Home1842 Edition

GENII

Volume 10 · 164 words · 1842 Edition

a sort of intermediate beings, believed by the Mahommiedans to exist between men and angels. They are of a grosser fabric than the latter, but much more active and powerful than the former. Some of them are good, others bad, and they are capable of future salvation or damnation like men. The orientals pretend that these genii inhabited the world many thousand years before the creation of Adam, under the reigns of several princes, who all bore the common name of Solomon; that falling at length into an almost general corruption, Eblis was sent to drive them into a remote part of the earth, there to be confined; and that some of that generation still remaining were by Tahmurat, one of the ancient kings of Persia, forced to retreat into the famous mountain of Kaph. They also established several ranks and degrees among this kind of beings, some being called absolutely Jim, others Peri or fairies; some Die or giants, others Tucwin or fates.