”
“[The race of Adam] procreated and their seed grew numerous, and some of the jinni race mingled with them and taught them the arts of planting and building, showed them what was good for them and what was harmful. Befriending mankind, the jinn won their affection, and for a time they lived together on the best of terms.
“But whenever the race of Adam recalled the enmity of the accursed Satan Lucifer and how he had cozened their forefather, their hearts filled with rage and rancour toward the jinni race. When Cain killed Abel, Abel’s progeny blamed the prompting of the jinn and hated them yet more. They sought them everywhere and tried to catch them with every trick of magic, witchcraft, and sorcery they knew. Some they clapped in bottles and tormented with all manner of smoke and foul vapours, nauseating and revolting to the jinni race.
“So things went until God sent the prophet Idrīs.[2] He smoothed relations between men and jinn through community of faith, law, submission, and religion. The jinn returned to the realms of men and lived in concord with them from the time of the Great Flood until the days of Abraham. But when Abraham was cast into the fire, men thought knowledge of the mangonel had come to the tyrant Nimrod from the jinn.[3] And when Joseph’s brothers cast him into the pit, this too was laid to the wiles of Satan, who was of jinni race. When God sent Moses, he reconciled the jinn and Israel through religious faith and law, and many of the jinn embraced his faith.
“In Solomon’s time, God strengthened his dominion and subjected the demons and jinn to him. Solomon subdued the kings of the earth, and the jinn boasted to mankind that he had achieved this by their help. Without their aid, they said, he would have been just another human king. The jinn led humans to believe that they had knowledge of the unseen. But, when Solomon died, and the jinn, still suffering their humiliating chastisements, knew nothing of his death, mankind realized that had the jinn possessed occult knowledge they would not have remained in such degrading torment.[4]
“Again, when the hoopoe brought his report of Bilqīs, and Solomon said to the throng of jinn and men, ‘Which of you will bring me her throne?’ [5] The jinn bragged, and one sprite, Ustur son of Māyān of Kaywān, said, ‘I’ll have it here before you rise from your place’—that is, before the court recesses. Solomon said, ‘I want it faster!’ At that, a man with knowledge of the Book, Āsaf son of Barkhiyya, said, ‘I’ll have it here in the twinkling of an eye.’ And when he saw it already standing steady at his side, he said, ‘This is by the grace of my Lord,’ and he knelt in prayer.[6] Man had clearly outdone the jinn. The court ended, and the jinn left, hanging their heads, the human rabble at their heels, trampling, gloating, and hooting at them.
“After the events I have mentioned, a band of jinn escaped from Solomon, and one rebelled against him. Solomon sent troops after them and trained them to snare the jinn with spells, incantations, magic words, and revealed verses, using sorcery to confine them. He produced a book for this purpose, found in his treasury after his death. Until he died Solomon kept the rebel jinn at work with arduous tasks.
“When Christ was sent, he called all creatures, men and jinn alike, to God and imbued them with yearning for Him. He showed them the way and taught them to mount to the Kingdom of Heaven. Several jinni bands embraced his faith. Keeping to a monastic path, they did rise up to heaven. There they overheard tidings among the celestial throng and relayed the reports to soothsayers.[7]
“When God sent Muhammad, God bless and keep him, the jinn were barred from eavesdropping and said, ‘We do not know whether evil is intended against those on earth or whether their Lord desires them to go right.’[8] Some jinni bands embraced Muhammad’s faith and became good Muslims.[9] Ever since then, down to our own days jinni relations with Muslims have been peaceable.
“Assembly of jinn,” the jinni scholar concluded, “do not antagonize them and spoil our relations with them. Don’t stir up smouldering hatred or revise the ancient bias against us that is ingrained in their nature. For hatred is like the fire latent in stones that appears when they’re struck together: it lights the matches that can burn down houses and bazaars. God protect us from the triumph of the wicked and the sway of the iniquitous, which brings ruin and disgrace!”