Necronomicon

The Necronomicon, also the Book of the Dead and Kitab al-Azif, is a fictional grimoire appearing in numerous Cthulhu Mythos stories. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound" (1922), though its purported author, Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in Lovecraft's "The Nameless City". Other authors such as August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith also cited the Necronomicon in their works. Many readers have believed it to be a real work, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it. Capitalizing on the notoriety of the fictional volume, real-life publishers have printed many books entitled "Necronomicon" since Lovecraft's death.

## History

According to Lovecraft's "History of the Necronomicon" (1927), the book was originally called Al-Azif, an Arabic word that Lovecraft defined as "that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons". One Arabic/English dictionary translates Azīf (عزيف) as "whistling (of the wind); weird sound or noise". Gabriel Oussani defined it as "the eerie sound of the jinn in the wilderness".

In the "History", Abdul Alhazred is said to have been a "half-crazed Arab" who worshipped Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu in the early 700s CE. He is described as being from Sanaá in Yemen. He visited the ruins of Babylon, the "subterranean secrets" of Memphis and the Empty Quarter of Arabia. In his last years, he lived in Damascus, where he wrote Al-Azif before his sudden and mysterious death in 738, which, according to Ibn Khallikan, happened when he was "seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses".

In subsequent years, the book gained considerable, though surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age. In 950, it was translated into Greek and given the title Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas, a fictional scholar from Constantinople. This version impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts before being suppressed and burnt in 1050 by Patriarch Michael. After this attempted suppression, the work was "only heard of furtively" until it was translated from Greek into Latin by Olaus Wormius. Both the Latin and Greek text were banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, though Latin editions were apparently published in 15th century Germany and 17th century Spain. A Greek edition was printed in Italy in the first half of the 16th century. The Elizabethan magician John Dee allegedly translated the book - presumably into English - but Lovecraft wrote that this version was never printed and only fragments survive.

According to Lovecraft, the Arabic version of Al-Azif had already disappeared by the time the Greek version was banned in 1050, though he cites "a vague account of a secret copy appearing in San Francisco during the current [20th] century" that "later perished in fire". The Greek version, he writes, has not been reported "since the burning of a certain Salem man's library in 1692".

## Contents

Necronomicon is claimed to hold descriptions of many of the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones, along with several methods on the summoning and binding of these creatures, along with many others. The very act of studying the text is inherently dangerous, as those who attempt to master its arcane knowledge generally meet terrible ends.