and where would we be without the work of creatives who incorporate so much history and lore in their work like @waraqamusa’s The Lover and The Jealous @SAChakrabooks’ jinn-tastic The Daevabad Trilogy @ausmazehanat’s magical Khorasan Archives and @GWillowWilson’s Alif the Unseen
and last but not least @Aphemia66’s Smokeless Fire series and @pdjeliclark ‘s A Dead Djinn in Cairo
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In Islamic eschatology, the world will be flooded by a mighty invasion in the end of days.
The great army of the monstrous Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) will rampage throughout the earth.
A thread-
Yajuj and Majuj are mentioned in the Qur’an (Kahf and Anbiya).
They are sealed away behind a mighty wall by a legendary king, Dhul al-Qarnayn who is frequently linked to Alexander the Great and occasionally Cyrus the Great, though neither are exact matches
It is commonly believed they scratch at the wall daily, tearing nearly through until God intervenes and restores the barrier.
Thus sealed away, the world is safe from Yajuj and Majuj, that is, until the end of days.
In Middle Eastern and Islamic lore, the jinn are associated with dreams. As subtle, invisible creatures they were treated as a separate race of beings and as a type of spirit-life.
A thread on jinn and dreams-
Jinn were said to have a special capacity to psychically influence humans through whisperings. These could fill the mind of people with doubt, fear, and lust
They could also sway the dreams of humans.
Some jinn like Kabus were described as a type of winged shadow which stalks humans at nighttime.
Slipping in through cracks, he perches on your chest causing paralysis as his icy fingers seep into the mind inducing nightmares and terror.
the birth time and subsequent horoscope are idealized; it reflects a nocturnal birth so Venus and Mars are emphasized.
The placements likely invoke Iskandar’s grandfather Timur, with Mars in the 11th House reflecting the power to conquer the world
It’s a beautiful depiction of Persian and Timurid art and the continuation of astrological knowledge with references to the astrologer Abu Ma’shar and the use of the ancient al-hilaj technique in the commentary
The Great Pyramids have always captured our imagination. For medieval Muslims, they were a relic of a ancient age of knowledge; an edifice of magic, astrology, and the jinn.
A thread-
By the 9th century there were several theories for who actually built the pyramids.
One stated they were built by the last jinn king, ibn Jann who ruled in the age before humanity.
In this narration, the jinn were the original inhabitants of the world. They filled the earth with wonder and corruption in equal measure.
Eventually a great jinn war broke out in which the angels sided with the goodly jinn and drove out the wicked ones.
Astrologers from the medieval Islamic world envisioned history as a series of great planetary cycles. You've heard of the Great Conjunction on December 20th and the Age of Aquarius, but the medieval writers had different ideas.
According to them we are in a new age
A thread-
While the Age of Aquarius is not really a thing in the writings of medieval astrologers, they do have several techniques which divide up history into astrological ages, or world years.
One is the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn which we discussed in our last two threads.
The others are intiha’at, fardar, dawr, and qisma which were all related to one another