Djinn

Djinn are supernatural beings who appear briefly in the novel’s dreamlike episodes. They are associated both with the phantasmagoria of a masked night in Jahilia and with the otherworldly audience for Gibreel Farishta and Mahound’s encounter in a cave on Mount Cone; neither scene explains their nature or gives them an individual role in the action.

Appearances in Jahilia

During a night when Hamza searches the streets of Jahilia, the city is described as populated by Djinn, houris, and demons. This imagery accompanies a parade of figures wearing animal and monstrous masks, among them eagles, jackals, horses, and two-headed creatures. The account places Djinn within the night’s crowded supernatural atmosphere, but does not establish whether they are beings in their own right, figures in a vision, or part of the masked spectacle.

Spectators in the cave

Djinn appear again in the account of Mahound wrestling Gibreel in a cave five hundred feet below the summit of Mount Cone. They sit among the boulders with afreets and other uncanny spectators, watching the prolonged struggle. They do not intervene or affect its outcome; their presence makes the cave feel like a scene witnessed by more than the two central figures, without clarifying who or what the spectators are.

Narrative significance

Across these scenes, Djinn belong to a supernatural world that the narration presents vividly but does not firmly separate from dream and vision. In Jahilia they are part of a city night crowded with masks and uncanny forms; in the cave they watch an encounter whose own reality is unsettled by the intimacy and uncertainty connecting Gibreel and Mahound. The Djinn remain indistinct, and that lack of definition is significant: they extend the novel’s atmosphere of uncertainty without providing an explanation for it.