Jinni

Jinni, also spelled djinn or genies in English, are a class of supernatural beings found in pre-Islamic Arabian folklore and Islamic theology. The term jinn is Arabic, often interpreted as beings created from smokeless fire and distinct from humans and angels. In Islamic tradition, jinn are one of the three intelligent creations of God, endowed with free will and moral accountability, comparable to humans in their capacity to choose good or evil.

Jinn are generally described as invisible or only partially perceptible to humans, though they may take on various forms. They are believed to inhabit places such as deserts, ruins, caves, and other secluded environments, and they can interact with people—granting favors, misdirecting, or causing harm, depending on the individual and circumstances. Islamic sources emphasize that jinn, like humans, will be judged by God after life, and some jinn are believers while others are disbelievers.

Folklore distinguishes several jinn types, including the powerful ifrit and the marid; other figures such as ghuls also appear in myths and later demonological works. In popular culture, jinn are often portrayed as magical beings confined to lamps or bottles who grant wishes, a trope popularized by tales from One Thousand and One Nights and adapted in modern literature and film. The term genie in Western usage is a transliteration variant of djinn/jinn and broadly refers to this family of beings in fantasy media. In scholarly and literary contexts, jinn are studied as a part of Middle Eastern folklore, religious belief, and cultural imagination regarding the unknown and the moral agency of non-human intelligent beings.