Arabic Folklore’s Most Terrifying Creature： The Ghoul

The ghoul is a creature that we find all across popular culture. There are dangerous mutants in the Fallout series of video games, undead monsters in Dungeons & Dragons, and of course Ghoul was the original name used for the zombies in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. One of the things that we can note about all these different ghouls is precisely that they are very different from each other. So what is the ghoul really? Where does it come from? Well, both the creature itself and the name, Ghoul, actually comes originally from Arabic and Islamic culture, where we find many accounts and folktales about this frightening creature, and where it has been discussed and debated from theological, rational, scientific, and philosophical perspectives. So in honor of this year's spooky season, sometimes also called Shocktober here on the channel, let's take a look at the frightening creature known as the ghoul. Another gentle reminder that I recently published a new song or single with my band Zini. It's an alternative rock song with influences from Middle Eastern music, so go check that out if you're interested in that, and let me know what you thought, and share it with your friends, and so on, if you liked it. Thank you. The ghoul is a creature that shows up in Middle Eastern and Arabian lore all the way back in In Arabic, the term used for the creature is which is, of course, where we get the modern, anglified version of the term, ghoul, as well. As with most cases of folklore and stories like this, it's very hard to know when the idea of the ghoul first originated. As I said, it is usually considered to come from Arabian culture, but there is some evidence and arguments that it may come from, or at least be connected, with an older creature from Mesopotamia called the galu, and you can tell the similarities even in the name itself, right? The galu were demons of the underworld in Mesopotamian culture and mythology, very frightening creatures. In general, the pre-Islamic Arabs seem to have seen the ghoul as a dangerous and frightening creature that dwelled in the empty desert and among old ruins. They thus posed a danger to people who were traveling across the desert, perhaps with caravans, and they could lure people to their deaths. This dangerous nature might also be indicated by the name itself. According to the lexicographer Ibn Mansur, in his classic work called Lisan al-Arab, the tongue or speech of the Arabs, the name ghoul is here argued to come etymologically from the Arabic verbal root ghāl, which means to kill. So, you know, watch out. There is, for example, a story told about Arqam bin Abu al-Arqam, one of the companions of the prophet Muhammad, whose son was supposedly kidnapped by a ghoul when he was on a desert journey. The ghoul had disguised itself as a woman and pretended to be the boy's attendant. There is also another popular story about Omar ibn al-Khattab, another companion and the second of the Rashidun Caliphs. And the story goes that presumably before he joined Muhammad's movement, Omar was on his way, he was walking, you know, across the desert plains of Arabia, on his way to Syria, maybe as part of some sort of trade venture, and in the desert he suddenly encounters a ghoul. And the ghoul asks him, where are you going? But Omar refused to answer the ghoul. And so, just like out of a horror movie, the ghoul is then said to turn its head completely around. But this doesn't even seem to frighten Omar at least that much, because he just raises his sword and cuts the ghoul down, kills it, specifically by striking it once between the head and the shoulder. And this might become important later on. So clearly, in the pre-Islamic Arabian environment, the ghoul was seen as a prominent dangerous creature among the many forces and beings that lurked and populated the desolate places in the desert environment. Traveling alone in the desert, especially at night, or hanging out among old ruins could be dangerous, and creatures like the ghoul embodied those fears. But what was the ghoul more specifically? Like, what is its characteristics? Where does it come from? What's the story? Well, for this we have to look a bit further down in history, a bit later on, in many of the great chroniclers and scholars and philosophers of the post-Islamic era. The Quran doesn't really mention ghouls at all, at least not directly, and the hadith literature, the traditions of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, is unclear. There are some hadiths where the Prophet talks about ghouls, but they are mostly hadiths that at least many Muslim scholars consider inauthentic. So, in other words, there isn't really any firm basis for this creature in the sacred sources of Islam, which has led to the variety of approaches that later Muslim scholars would have towards this creature. Some have rejected the existence of ghouls altogether, seeing it just as a myth, whereas others have accepted it completely. And this partly comes down to the relationship of the ghoul with jinn. Indeed, while the ghoul isn't mentioned in the Quran, the jinn definitely are. There is even a full surah of the Quran called the jinn. Jinn are, of course, an elusive being said to be created from smokeless fire and which are mostly invisible to human beings. They inhabit the world around us and have communities of their own, and while popular assumption might make you assume that they are just inherently evil, like akin to Christian demons, basically, this is not really the case. Jinn are creatures that can be both good or evil, either friendly or malevolent, and they have religious communities and countries of their own. The word jinn is, of course, where we get the more famous term, genie, in English, as in the genie of the lamp, and this is an anglified version of the singular form of the word, which is jinni. Because the jinn are so widely attested in the Quran and hadith literature, it's basically part of normative Islamic belief that they are real. Of course, people have given different interpretations of them, even to the point of allegorizing or metaphorizing them, but the complete rejection of their existence is kind of out of the question. But when we look at different accounts and descriptions, there isn't full agreement on whether the ghoul is a species of jinn or if it's a separate creature in itself. Of course, the specific definition of the jinn and the categorization of different jinn is not something that was consistent or agreed upon in Arabic or Islamic literature either. Some see jinn as a much broader category for all invisible ethereal creatures, whereas others have a much more narrow definition. But I would say that, at least according to the research that I've been able to do, it seems that the most common position among Islamic slash Arab scholars is that the ghoul is a kind of, it's a type of jinn. It belongs in the wider category of jinn. But the thing about the ghoul is, aside from some of the general characteristics that we have just described, there is a variety of different and sometimes conflicting descriptions in the literature. In an article by Ahmed K. Al-Rawi, he gives this According to Abu al-Wafa, a ghoul is the male genie and the female is called Si'alwa, and the plural is Ghailan. Sa'id ibn Ibrahim al-Tasturi, in his Mudhkar wal Mu'annaf, disagrees with this explanation and states that a ghoul is a feminine being denoting the enchantress of genies. In addition, al-Jahiz noted that Arabs used to generally refer to the ghoul as a female creature. And in Jamharat al-Lugha, Ibn Duraid mentions the term Qutrub for the male ghoul, a name that also has the meaning of madman or drugs. We can also look at a really interesting book from the 13th century, the Ajja'ib al-Makhluqat wa Ghaira'ib al-Mawjudat, The Wonders of Creation and Oddities of Existence by Zakariyya al-Qazwini. This is another compendium telling various strange legends and stories from the wider Islamic world, including strange and mysterious creatures and what's known today as cryptids, mythical beasts and creatures out there. In a section about the ghoul, he says, quote, the most famous of them is the ghoul. They claim that the ghoul is a strange and deformed animal, not under the command of nature, who goes out alone, does not seek the company of others and becomes bestial. It seeks out the empty wastes and can resemble both humans and beasts. They can appear to those who travel by themselves at night or in moments of seclusion or solitude. They will be led to believe that it is a fellow traveler, but it will then lead them away from the path. Some say that when the devils, the shayateen, wanted to eavesdrop, eavesdrop on heaven, basically, a meteor struck them so that some of them were burned, some fell into the sea and became crocodiles, and some fell on land and became ghouls. Al-Jahil said the ghoul is anything from among the jinn that spreads corruption and can take on different shapes and garments. So a lot of different accounts, but a very prominent theme is that ghouls are usually female creatures, or at least that they take on female form, and that they can lure travelers in the night away from the path to hurt them or even kill them. There are stories where travelers are told that if they see smoke in the distance, they are never supposed to go to where the smoke is. That could be a ghoul that's trying to lure them there, and they use different techniques to, you know, lure people in, especially people alone wandering the deserts, and then they will kill them and sometimes even eat them. One of the earliest and most famous sources from the Islamic period comes from the famous scholar, philosopher, and Mu'atazili theologian Al-Jahil. Among many of his other accomplishments, he wrote a book called Kitab al-Hayawan, the book of animals, a massive seven volume zoological encyclopedia describing many animals and creatures of the world. And among many other things, he talks about the ghoul. In another article, the same author Arawi says, quote, he said the ghoul was believed to attract travelers by setting fire at night. Subsequently, the travelers would lose their direction. Al-Jahil elaborated by saying that people view the ghoul as a type of genie, and the si'alwa was the female genie if she did not change or become a ghoul by deluding travelers. If a genie changed its shape and harassed travelers, it would become a she-devil or ghoul. So here Al-Jahil clearly seems to identify it as a type of genie, right? Specifically, if there's a genie that does these things, leads travelers astray and shapeshift, then that genie is called by the name ghoul, basically. And this is another common feature of the ghoul, the shape-shifting abilities. Many stories tell of how a ghoul can shape-shift into different creatures or even humans to fool travelers. We saw an example of this from before, where the ghoul pretended to be a woman to kidnap the boy or one of the prophet's companions. And there's another famous story about a pre-Islamic poet known as Ta'aba Tasharran. We find this story in one of the great collections of songs, poems, and stories from the Arab world, the Kitab al-Ghani, Book of Songs by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, compiled in the 10th century. The name Ta'aba Tasharran means he who carried evil under his arm, and there are various versions of the story of how he got that name. In one, told in the aforementioned Kitab al-Ghani, the man, whose real name was Thabit ibn Jabr al-Fahmi, is walking in the desert and sees a lone ram, which he decides to pick up and carry back home, presumably because he thought it had escaped and it was maybe one of his goats and he wanted to bring it back. So he does this. But on the way back, he realized that the ram under his arm was getting heavier and heavier, to the point that when he reached the village, his home village, he let it go to the ground. And when he looked down, he realized that it was, in fact, a ghoul. And when his friends asked him, what's that? He said, it's a ghoul. And so after that, he was given this nickname, the one who carried evil under his arm, because he was walking around carrying a ghoul. In the Kitab al-Ghani, there is even a preserved poem, supposedly written by him about this encounter, where he describes it like this. Quote, I saw two eyes in an ugly face like the head of a cat, having a cloven mouth and two deformed legs and a dog's scap. Of course, Ta'aba Tasharran also kills the ghoul in question by striking it with his sword. And importantly, this is another recurring characteristic about the ghoul in these sources, that in order to kill it, you must strike it with only one blow from your sword. Remember the story about Omar ibn al-Khattab, when he met the ghoul, he struck it with one blow of the sword in between the head and the shoulder. And this is a recurring thing in stories about ghouls in these old sources, that you can only kill them by striking them once. If you strike it one more time, then it will take another thousand strikes before it actually dies. And so this is one of the things that the ghoul will use to fool people. You strike it once, maybe it didn't completely die yet, so it'll be like, oh I'm not dead yet, please strike me again. But you're not supposed to do that, because then you fall into that trap. So this is another very interesting detail, that's very recurring in these old sources. Among other things, it is also attested in the writings of al-Jahiz in the Kitab al-Hayrwan, or at least it's mentioned as a thing that people believe about the ghoul, without necessarily him himself believing it. Because indeed, this is also important, that there were many scholars that did not even think that the ghoul was real. They thought that this was just made-up stories, it didn't exist. There is a theological school within Islam known as the Mu'tazila, which was especially popular in the early centuries. They placed a heavy emphasis on reason in interpreting religious matters, as well as in general really, and many of the Mu'tazila seemed to have been skeptical of the existence of ghouls, as they believed it ran counter to reasoned judgment. And one of the most famous of the early Mu'tazila was indeed the aforementioned philosopher al-Jahiz. And he indeed seems to have questioned the validity of the stories about ghouls, arguing that they are the result of confused people who, as a result of being alone in the desert, would become confused, scared, and even start hallucinating or imagining things that are not there. Especially in a culture where you've been taught since you were a kid that ghouls lurked out there in the desert, the power of suggestion could make you see and interpret things as being ghouls, but which perhaps have other natural explanations. This is essentially the argument that al-Jahiz is giving here. He also considered many of the people who claimed to have seen or encountered ghouls, such as the Arab poet Aba Tasharran, as liars essentially, who made up stories about ghouls to gain renown and fame. A firmly logical, rational approach to the question that was also shared by many others, perhaps especially according to some sources, especially those from the Mu'tazila school, the rationalistic school of theology. Of course, one of the most prominent and globally famous places where we find stories about jinn and ghouls are in the stories of the Thousand and One Nights, sometimes also known as the Arabian Nights, a collection of stories from the quote-unquote golden age of Islam that has been widely read by a global audience. If you've read any of these stories, you will know that the jinn feature very prominently as characters, mostly as dangerous or at least mischievous in some way. There is of course Aladdin and the genie of the lamp, or in some of the more traditional stories like the fisherman and the jinni, or the merchant and the jinni. These are fantastical stories, often with a moral message, and it shows us how prominent the idea of different kinds of jinn were in the cultures of the Middle East at the time. But in terms of ghouls, more specifically, we don't get as many mentions. Perhaps the most famous comes from the story of Sidi Noman. In this tale, the titular character, Sidi Noman, gets married to a wife called Amina. They are initially very happy, but Sidi Noman starts noticing some strange behavior from his wife. She never really eats anything, only a few grains of rice per dinner, so one night he starts to investigate and then follows her when she gets out of bed. To his horror, he discovers that she then sneaks away to the cemetery where she meets with a ghoul, and the two together dig up a corpse and start consuming it. His wife, it turns out, is herself a shape-shifting ghoul. Later, when Sidi Noman confronts his wife, being an enchantress, she uses magic to turn him into a dog, and then the story kind of goes on from there. There are a few things that we can take from this story, and the character of Amina, who is perhaps one of the most famous ghouls in literary history. First of all, it points to another quite common idea that humans and djinns, and even humans and ghouls, more specifically, can get married. Indeed, not all accounts of ghouls state that they are necessarily evil, but they can be both good and bad, just like djinn more generally. Again, Al-Jahez would not agree with this, because his definition of a ghoul was a djinn who did horrible things, basically, right? But some seem to have a more broad definition of the moral character of the ghouls, and also tell stories of how ghouls and humans got married. Sometimes they even lived long and relatively happy lives. Another detail in the story of Sidi Noman is the horrifying act that Amina takes part in, the consuming of dead corpses. In fact, this has become another one of the most commonly attributed characteristics of ghouls, and shows up in a lot of pop culture to this day. But there's a problem here. While the ghoul was certainly feared as being able to kill people, the idea that they dig up bodies and eat them is not really found in any traditional Arabic sources, and does not seem to have enough future of the ghoul in classical Arabic and Islamicate culture. You see, when we read The Thousand and One Nights, we are usually reading a collection compiled and translated by a French orientalist called Antoine Galland in the early 18th century. Now, at first, he was working from an old Syrian Arabic manuscript containing some of their traditional tales, but when he ran out of those, he also added some stories that were not part of this traditional source. The story goes that he had a Christian Syrian man by the name of Hanna Diab, who recounted orally some of the stories that he would include later on in this collection. But it's also quite clear that Galland significantly contributed to the composition of these stories himself, adding things and changing things and so on. And in fact, many of the most famous stories that we associate with the Arabian Nights come from this later edition, which is not found in the traditional Arabic sources, including the story of And also, significantly, the story of Sidi Nouman, where we find the ghoula Amina. It is thus probable that the part about the ghoul digging up and eating corpses was an addition by Galland himself, possibly influenced by aspects of European culture and folklore at the time, like vampires, for instance. So while this is one of the most widely known characteristics of the ghoul, it is not one that goes back to the Arabic version of the creature, but is a modern invention. And with that said, folklore, of course, is always changing and transforming, so it doesn't necessarily mean that any of this is inaccurate or wrong, but it's still something that is maybe helpful to keep in mind. Instead, the many traditions and stories of ghouls from the Arabic-speaking world, while varied and diverse, of course, follow most of the general characteristics that we outlined before. One of the most famous ghouls from the Islamic world is called Aisha Khandija. She's a female ghoul, or a ghoul that takes female form, and is a prominent feature of folklore in Morocco in particular. She's said to be a beautiful, younger-looking woman who is especially thought to hang around water, either by the sea or lakes, or even just the water canals in larger cities like Fez. She particularly lures young men to follow her through her beauty, and then, if they don't manage to escape, she will kill them. The only thing that can be used as clues to give away her monstrous identity is that her feet are cloven, like that of a goat or a camel. Aisha is a prominent aspect of Moroccan lore, and there are other similar ghouls or jinn of Moroccan folklore also called Aisha, which are sometimes seen as different forms of this one dangerous monster. Another frightening story that we might tell from the classical Arabic sources is retold by Al-Ashbahani. It tells of two men who want to provide a wedding dress to a bride-to-be, and so they go on a journey to get this present for this woman, and on the way they have to cross the desert, of course. And while on their way there, they encounter a woman by herself in the desert, which is strange already, right? But anyway, they greet her, and she asks them what they're doing. So they tell her, we're going to go, we're going to get these wedding garments for this woman, and then we're going back, I guess, to give it to her. So the woman says, I can help you with that as long as you promise to visit me again on the way back. So, said and done, they do so. They go, they finish their business in whatever place they're going, and then on the way back, they go by the woman again. And when they meet her, they say hello again, and then she says, I'll go with you. I'll follow you for a while. So she does. She sits on the camel, and they walk for a while before suddenly they reach a kind of mound in the desert, and she says she has to stop because she has to relieve herself. They stop, and she gets off the camel, and she goes over the mound. But then she's gone for an hour, which is, of course, weird. So the men start questioning what's going on. Maybe there's some kind of aspect of older sort of morals here, in the sense that the men didn't want to go check on her for an hour because of the privacy of what she was doing, maybe. But anyway, after an hour, enough is enough. So one of them goes over the mound, disappears behind it to check on her, but he also doesn't come back. So the last man now is very concerned. So he also goes to check on the situation. He walks over to the mound, and when he can see over it, he finds a horrible, horrifying sight, that the woman is lying on top of the man and eating from his liver. And so this man is horrified. He screams, and he runs away. But the woman, who obviously seems to be a ghoul, she runs after him. Eventually, she catches up to him, and she says, what are you doing? And the man says, well, there's a devil amongst us. And then a kind of weird turn of events, she helps him. So she says, okay, here's what you do to get rid of me, or not to get rid of me, but to be safe from my evil, is that you say these prayers. And this might go back to certain prayers that we find, I think, in some hadith literature with the Prophet. In those hadiths where the ghouls are mentioned, there are some where the hadith or where the Prophet tells his companions to say certain prayers, like parts of the Qur'an and other prayers, to ward off ghouls and evil. So he does what she says, he says these prayers. And as he does, the skies open up, and she is struck by fire, and like explodes, basically, and dies. A very dramatic and strange and frightening story about a ghoul from classical Islamic, or at least Arabic, lore. Returning to the Thousand and One Nights, due to the enormous popularity of Galan's translation and interpretation in Europe, the ghoul became a prominent feature of English and European literature, though often still connected to the Middle East in different ways. Charles Dickens essentially recounts the story of Sidi Nouman in A Christmas Tree. In Wuthering Heights, Bronte compares the character Heathcliff to a ghoul, with specific indirect reference to Amina's lack of eating in the story of Sidi Nouman. And today, as we said, the ghoul shows up frequently, if sometimes only by name, in movies and video games and other places. In its region of origin, the ghoul also remains a prominent feature of folklore. Perhaps not as widely believed in or widespread as in other eras of history, but especially in more rural areas, where life is lived more traditionally, the ghoul is still feared. Especially for those living in or at the edge of deserts, whose empty, quiet wastes still inspire awe and fear, and in which this fearful creature has always been thought to live. Thank you so much for joining me for this year's Spooky Season in Orisha October. I hope this was an interesting dive into the world of ghouls. For the next couple episodes, we'll see. I think I'm working on an episode about alchemy, maybe alchemy generally or alchemy in the Islamic world. I might do an episode on the Emerald Tablet. We'll see. But there's going to be some spooky stuff this October, as always, so look forward to that. Of course, I am very much looking forward to that. I hope everything is well with all of you out there, and I'd like to give a special shout-out, first of all, to myself, because I just released my new song, Tasting, with my band Zini. As I mentioned in the beginning, this is an alternative rock song with influences from Middle Eastern music, so check that out if you're interested in that, and share it with your friends if you like it. And then a shout-out, of course, to my patrons over on patreon.com, who support me and my work here monetarily, which is highly appreciated, and I am deeply grateful and humbled that people want to support me. If anyone else wants to become a patron and support this project of bringing free educational content on the world's religions and philosophies, then there are links to that in the description. You can also support by just liking, commenting, and subscribing on the channel. Thank you all so much, it's all very much appreciated. If you're interested in my work, you can follow me on my socials, on Instagram and TikTok and so on, it's on the screen, or subscribe to my other channel, Philip Holm, where you find my music and content about music, including that new song, which you should check out. So go there, subscribe, and keep an eye out for new content there as well. And for now, thank you so much, and look forward to more spooky content in the coming weeks. I'll see you then.