One of the few aspects of Mauritanian culture that I have actually found interesting is their belief in the jinn. The word ‘genie’ has its derivative in the Arabic word ‘jinn,’ and that is where we get the basic idea of our concept of genies. The jinn are basically desert spirits, and they bear a resemblance to our idea of what genies are (the rub the lamp, grant you wishes kind), but the Arabic jinn can more aptly be described as a poltergeist or a spirit.

 

The Qur’an mentions jinn – there is a chapter in the book titled “The Jinn.” The Qur’an says that Allah created man out of clay, and the jinn out of smokeless fire. It says that jinn dwell on the earth among men, but they are distinctly different from men, and they cannot go to Paradise when they die. It also mentions that a group of jinn fought for Solomon’s armies, and they were skilled warriors. Other than mentioning them briefly, the Qur’an does not talk much about jinn, but treats them as subjects that were well-known to its audience.

 

However, the belief in jinns predates the Qur’an – belief in jinn is an ancient belief that goes very far back into the history of Arabic people, and various jinns may have even been worshiped as minor gods before the invention of Islam. When Mohammed brought Islam to the Arabs, their belief in the jinn was so engrained that he had to include them in his new belief system, and the superstitions regarding jinns has continued on to the present day, piggybacking Islam to wherever it was exported. Often, jinn stories combined with local superstitions as Islam spread, resulting in a very wide variety of tales that involve them over the vast expanse of the Islamic world.

 

In spite of the fact that Islam does not allow for much room for incorporation of superstition (other than the superstitions sanctioned in the Qur’an), many fringe superstitions have persisted where Islam grew into already existing belief systems, particularly animist traditions. For example, many people in Mauritania wear gris-gris, a good luck charm that is made from a page of the Qur’an, folded into a piece of leather, and sewn onto a string to be attached to the body. This practice is a holdover from animist traditions (when animal skins and other “magic” objects were tied up in leather) that has been reinvented to incorporate Islam – while technically forbidden by Islam on the grounds that it is not sanctioned by the Qur’an, Muslims all over West Africa persist in wearing the charms (sometimes even very religious people will tell you that it is forbidden by Islam, but will still have the gris-gris tied onto their children). So the fact that fantastic jinn stories have continued to be passed down through generations of Muslims, despite not exactly being a part of Islamic belief, is not surprising.

 

From what I’ve gathered from discussing jinns with my Mauritanian friends, there are a few interesting characteristics about jinns that can help you recognize them. First of all, most of my friends agree that they only have four fingers. While this may seem obvious, most of the people in the stories who meet jinns don’t seem to notice. I’ve also heard that some jinns can only walk sideways, but I find it hard to believe that anyone who met a person who can only walk sideways wouldn’t notice that fact. I read once that you can identify a jinn by looking in his eyes – since they were created from “smokeless fire,” you can see a small flame in their pupils if you look directly into their eyes.

 

There seems to be a general consensus that jinns can be either good or evil, but stories about mischievous jinns outnumber the stories of helpful jinns. Jinn can be either male or female, and some of them are Muslims (incidently, Muslim jinn are supposed to have five fingers). Gender doesn’t seem to be a determining factor in whether or not a jinn is good or evil, but presumably all Muslim jinns are good guys and won’t play tricks on you, whereas the bad jinns obviously have to be non-Muslims. The trickster jinns tend to concentrate on two groups of people – potential fornicators, and people who undertake tasks without first invoking the name of Allah – but also occasionally prey on innocent, unsuspecting victims as well. Several of my friends have warned me to be careful if I meet a beautiful woman that I don’t know in a big city like Dakar or Nouakchott – she could be a jinn, just waiting to play a trick on me!

 

Finally, the most interesting attribute of jinns is that their “memory” is exactly the opposite of ours – they can’t remember anything in the past, but they can see the future, just as well as we can remember the past! Marabous, like gri-gris, are holdovers from pre-Islamic African traditions, descended from traditional shamans, healers, and witch doctors whose role has been combined with that of the Islamic imam, the local religious leader. Their areas of expertise include naming ceremonies and baptisms, in the Islamic spectre, as well as healings, placing and removing curses, and making and blessing gri-gris, duties that have been passed down from pre-Islamic animistic traditions. Additionally, marabous are generally accredited with being able to see the future, but this ability is not their own – as religious representatives, they are believed to be able to discern between humans and jinns, and able to marry jinns with no consequences (since the marabous can recognize them, theoretically, they can tell which jinns are good and which are bad, and the jinns can’t trick them like they can normal people). Because they can marry a jinn, marabous can talk to them and discover the future, which they can then pass on to people who give them appropriate amount of compensation for this information.

 

The jinn usually appear in human form, most of the time posing as a beautiful man or woman, but can sometimes take the form of animals or even inanimate objects. However, if you ever run into one, you can always make him go away by saying “bismillah u-rathman u-rahiim” – they can’t stick around when you say the name of Allah!

 

Because belief in the exaggerated jinn stories that circulate among people is technically forbidden by Islam, people here are reluctant to talk about the jinn. After my friend Nipquha’s baby was born, I noticed that she had a knife under the sleeping baby’s pillow. “Nipquha, why is there a knife under the baby’s pillow?” I asked her. I already knew the answer from my discussion with other Mauritanians, but I wanted to see if she would tell me. “Oh, I must have forgotten it there,” she lied. “Hmm, maybe you should move it – I don’t think that’s safe to have a knife so close to the baby,” I said. “Yeah, that’s true,” Nipquha replied. But she didn’t move the knife. So I said, “Nipquha, is the knife there to protect Mohammed Fall [the baby] from jinns?” She looked at me with surprise. “You know about the jinn?” “Of course,” I said, “I’ve been living in Mauritania for almost two years – I know that people put knives under the babies’ pillows to keep the jinns away!” “Oh, I see. Well, do you know the story about the woman married to the goat?” she asked. I hadn’t heard that one, or many of the others she and other friends told me that night and in the ensuing weeks…

 

Marouf and Nipquha, my source for most of the jinn stories.

“Once, there was a lady that lived in Tidjikja who met a very kind man, and they were eventually married. But no one came to their wedding celebration, and she was very sad. She asked her mother why no one came, and her mother told her that everyone thought it was a joke because she had introduced her goat to everyone as her husband. The woman insisted that the goat was her husband, but she was the only one who saw him as a man because he was a jinn, and she didn’t know.”

 

“One time, there was a man who was bringing his khayma (large traditional cloth tent, supported by two 12-foot wooden poles) in from the countryside on his donkey cart. When he was close to his village, he tied the donkey to a tree and walked to his parents’ house to get water. In the evening, when it was cooler, he went back out to bring the donkey into town, but when he came over the ridge to where he had tied him up, he saw hundreds of donkeys, all of them with carts attached with a khayma loaded on it! He looked at each of the donkeys, searching for his own, but couldn’t find him. A few hours later, worried, his father came out to look for him, but he said ‘Bismillah u-rathman u-rahiim [In the name of Allah, the Beneficent and Merciful]’ before he left. When he came out to the place where his son and the donkey were at, he saw his son running around like crazy. He stopped his son and asked him what he was doing. ‘I can’t find my donkey! There are hundreds of them here!’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about?” said the father, “Your donkey is tied up, right here!’ The father took the son and donkey home, where they consulted the family, who determined that the son was acting crazy because he forgot to say ‘bismilla u-rathman u-rahiim’ before he left, and so the jinns had played a trick on him.”

 

“One night, a man heard a baby goat bleating just outside his front door. He had locked all of his goats up for the night, so he was puzzled about how one of them had gotten out and decided to investigate. When he went outside, the goat moved further away, towards the edge of his property. As he went towards the goat, every time he got close to where he thought it should be, the sounds got further and further away. Finally, the man got scared and turned to go back to his house, and when he turned around, he was further away from home than he had thought, so he started to go back in a hurry. But then, all of a sudden, he heard the baby goat again…right behind him! When he turned around, the sound moved further away again. Then the man realized that it was a jinn, trying to lure him away from the safety of his home, so he ran back to his house and stayed inside for the rest of the night.”

 

The most common story I heard from several sources was about a man who met a beautiful woman and lay down with her. In the morning, when he woke up, he had his arms wrapped around a dead donkey! He realized that this was what he had slept with, so he went crazy and started screaming, and he had to be taken to a marabou.

 

Another similar story is of two brothers who heard wedding celebration music nearby. They decided to go join the party (not unusual in Moor culture), and set off in their finest clothes. On the way, they met two beautiful women who said they were coming from the wedding, and they asked them to sit down with them. The two brothers ended up sleeping with the two women, and in the morning, they woke up with two dead donkeys, in the middle of the seasonal riverbed.

 

Another similar tale: “Once, a woman heard drums and music near her house, so she went out to find the celebration. But as she walked, the drums seemed to be getting further and further away. Finally, far out in the desert, she came upon a small group of six people, playing the drums and singing. She joined them in their revelry until, exhausted, she fell asleep. In the morning, she woke up to find six dead donkeys lying near her, but no instruments.”

 

Sometimes, instead of a dead donkey, people are a little luckier… “There was a man who was coming home from a long day of work. On the way to his house, he met his fiancée. His fiancée told him that she didn’t want to go to the house, she wanted to go out to the desert. They went to the desert and slept together out there. In the morning, the man woke up covered in dirt and mud. He didn’t know what had happened, so he went home. His fiancée was there, waiting for him, angry that he hadn’t come home the night before!  Then he realized – he had met a jinn who looked like his fiancée.”

 

“Another man met a beautiful woman one night when he was walking around the city. She asked him to come back to her house, where she made him tea. They slept together, and when he woke up in the morning, he was buried under a pile of rocks in the middle of the market.”

 

“One woman married a jinn, but she didn’t know he was a jinn. She had four very intelligent sons, but whenever she bragged about them, everyone thought she was crazy because they had never met the sons – they could only come out and talk to her when there was no one else in the room.”

 

One of the few stories I’ve heard of a helpful jinn was with a woman who was a midwife. One day, she saw a toad in her house. She wanted to keep the toad, but it kept trying to get away, so she let it out, but, joking, told it, “OK, you can go, but if you ever get pregnant, you have to let me help you deliver your babies, because that’s my job!” What she didn’t know was that the toad was a jinn. A few months later, a man came on a camel and told the midwife that someone needed her help, so she went with him out into the desert, into a cave. As they were going in, he told her, “Do not say ‘bismillah’ or the name of Allah.” There, in the cave, she found the toad! She thought it was strange, but the man had disappeared, so she tried to help the toad deliver her babies. After all the babies had been born, the toad gave the woman a handful of charcoal, and she told her to carry the charcoal back to her house, but she couldn’t say ‘bismillah’ until she got home. The woman did as she was told – she carried the charcoal home, and once she was in her house, she said “bismillah,” and the charcoal turned into a handful of gold!

 

Count the fingers before accepting tea.

“Some women were sitting by the seasonal river one evening, making tea and talking together. Three strange men came up to them, sat down, and asked them to make tea. The women obliged, and soon the men were flirting with them. Then one of the women noticed that the men were jinns, but she didn’t say anything. One of the men asked the women to recite some poetry for them, and so the observant woman said she knew one:

‘Here you come, to us three women

And ask us to be your singers.

But we cannot sing a song for you,

‘Cause you only have four fingers!’

At that, the three men smiled at the women and flew straight up into the air and disappeared.”

 

“A young woman was trying to cook dinner for her family, and she had the charcoal stove burning hot, but the food in the pot wasn’t cooking – it wasn’t even getting warm! Frustrated, she asked her mother for help. The mother came over to the stove, and before she looked at the pot, she said ‘bismillah u-rathman u-rahiim,’ and some the charcoal embers jumped out of the stove and ran away! So she said it again and again, until all of the embers had run off. She explained to her perplexed daughter that jinns had disguised themselves as embers and fooled her.”

 

My friend Maruf told me that when he was younger, he and his friend heard drums and they decided to go out together to join the celebration. But as they got closer, the sound kept moving away, until finally, they were at the edge of town, past the last house. Maruf realized that they were being tricked by jinns, so they quickly turned around and headed home. One the way back home, they saw a bonfire and decided to stop and see what was going on. As they approached, they saw an old man throwing things onto the fire. When they were getting close, the old man suddenly stepped into the fire and disappeared, and then the fire went out! Scared, they started running home, but when they got there, they saw a huge dog in the moonlight, right in front of their door. Maruf’s friend turned a flashlight on to try to scare the dog away, but when he shined it on him, all that was there was a little kitten!

 

One of Maruf’s father’s friends was living by himself, and one night while he was eating dinner, a cat came and tried to get his food. He shooed the cat away, but it kept coming back, and so he threw his knife at it and hit it in its side, and the cat ran off. The next morning, the police came and arrested the man and took him to a judge. There, a man with a large knife wound in his side claimed that the man had thrown his knife at him the night before. He knew the man’s name and he had his knife, so the judge sent the man to prison. Then he had a doctor come to clean up the victim. The doctor, before he started to work on the wound, said “bismillah u-rathman u-rahiim,” and the man disappeared! The judge, realizing that he was a jinn, released the Maruf’s father’s friend from prison.

 

So I guess the moral of the stories is…don’t sleep with beautiful people, and always invoke the name of Allah before doing ANYTHING!!