Hatif

Hatif (Arabic: هَاتِف‎, lit. 'calling, shouting') is a voice that can be heard without one's discovering the body that made it.[1]

Pre-Islamic Arabs credited jinn with such hatif avenging murder on a fellow jinn by driving the murderer insane.[2] Al-Jahiz wrote that the Bedouin believed the jinn could be used as transmitters of important messages. The receiver would hear the message in realtime without seeing the speaker. He stated that belief in Hatif was widespread among the Bedouin, and they would be perplexed that people could disbelieve in it.[3] Al-Masudi focused on the psychological backgrounds of this phenomenon, and explained the Hatif as a hallucination caused by loneliness.[4]

In some cases, the voice does not come from jinn, but from ghosts, dwelling near graves and remember humans about their mortality or announce their death.[5]

References
  1. Abdelfattah Kilito Arabs and the Art of Storytelling: A Strange Familiarity Syracuse University Press 2012 ISBN 978-0-815-65286-1 page 92
  2. Amira El Zein: The Evolution of the Concept of Jinn from Pre-Islam to Islam'. pp. 113
  3. Tobias Nünlist Dämonenglaube im Islam Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015 ISBN 978-3-110-33168-4 p. 327(German)
  4. Tobias Nünlist Dämonenglaube im Islam Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015 ISBN 978-3-110-33168-4 p. 327(German)
  5. Werner Diem, Marco Schöller The Living and the Dead in Islam: Epitaphs as texts Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004 ISBN 9783447050838 p. 158


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