Fire Djinn of Oman

By all accounts, Muhammed al-Hinai is a respectable man. He is the father of a total of five children and works at a local factory just 20 miles away from his '*modest*' cement house. He went to a top local university, and is not the sort of man that would be prone to flights of fancy. He is a devout Muslim, but he feels that he must sometimes keep his voice down in his own home as to make certain that the evil djinn that haunt his town don't hear him. This is apparently a belief shared by almost everyone who lives in Bahla, Oman. Bahla has a long history of encounters with malevolent spirits, and this is the story of how Muhammed al-Hinai would come to have a tale of his own to tell.

## Green Flames of the Genies

A reporter for the *Pacific Standard* came to interview Muhammed about his encounter and about the wider tradition of djinn encounters in the region in October of 2015. His confrontation with the supernatural had apparently taken place in February of that year, and has left him somewhat afraid to enter his own yard. On the cold winter's day in question, he caught sight of a mass of bright green flames hovering over the sand behind his house. The verdant flames darted about at bizarre diagonal angles. It never grew in intensity or subsided like one would expect ordinary fire to eventually do, and seemed to hover in that same area for '*several minutes*'.

As if this wasn't already odd enough, Muhammed also claimed that he could hear what he described as evil cackling emanating from the unnatural inferno - and that he had seen a pale feminine figure clad in rags stood atop the skeletal Sidr tree in his yard. She had apparently appeared just before the supernatural fire manifested itself, and had then either disappeared as the fire appeared or had vanished along with the fire after its minutes of terror-bringing had elapsed.

One might be driven to suggest that this phenomenon may have had a natural explanation. Spontaneous fires are of course not uncommon under the blazing heat of the Arabic sun, but this naturalistic theory goes up in smokeless fire (get it?) when one considers that this event took place in February, and that the flames hovered over sand and solid rock, meaning that there wouldn't have been any materials to ignite and especially nothing to give the blaze its odd green colouration.

Muhammed is not alone in his experiences, however, and as I mentioned at the beginning of this article - Oman seems to be utterly infested with the troublesome fire spirits.

## A Conflagration of Spirits

This same reporter evidently did quite a thorough job at exploring djinn traditions in the area. He was able to talk to a local family who was plagued by weekly manifestations of an odd phenomenon outside their house. A '*low moaning*' would emanate from some nebulous location in the morning, and the family would wake to find that meticulous piles of sand and stones had been constructed underneath the window of their infant son's bedroom. Some other djinn witnesses were a group of farmers who reported being menaced by spirits which would call their names from far-off locations and lure them out into the cold.

Stories of possession also abound, with the reporter being told by someone who had allegedly been possessed by one of the entities that it felt like someone was constantly blowing directly into his ears, and another man claiming that his 30-year-old brother had been found on some nights muttering '*unintelligible phrases*' up against his wall.

## History of a Haunting

Bahla faces enormous mountains to its north and vast expanses of desolate desert to the south, and is dominated by the imposing shadow of a spectacular mud-brick fortress constructed in the 12th century. Its magnificent tower reaches 155ft into the air. For three great centuries, the dominant local tribe of Banu Nebhan ruled over the area - spreading Ibadism (which is still the dominant school of Islam in the area today) as well as stories of malevolent djinn stalking the deserts after dark. According to Abdulfattah al-Humairi - a local historian - the powerful people of that fort attracted equally-powerful djinn to the area. Some of these mighty Bahlawi generals were apparently so powerful that they could command the spirits from atop the tower.

The city is surrounded by a 14-kilometer-long wall which was built in the 15th century to protect the settlement from the dangers of the harsh desert outside. Obviously, this has greatly impacted on the perceptions of outsiders of all levels of tangibility hosted by the inhabitants of the city. Stories about Bedouin people who would come to the walls at night in order to kidnap people and take them off to Dubai or Saudi Arabia where they would be sold like livestock. Rumours about flesh-eating ghouls also abounded. These odd urban legends are still very much present today - particularly surrounding three abandoned mosques that sit in the desert just outside the walls of the town. Some believe that these were originally used by Sufi Muslims (Islamic mystics) who were later banished from the town due to their collaboration with the djinn, while others even allege that the mysterious mosques had simply flown into the area and landed there one day.

There is still a vast, ongoing tradition of black magic and belief in all manner of supernatural entities and practices within the walls of Bahla. Some writers have even called it '*Oman's Magical Oasis*'. It is clear that these traditions are not going away any time soon, especially not if the djinn continue to show themselves there as often as they seemingly still do into the modern day...

## Source

'*The Jinn of Oman*' by Gaar Adams for the *Pacific Standard*