The origins of the traditional approach towards the jinn of poetic inspiration in tribal Arab culture

Abstract

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.