sábado, 1 de junio de 2019

Biography of Abdallah al-Hazraj


Biography of Abdallah al-Hazraj
By Elias Nyarlathotep Otis & Anna Nancy Owen
Translated by Luis G. Abbadie[i]

The following biography is an impressive and polemical work belonging to the introductory materials of Otis & Owen’s Necronomicon translation; working from the extensive library of the Russian cult of Cthulhu Zohavat Fseh, they put out in 2009 a tremendous compilation of research and samples of rare pseudobiblia. According to their own account, working from several Greek fragments, they reconstructed what they considered a nearly complete copy of Theodorus philetas’ 1228 translation of the Kitab Al-Azif. They then proceeded to attempt a reconstruction of what might have been the original Arabic text, substituting various terms and excising various texts from other sources –such as the Book of Eibon, Sauthenerom, the Book of Enoch, etc.- which they considered had been part of Alhazred’s library but not of Al-Azif, so these fragments were turned into appendixes.
Click here to read the original text.

Among the various research essays, this extensive biography of Abdallah al-Hazraj (Abdul Alhazred) stands out. The reader may be familiar with the widely accepted versions of Alhazred’s life  (either the Armitage / Carter school of thought, represented in professor Henry Armitage’s monography “A Brief Biography of Abdul Alhazred”, published online in Nightscapes); the Philetas / Tyson version, found in Theodorus Philetas’ introduction to his Greek translation and greatly studied and expanded upon by Donald Tyson in his various works on Necronomica; or the Llopis / Al Burux school, expounded in Al Burux’s treatise Els Que Vigilen, and in Rafael Llopis’ book El Novísimo Algazife, o Libro de las Postrimerías, which attributes to the Mad Arab a secret Khemetic faith, and an extraordinary longevity by identifying him with Abdelésar, whom others –me included- identify as a disciple of Alhazred).


Otis’ & Owen’s conclusions are at times extremely controversial, but they are all carefully reflected upon and documented, and whether one may agree or strongly disagree over this or that aspect, I hold no doubts that, no matter what your previous concept of Alhazred’s life is, you will find some groundbreaking angles and items that may cause you to reconsider some aspects of this extraordinary life led by the Prophet of the Old Ones.
-Luis G. Abbadie
June 1, 2019
Montecruz, Jalisco

“Text [meaning the original Russian text] proofread and approved by the Hierarchs of the cult of Cthulhu Zohavat Fseh! Literary editor, compiler and publisher - Elias Nyarlathotep Otis. Reproduction and replication of the entire publication and its fragments by any available means is not only not prohibited, but also encouraged.”

1. The Arab conquests on the eve of the Nativity of Al-Hazraj

The Arab conquest began during the life of Muhammad. In 630, shortly after the adoption of Islam by Abu Sufyan and the Meccans and two years before the death of the prophet, the Arabs subjugated almost all of Arabia, including Yemen, to their rule. In 631 (an insignificant fact, which, however, we still remember when it comes to dating Al-Asif) the Islamic calendar was reformed: the year began to consist of twelve lunar months (and, therefore, 11 days shorter than the solar year), and the Hijra became the reference point of the new era - Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina, which took place in the year 622 according to the Julian calendar.

In 632, the year of the death of Mohammed and the election of Abu Bakr, the companion of the prophet, the first "Righteous caliph" in the Persian Empire (in the territory of which Al-Hazraj was born) Yezdigerd III of the Sassanid clan, the last shahinshah of Iran, reigned. In the same year, the Arabs invaded Byzantine Syria and Palestine, as well as Sassanian Mesopotamia, thus declaring war on both great powers, weakened by lengthy civil strife. In 634 they began the conquest of the ancestral Persian territories and Asia Minor, in 635 (already under the rule of the second caliph, Umar) they took over Damascus, in 636 they conquered Phenicia. The army of the caliphate was divided into three parts: one is directed against Egypt, the other at Syria, the third at Persia. In the same year, most of Mesopotamia came under Umar’s rule, the next year the Byzantines handed Jerusalem over to the Arabs, and a year later they also lost Antioch.

It may seem strange that a territory cut off from Persia in this way, were already inhabited by Arabs in the 4th century (mainly from the Hasanid tribe who professed Nestorianism; their kindred tribe, the Lakhmids, lived toward the east and adhered to monophysite Christianity) by decree of Emperor Julian II and therefore known as Beth Arabaye, or Land of Arabia, nevertheless, they did not want to reunite immediately with their fellow tribesmen, and put up armed resistance for almost three years after being surrounded by Umar's armies. However, we must recall that it was in Nusaybin, the capital of Beth Arabaye, that one of the largest academies of that time was located (at the end of the 6th century, it employed about a thousand scientists working in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine), and the whole region was famous for its ethnic and religious diversity. (here you could meet Zoroastrian, Manichean, Sabian, Gnostic, Monophysite, Monofelite, Nestorian, Arian, Orthodox Christians, Dahriti materialists and pagans of Greek, Kurdish, Persian, Jewish, Arab, Khazar, Armenian, Azerbaijani or Azeri origins), it is not difficult to understand why the educated and tolerant inhabitants of this land refused to voluntarily lay down their arms before the hordes of illiterate fanatics. However, in 639, after a short siege, Nusaybin fell, and over the next two years, the entire territory of Beth Arabaya was conquered.

2. Jabir al-Hazraj

It is here and precisely in this troubled time, three years after the fall of Nusaybin, upon 3 Ramadan year 21 from Hijra (which corresponds to the 8th of August 642 according to the Gregorian chronology or 4 Uluru according to the Babylonian calendar, which was common among the Beth-Arabaye Sabians) Abdullah ibn Jabir ibn Abdullah ibn Amr al-Hazraj al-Ansari was born. This day is celebrated by the devout cthulhuists as Al-Hazraj's Nativity and Day of Cthulhu. Some modern sources point to something completely different. Alkhazred's "true" name: Abdullah ibn Abu Bin ibn Saub al-Hazraj. However, besides the wrong suffix of the generic name (Nisba), here he find present another absolutely unbelievable element for the Arabic name formation “Ibn Abu Bin ibn ...” meaning either "The son of the father of Bin, the son ..." (the name Bin is absent in Arabic), or in general (if read "Bin" as one of the transcriptions of the word with the meaning "a son") “The son of the father of the son of the son...” Therefore, we would ignore this version of the name as unreliable, even if we did not know the name of the real father of Abdallah (just as his father could not be called Ibn Abu Abdallah, as some claim, because it would mean “The son of Abdallah’s father”, with the result that al-Hazraj himself would have been his own son).

The new prophet was born light-skinned and green-eyed, so superstitious Arabs often called him “The son of the jinn”, although here, of course, only the Persian genes of the mother affected. Very little is known about his parents. Father, Jabir al-Hazraj (607-697), a faithful Muslim from Yasrib (Medina), is known as one of the first collectors of Hadith - legends about the prophet Muhammad. His literacy (Jabir was one of the most educated people of the caliphate of that time) caused him to be sent on a mission to enlightened Nusaybin, where he served as a clerk and interpreter. He came from a tribe of Hazrajtes who (along with another Arab tribe of Iasriba - Awits) were known under the collective name of the Ansars (the grandmother of Mohammed comes from the Hazrajtes, so it can be safely stated that in the fourth and fifth tribes both prophets are kin). It is the representatives of this tribe in the Quran that are often called “Hypocrites”, because, unlike the first Meccan comrades of the Muslim prophet, the adoption of Islam for them from the very beginning became an act of politics, not faith: they accepted Muhammad as their leader in order to stop the strife between their tribes, to rise above the Judean tribes and, "If it be the will of Allah," to conquer the neighbouring lands.

Before converting to the new faith, the inhabitants of Yasriba worshiped mainly two goddesses of the ancient Arabian pantheon, Manat and Uzza, and in order to appease their new allies (and also the worshipers of Lat to the Meccans), at first, Muhammad even recognized the intercession of these three goddesses as "Daughters of Allah". Later, gaining strength and experience, he rejected these remnants of Jahiliyyah (paganism), declaring their "Revelations" about their intercession “Shaytan's verses” and excluding them from the Quran. Unfortunately, it is not known for certain (not from Muslim sources - denying the very fact of the existence of these verses), when the worship of Lat, Manat and Uzza was finally rejected. It is impossible to say for sure whether Jabir was sincere in his new faith. (we believe he was). However, it seems to us very probable that, as a child brought up in the worship of Manat, he could but adopt some features of the cult of this goddess and not take them with him to his monotheistic life, just as even atheists today adorn their speech with turns like "O Lord" or "Mother of God." It cannot be discarded that "pagan survivals" in his father might exert any influence on the early religious ideas of Abdallah ibn Jabir.

Curiously the Mad Poet’s father left him a hadith in which Mohammed says: “When night comes and twilight comes, watch over thy children, for the demons gather at this time. When the hour has passed, shut the doors and mark the name of Allah. Shaitan will not open the locked doors. ” It would be interesting to know in which year exactly Jabir recorded this maxim. Whether he remembered it after the young Abdullah renounced the "true faith" - or maybe it was some kind of prophecy, which Mohammed addressed to him, Jabir, personally…?

3. Abdallah’s Mother

The patriarchal history of the Islamized society did not convey to us the name of the mother of Abdallah Ibn Jabir (using the Arabic name-formation system, we can conditionally call it Bint al-Hassan - the daughter of Hasan - and Umm Abdallah - the mother of Abdallah). It is only known that she was of Armenian-Persian origin. (this confirms not only the subsequent flight of Abdallah towards Armenia, but also his use of the thirty-six-letter system to build his correspondence tables) and professed Sabeism. In fact, Sabeism is a Gnostic non-Christian dogma, expressed in the worship of the stars, the deification of the heavenly bodies. In ancient times, Sabeism was especially prevalent in Babylon and Assyria, and later in Arabia, Syria, and Asia Minor. Sabean temples served simultaneously as observatories. Even more actively than the fixed stars, Sabeans worshiped the wandering stars, who were credited with influencing everything on earth, nature, and people.
integral to Sabeism were magic and astrology. As you can see from the text of Al-Azif (even from those potions that are familiar to the reader from the Simon Necronomicon or from the essentially fictional Donald Tyson The Wanderings of Alhazred), bringing significant innovations to the religion of his ancestors on the maternal line, Abdullah al-Hazraj remained faithful to the spirit of the Gnostic teachings of Mesopotamia until the end of his days (Gnosticism is generally much more tolerant to internal differences and interpretations than traditional Abrahamic cults; it is enough to compare, for example, Manichaeism with the only traditional trend of Sabeism that has survived to this day - Mandeism, or "Christianity of St. John" - to notice the depth of their differences, which do not interfere their community).

Later, the Old Syrian pagans of the Hellenistic culture were also called sabiyas, which, around 830, adopted the name of sabiyi, in order to use among the Islamic peoples religious tolerance, which the Koran promised to present sabiyam. They lived mostly in Northern Mesopotamia (in Garan, Edessa, Baghdad, Nusaybin and others). Their religion is a mixture of Chaldeanism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism (the features of these teachings can be found in Al-Azif).
The surviving names of the highest archons honored by the co-religionists Umm Abdullah (Naxyr, Nadur and Naryx), suggest the Mediterranean roots of the local flow of Gnosticism: Naryx is ​​a toponym of one of the cities of Locrida, Nadur that of Malta ( unfortunately, we did not find the name Naxyr). Apparently, among the sacred texts of this Sabean church was a scripture called Sophinerom (Sauthenerom[1]), one of the presently known Gnostic texts about the Old Ones, where the names Cthulhu, Hastur, Naxyr and others are found alongside prophecies about the coming of the Son of Man. Probably, in his childhood years, Ibn Jabir also became acquainted with other Gnostic scriptures: many of the thoughts expressed in his teachings closely intersect with the contents of the Book of Enoch, the Manichaean Book of Giants and other apocryphal texts.

It is difficult to say whether Bint Al-Hassan and Jabir were married by force (it is known that at the time of her marriage she was about fifteen years, while Jabir was over thirty), or the role provided a good education from al-Hazraj’s senior. One way or another, she was not the first and not the only wife of the Medina clerk, and her husband, who was constantly absent from home because of the incessant military campaigns (due to the particular danger of the campaigns, the Arabs of that time had to abandon the old tradition, when the wives and children of the soldiers followed behind the troops), she could hardly have given to his son (also far from the only one: even from this wife he had at least one daughter and another son) a lot of attention.

He was virtually replaced with his own father, Abdallah Hassan, the father of his mother, who was only slightly older than Jabir. the child al-Hazraj was fed with abundant Chaldean wisdom from ancient Babylonia by his mother and grandfather, but both came from a family of illiterate shepherds and merchants, and the educated Jabir did not find the time or desire to teach his son to read (probably by the age of nine he was only able to write and count, but apparently already in three of his native languages: Arabic, Persian and Armenian).

When the boy was a little older, he cared for herd goats: first under the supervision of Hassan, then independently. Since, according to the Qur'an, Sabeanism (actually, while it may seem strange, with Christians and Jews, who often rely main enemies of Islam, but in the time of Muhammad were first its main allies against paganism) refers to "those who believe in Allah and the last days" (which, to be fair, is not quite true, as some Sabean doctrine can evidence obvious features of polytheism, although most of them - including their treatment by al-Hazraj - do indeed have a pronounced eschatological character), and therefore, from the standpoint of orthodox Muslims, are a privileged category in comparison with idolaters, it’s not to be ruled out that Hassan and his family were not even formally converted to Islam, but retained the opportunity to profess the religion of their ancestors.

4. The Fall of the Sassanid Empire

Meanwhile, the caliphate inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Sassanid army, invaded Armenia, Libya and Algeria, finally conquered Syria, Palestine, Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Egypt. In Alexandria, Caliph Osman, replacing Umar, who was killed by a Persian Christian in 644, in 646, ordered the commander Amr to burn the famous library, badly damaged by both Romans and Christians. It is reported that while the caliph said: “If these books say what is already in the Qur'an, they are useless. If they say something else, they are harmful. Therefore, in both cases, they must be burned,” however, some Alexandrian manuscripts are mentioned as surviving until the 8th century. Finally, in 651, the Sassanid state finally passed under the authority of the caliphate. Emperor Yezdegerd fled to Merv, where he was treacherously murdered by either the owner of a water mill, or an Arabian horseman, who was pursuing the defeated ruler. The Arabs seized the Merv oasis and reached the Amu Darya. In different parts of Iran, weak attempts of resistance against the new government breoke out, but they were brutally suppressed. Innocent or not, some relatives of Abdallah’s mother fall under the “purge” and, having no other way out, she decided to send him to her relatives living in Armenia (for some reason, not currently established, she was unable to go along with her son). This event, which occurred on March 17, 651, according to the modern European calendar, and which we call Flight, or Exodus (in Arabic “Hijra”, like the analogical event in the life of Muhammad), will be a turning point in the life of the future religious teacher.
Armenia at that time was experiencing a period of severe crisis. Part of it still had some state autonomy, although it was strongly influenced by Persia and Byzantium. Former governors (Martspany) of the Sassanid used in many ways unlimited power in their subordinate territories. The Arabs who invaded Armenia appointed their own governors, the Ostikans, while the Byzantine territories were ruled by the imperial quarrels. In addition, the Monotheelic branch of Christianity, which dominated Armenia’s territory and was anathematized by the Byzantine church for a long time, finally received support from Emperor Heraclius I in 638, which, however, did not interfere with the peaceful coexistence of Christian and non-Christian churches on the territory of Armenia and the Gnostic churches. And nowadays family ties in the Caucasus are often more important than religious affiliation, so it is not surprising that the Gnostic grandson of Hasan of Armenian origin from the Persian Beth Arabaye could count on the support of his relatives not only in the formerly Persian, but also in the Christianized Byzantine territories of Armenia.

5. The beginning of the Wanderings

According to the text of Al-Azif, the young Ibn Jabir reached the lands of Masis (foothills of Ararat) in early February 652. It is not surprising that the whole area spent almost a year on the road between these not very distant areas: it is enough to recall the age of al-Hazraj, the primitive vehicles of the time, the rough terrain and in particular that it occurred in the midst of war. On February 7th he settled down for the night near an ancient sanctuary, a place of worship serving some of the sects of pagan Gnostic orientation, worshippers of the Old Ones. Awakened three hours before dawn by a howling wolf, he witnessed a strange ritual, which made a lasting impression on him. Since Since these events are carefully described by Abdullah himself, we will not dwell on them in detail. Our task does not preclude the conviction of readers concerning the absolute authenticity of the story, which is told by the Mad Poet. On the contrary, we believe that childhood, fatigue, lack of sleep, shock from parting with loved ones and from the ritual itself; as well as some kind of grass that, as Ibn Jabir mentioned nine days before his death, he carelessly threw into the bonfire that evening, and seven dozen years that passed from the events themselves to the time of their recording could have a significant impact on a number of details, including the most supernatural ones. However, the fact remains that the incident in the foothills of Ararat caused some visions or revelations in the young al-Hazraj, which in many respects determined his further fate.

Leaving the place of sacrifice, Abdullah, following the instructions of his mother, continued to Armenia. However, having reached the crowded places, he learned that the Byzantine patrician Pasagnates had handed over Armenia to the Arabs. It made no sense to move on, the dangers that awaited him in Beth-Arabaya apparently were not over, therefore, led by its youthful fantasies about ancient Babylon and recently acquired revelations, in which Chaldean magic played a significant role, al-Hazraj turns back in Mesopotamia, but not to Nusaybin, but to the land of Babylonia. About this period of the poet’s life we ​​know practically nothing. For a long time in the ruins of Babylon (It is said that he stayed there for two years), Ur, Nippur and other ancient cities of Mesopotamia, where he indulged in meditations and reflections, and, perhaps, excavations. No one knows in what way – rational or otherwise - he could read the texts and how he could learn the ancient wisdom. It is said that at this time he became acquainted with the legendary sorcerer Yak-Thoob, his first teacher, who knew several languages and the history of Mesopotamia. Perhaps it is in this period that he learned the language of the ancient Sumerians, and translated into Arabic the Chaldean Maklu Tablets, the Scripture of Magan and others which he would include as annexes in Al-Azif. In addition, during this period the young man took (or was demanded from by his Teacher – this cannot be ascertained) strict vows of abstinence from sexual activity and habitat in human dwellings (when and for what reasons he abandoned his vows are not established, but in Yemen he found housing, and wife), and upon leaving Babylonia nearly seven years later, he was a completely different person: Mature, increased in wisdom... and certainly very much feral. “childhood friends turned away from me [after that], and I from them” – wrote the Prophet himself about this period of his life.

Leaving the ancient ruins around 658-659, at seventeen, he passed through Mosul (ancient Nineveh) and went to Beth-Arabaye to see his family, but there he found out that his mother, grandfather, brothers and sisters died under unexplained circumstances (according to the “Official version”, committed suicide), the house was destroyed, the herd stricken down, exterminated or hijacked. None of the residents could explain to him the reasons for this tragedy, and to the end of his days, al-Hazraj was convinced that the curse of the Old Ones was to blame. Perhaps he was right... but even if it were so (though why was that necessary? Did not the himself prophet bless them, Abdallah al-Hazraj?...), perhaps the hands of the occupying authorities in Mesopotamia brought down this curse?...

6. Mu'awiya ibn Abu Sufyan

Shortly before the completion of the first reclusion of Ibn Jabir (in 656-m) the Islamic world was under serious civil strife. Shiite groups led by Ali Ibn Abu Talib arrived in Mecca. The nephew of Marwan Osman the Umayyad ordering to seize the leaders of the rebels, however, caused the Shi’ite Caliph’s house to be rushed in to kill him, and Ali became the last of the four so-called "Rightly Guided Caliphs" (which, for obvious reasons, to this day is recognized as such only by Shi’ites but not by Sunnis). In December of the same year, a battle took place between the army of Caliph Ali and the rebel troops, led by Talha and al-Zubayr, known as the Battle of the Camel. The inspiration of the rebellion was Aisha - the daughter of the Caliph Abu Bakr and the beloved wife of Muhammad. As a result of the battle, Aisha’s supporters were defeated, and Aisha herself was taken into custody in Mecca, where she subsequently died.

The following year, the famous Battle of Siffin took place - the battle between Ali’s armies and the rebel army of the Syrian governor of Mu’awiya. The battle was unsuccessful for the rebels, and then Muaviya decided to apply cunning, fully demonstrating his resourcefulness and non-dogmatism: he ordered his soldiers to pin scrolls of the Qu’ran on the spears. Then the pious caliph ordered to stop the battle. Mu'awiya kept his army, and in the camp of Ali began a schism among the soldiers, some of whom (12,000) protested his indecisiveness and left the camp - they were called haridjits. They chose Caliph Abdallah Ibn Wahba from among themselves and later opposed both the Sunnis and the Shi’ites. In 659, Mu'awiya, without the consent of the Caliph Ali, concluded a separate peace with Byzantium, and in the year 660 invaded Iraq. Since here, in Basra, occurred the historic meeting of the future Caliph Mu'awiya ibn Abu Sufyan and future religious teacher Abdullah ibn Jabir, which would lead to the search for the legendary Irem and being persecuted in the unfavourable political situation in the country, a few more words should be said about this most outstanding personality.

Mu'awiya ibn Abu Sufyan was born 20 years before the Hijra. As the son of the head of the community, by the time of the preaching of Islam, he was one of fourteen Quraish, who knew how to write. As in the case of the elder al-Hazraj, literacy put him in a privileged position. Scribes became important government officials, tribal leaders and even kings. Mu’awiya was one of the most famous scribes of the Qur'an, one of the ten companions who recorded the revelations from the mouth of Muhammad and many other things that the Prophet commanded him, until the last days of the life of the Allah’s Messenger. After the death of the prophet, Mu'awiyah promulgated the Hadith to his companions, among whom was Abdallah’s father. Waging constant war with the Byzantines, Mu’awiya often wrote to the Caliph petitions for the creation of a Muslim fleet, but Umar did not give him consent. The construction of warships began only under Osman, who strictly forbade Mu'awiya to force people to participate in the battle at sea.

It is interesting to observe that shipbuilding and general seafaring were developed by the Arabs from ancient times. As noted by a prominent Soviet Islamic scholar, O. I. Klimovich, in his Book of the Qu’ran, "Even in pre-Islamic times, Arab navigators undertook distant voyages" and were well known "Along the entire eastern coast of Africa and on the adjacent islands, as well as along the coasts of the Persian Gulf, Iran, India, Ceylon, up to China" (around the year 300, the Arabs formed a trade colony in Guangzhou). At the same time, the Arabs conducted maritime trade through Ceylon, Sumatra, Indonesia. Undoubtedly, in addition to the exchange of material goods, this led to an extensive cultural exchange: in various parts of the caliphate, in the early periods of its existence, echoes of stories and legends from almost all of the Old World could be found (which in the future, of course, could influence the formation of Ibn Jabir’s worldview).

The insightful no doubt saw the benefits from the creation of a strong fleet and development of sea routes. Thanks to his talent Cyprus was annexed to the caliphate. In 651 there was the first major naval battle between Muslim and Byzantine fleets, and, despite their numerical superiority, the Byzantines were defeated. Mu'awiya’s authority grew with each new conquest. A prudent politician, he tried not to gain additional enemies and was restrained even with obvious ill-wishers. He had the gift to choose the people in whom he could rely. These were the most important reasons for the stability of his position. It is known that he had authority not only among Muslims, but also among representatives of other religions. A story tells that in the dispute between the Maronites (Eastern Catholic Church) with Jacobite (Monophysite) Patriarch Theodore, in June 658th, Mu'awiya acted as arbitrator.
The Prophet of the Old Ones.
Author Unknown

 
7. The Blessing of the Umayyad

The Muslim historians of the ‘Abbasid caliphate period ensured that this page of the biography of the first Umayyad caliph was permanently withdrawn from the annals. However, through the efforts of the Syrian Bishop Severi Seboht, a mathematician and astronomer who lived at that time in the Keneshre monastery in Northern Mesopotamia (thus, a fellow countryman of al-Hazraj), who was familiar with Mu'awiya and aware of the aforesaid disputation, who gave mankind the astrolabe and the concept of zero, legends about this event were preserved (partly orally, partly - in manuscripts stored by the priests of the cult of the CZF[ii] to the present day. Unfortunately, few details are known, but the fragmentary information at our disposal, and the subsequent history of the caliphate are reason enough to believe that the two learned men could easily find a common language. They, despite their difference in age and religion, acknowledged each other smoothly as equals above alien dogmas Abdullah learned from Mu'awiya that his father was alive (the elder al-Hazraj had died already in 697, having lived 90 years as would later his son), but did not wish to meet him. In addition, due to the depth of the affected young scribe’s poetry, Mu’awiya, who had known Mohammed, easily recognized in al-Hazraj new prophet and asked for his blessing, and it was received. According to Ibn Jabir’s blessing as given to Mu’awiya and extended to Abu Sufyan, the Umayyads were supposed to become kings of the Arab people (indeed, prior to Muawiya, the Caliphs were elected by the community, starting with his own son Yazid, the caliphate became a monarchical state) as long as "Worshippers through images and likenesses(thus al-Hazraj wisely designated fine art and sculpture, as well as images of the divine of animate and inanimate nature, to play a significant role in the service of Chaldeans) were allowed to pursue their faith freely in the lands under the caliphs. Over half a century later, the blessing of al-Hazraj turned into a curse for the Umayyads who violated this covenant. (on this matter, we'll return in due time), but the educated and tolerant Muawiya saw nothing impossible in complying with this simple requirement. Despite the fact that the conversation between the two great representatives of the era lasted about three hours, more about its content, alas, is not known.

In the same year, an anti-Arab uprising flared up in Armenia, provoked by Muawiya’s agents in order to weaken Ali’s forces. The next year, the Kharijites (also, apparently, not without the support or passive complicity of this talented politician) slew Ali ibn Abu Talib. The Caliphate was taken for a short time by his son Hassan, after which Mu’awiya, with the approval of the majority of authoritative representatives of the community, took power into his own hands, transferred the capital to Damascus, where he had held the position of governor for so long, and proceeded to implement his long-standing idea – to build a fleet in the Syrian ports.

8. Rub Al-Khali

Around this time, Abdullah al-Hazrajah reached the great desert of Rub al-Khali, where, according to legend, was supposed to lie Thousand-Pillared Irem, the city of the dead people of Ad, also known as Ubar (the ruins of which, on the territory of present-day Oman, were actually discovered in the 90s of the 20th century by the Nicholas Klepp expedition). On the edge of the desert, where Ibn Jabir was in meditation and fasting, he was visited by voices and visions, as a result of which, inexplicably, he spent a long time in the desert ( apparently, without water, food and shelter), he, according to the text of Al-Azif, acquired abilities that a superstitious person could call nothing short of supernatural: phenomenal ease in learning unknown dialects, deciphering unknown alphabets and even understanding animal languages. It is possible to believe or not the information given in this book, but it is not difficult to assume that such or similar abilities could be found in a person who had been studying to control his mind for many years. He could hardly understand a foreign language, barely hearing or seeing unfamiliar words; but lengthy mental training, coupled with insight caused by long meditations and austerity, could well allow others to learn foreign dialects much more successfully than an unprepared person could. As for the languages ​​of animals, judging by the further narration of Al-Azif, we are talking about the ability to gain wisdom through observation of the habits of all kinds of creatures, and this interpretation of the ability appears to be quite natural.

Deeper into the Crimson Desert the young prophet went, for so long he spent his time there, until finally his tracks were lost for many years. Those who knew him said that he was killed or abducted by jinn. About this period of the life of Ibn Jabir (approximately from 660 to 669) we can judge only on the basis of scant few words in Al-Azif and our own guesses.

According to the stories of Abdallah, near the end of his wanderings in the desert (to survive which he learned through observation the habits of desert animals) he discovered Irem of the thousand pillars, where for a long time he studied ancient texts. Excavations in Ubar found nothing that could be mistaken for a Irem’s columns and its mysterious dungeons, so it can be said with a high degree of confidence that, having reached Ubar, al-Hazraj was again overtaken by visions in which reality mingled with fantasies (however, there is also a version that the word traditionally translated as "pillars", actually means "giants"). It is said that magicians of Maghreb (mukarrib) visited there in altered states of consciousness. They used three methods: specially-consumed drugs, mastering lucid dreaming and practising a complete absence of thought. There, in this mystical space, they communicated with the inhabitants of the Void and learned the art of Gnosis - the highest achievement in Sufi and Maghreb mysticism, during which the mukarrib dropped off the shackles of matter and became absorbed unto the Void. Furthermore, using certain secret techniques, they went beyond the boundaries of the Void and gained incredible power over the beings of both realities — over people and over the jinn. One way or another, it was here that Abdallah’s views on the emergence of the world, the nature of the Old Ones and the forthcoming eschatological catastrophe were finally shaped, since he already had them delineated in Sana'a, Yemen, where he went after wandering in the wilderness, he acquired his Mad Poet nickname and wrote his first work, as the Book of the Jinn and later the basis of Al-Azif.

It is said that the Book of the Jinn, written by Ibn Jabir (to whom some sources are credited with a total of 12 works) was later adscribed to Abu Said ibn Abul Hasan Yasar al-Basri, an Islamic theologian from Medina, the same age as Abdallah, the son of the handmaiden of one of Muhammad’s wives and the founder of Sufism, wwhom al-Hazraj met many years later, in 721, in Basra. Through him, according to legends, the book fell into the hands of the Sufis and is guarded by them to the present. Al-Basri preached frailty of life and asceticism, which fit well with the views of Sabeism. When al-Hajjaj became the ruler of Iraq, al-Basri participated in organizing the final work of marking letters in the text of the Koran with diacritical signs. It is also said that the Book of the Jinn was known to Algerian magician and astrologer al-Buni, who used material from it in his treatise "The Sun of great knowledge." There is also an opinion that passages from the Book of the Jinn, later included in Al-Azif, were translated by John Dee under the title Grimoirum Imperium”, but we still have no data to support or disprove these versions.

9. Life in Yemen

Almost a decade wandering in the desert, probably somehow fulfilled the vows given by Ibn Jabir: settling in Yemen, he not only acquired a house and followers, but also entered into close relationships with a woman whose name (like the name of his mother, and the name of his daughter) story did not save, for the same patriarchal reasons. There are legends that his beloved was royal in blood and probably bred from Saif Dhu Yazan, the last Jewish king of Yemen, who conquered these lands in 575-576. The legends supply this romantic story with a lot of completely implausible details. In particular, it is mentioned that Abdallah was then 15 years old, despite the fact that he celebrated his fifteenth birthday among the ruins of Babylon; it is said that al-Hazraj lived at the court of the king of Yemen, despite the fact that Sassanid governors ruled there since the death of Sayf at the end of the VIth century, and the imams of the caliphate since the thirties on the VIIth; it is also mentioned in connection to this that Ibn Jabir suffered from having “cut off his penis, nose, ears, and scarred his cheeks, forced him to watch the illegal fruit of his union with the princess being burned, and forced him to eat the baby’s corpse, then he was taken to the east, into Rub al-Khali, where was left without water to die,” but, as you know, he was in Rub al-Khali before he was in Yemen, and he also had healthy genitals, judging by the fact that it was in Yemen that shortly before his departure from this country, he had a daughter. In the same way, al-Hazraj could not be a student of the famous astronomer al-Biruni, as indicated by another legend: firstly, Abu Reyhan Mohammed ibn Ahmed al-Biruni never lived in Yemen; secondly, he was born two centuries and a half after Ibn Jabir’s death.
Abdullah lived in Sana'a for about twenty years, and therefore became known as “Mad Arab from Yemen,” although he was neither born in this country, nor a thoroughbred Arab, nor a madman in the psychiatric sense of the word: despite the fact that he often led pretty bizarre endeavors, we don’t have any evidence to support his insanity, with the exception of his chronic inability to sustain the thread of his narrative for several paragraphs, without straying off to other topics (sometimes, judging by the text of Al-Azif, he cannot even figure out himself whether he feared the arrival of the Great Old Ones or, alternatively, awaited them with joyful impatience).

Some historians believe that in Sana'a Al-Hazraj became acquainted with the writings of neo-Platonist Proclus (412-485), who was well oriented in astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and metaphysics, but was at the same time also quite versed in the techniques of magical theurgy to cause visible phenomenons under the goddess Hecate, and, moreover, was initiated into the Egyptian and Chaldean mysteries. Apparently, during the Yemeni period of Abdallah’s life he worked on his translation into Arabic of ancient texts found by him in Irem, which he later refers to in Al-Azif: The Scrolls of Sacred Lies, the Book of Eibon, the Zanthu Tablets, etc. (surviving fragments of some of them are given in the Appendices[iii]). Some researchers believe that some or even all of these books were written by al-Hazraj, however, the style is substantialy different, and in some places a noticeably divergent worldview causes us to doubt this perspective. These books had a significant influence on his outlook: separate, sometimes very loosely interpreted, excerpts from them later formed the basis for individual fragments of Al-Azif.

Ibn Jabir’s reasons for his departure from Yemen shortly after the birth of his daughter, are not clearly determined. Perhaps he realized that his destiny lay in traveling, and it was time to hit the road again; otherwise the cause might lie in socio-political circumstances, which were rich in these years (Thus, during the stay of Al-Hazraj in Sana’a, a truce with Byzantium was broken; the empire was deprived of Tunisia, Algeria and Smyrna, Caucasian Albania also joined the caliphate, in Damascus there were three caliphs from the Umayyad; “Greek fire” was invented and successfully used against the fleet of the caliphate; the Shi’ites suffered another defeat from the Sunnis; Armenia, Iviria, Albania, Vulcania and Midia again ceded to Byzantium, Monothelitism was again recognized as heresy and anathema, and in Rome one Pope changed after another); or perhaps another received revelation urged him to go to Egypt. At any rate, around 690, he left his young daughter in Sana'a and set off on a new journey.

10. Egypt

During the month of Ramadan, during the Hajj, Al-Hazraj reached Mecca and read obscene poems of his own composition near the Kaa'ba, which he publicly called the “Crocodile Stone” and the “shrine of the jinn”, for which he was almost stoned. But a relative from Medina recognized him and interceded for him as an obsessed majnun (he later used this word in relation to himself first in conversation with Hassan al-Basri, from which it passed on to the Sufi tradition, along with some austerities and meditations, first introduced by Ibn Jabir, and then in Al-Azif). Then he passed through Medina, where he finally broke relations with his elderly father, and through Petra, where he publicly worshipped the Great Old ones on the site of the ancient sanctuary of Manat. It is probably in connection with this event that Abu al-Munzir Hisham ibn Mohammed ibn al-Sa'ib al-Kalbi, in his The Treatise on Idols, quotes the following phrase: "I have sworn an oath of true faith before Manat upon the place of al-Hazraj." However, al-Kalbi himself could not be familiar with Abdullah, but his father, Mohammed ibn al-Sa'ib al-Kalbi (died in 763) was a well-known connoisseur of genealogy (as was the elder al-Hazraj) and one of the authors of the earliest interpretations of the Koran, whom his father often refers to in his Hisham writings. Some sources (“Pre-Islamic Deites. Mesopotamia”, Cambridge University Press: 1908), also referred to a letter of Muhammad al-Kalbi to his son, in which he spoke about some very wealthy and wise hermit named Abdullah al-Hazraj, whom he stayed with for 40 days and “who taught me to understand the signs of the holy place of al-Hazraj”.
After leaving Petra, Abdullah reached Jerusalem, where he became a witness (or participant) of the unsuccessful magical experiment of his Yemeni disciple Ibn Marut, which ended in the death of the latter[iv]. After that, he passed Sinai[v] and reached Egypt, where, after passing Bubastis (Per-Bastet), he stopped in Alexandria, in the house of a certain Khephnes, from whom he learned some secrets of the magical craft, and perhaps also obtained access to some of the manuscripts, preserved after the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. In Alexandria, the trail of al-Hazraj is once again lost. Some biographies indicate that he was at Giza, Thebes and Memphis (where, as it is said, " explored underground caves for five years”), but more or less reliable, or at least plausible information about his stay in Egypt was not found, nor is it known whether he visited other cities and countries in Africa - for example, Christian Ethiopia, or, say, ancient Benin. Apparently, he was able to get to Ifriqiya (present territory of Tunisia), because legends say that al-Hazraj spent some time on pirate ships (although his role is not specified: a soldier or a jester, counselor or clerk, servant or interpreter, magician or sorcerer)[vi], and it was there, in the former Phoenician, current Caliphate possessions, that lay the main base of the Mediterranean pirates of the VII-VIIIth centuries. Apparently, this same period of his life is casually mentioned in the last book of Al-Azif:   Traveling from island to island, I have heard many stories of ancient and forgotten knowledge” (Crete is mentioned separately in the same fragment). Commemorated in the notes of al-Hazraj are Rome, and Constantinople, and the “wilderness of Africa”, and even “the Isle of the Britons”, however, there is no certainty that Abdullah himself visited these places: most likely, he was simply he merely learned from other people's stories about these lands. 

11. The Path to the East

After returning from Africa, al-Hazraj undertook his farthest and most mysterious journey to the East. His detailed itinerary is unknown, as well as exactly what he did during his journey. One of his goals - but hardly the only one or even the foremost - could be a collection of herbs used by him in magical experiments, since Al-Azif’s phytogeography is quite wide (some the herbs mentioned in the text grow in Southeastern Asia, but they could no doubt be acquired much closer to the lands of the Caliphate), although substantially all of the ingredients grow, as can be seen, in Iraq. Most likely, he was doing some part of the journey tagging along with victorious campaigns of the caliphate army, but it is not known whether he officially belonged to this army. He visited Shiraz and, along with Zoroastrian refugees, went to West India, in the direction of present-day Gujarat. Turning north, he, according to one of his biographers, referring to the XIII century Kurdish historian Ibn Haleakala, he reached Punjab. Following his logic visiting shrines of all kinds of religions (Babylon, Cairo, Mecca, Petra, Sinai, Jerusalem, Shiraz), we can assume that, wandering through India, he could pay a visit also to Patna (district in North India, associated both with the history of Buddhism and Jainism) and any of the numerous holy places of Hinduism, but, no matter how much we want it, so far we have no data on this, so we do not consider it appropriate to produce speculations about such an already semi-legendary individual like Abdullah ibn Jabir ibn Abdullah ibn Amr al-Hazraj al Ansari.
Judging by the first deity mentioned in the book of Al-Azif being the Samoyed deity Nguo, Ibn Jabir came right up to southern Siberia, as indicated by the following words: "I have raised armies against the Lands of the East … and so doing found Nguo, the god of the infidels"- however, the details of this story are unknown to us. In Samarkand or in Bukhara, following the Great Silk Road back to Persia, al-Hazraj met with a refugee from Tibet, the “mad lama” Idak Yung (this name roughly means “Voice of the Hungry Spirits", which, along with the extract from his works, preserved thanks to al-Hazraj, gives us good reason to believe that he received his revelations from the same source as Ibn Jabir). It is also worth noting that Tibetan Buddhism, which was born in the middle of the VIIth century, was not yet fully formed and strengthened among the inhabitants of the highlands; during this period -from 650 to 740-there ocurred a serious crisis after the death of Songtsen Gampo, king of Tibet, who brought in Gautama's teachings, therefore, the appearance of “insane” refugees from this country was a rather natural phenomenon.

12. Jabir al-Azdi

Returning to Persia through Tus (province of Khorasan) at the end of 720, the “mad Arab” learned that his daughter resided here, married to the Yemeni apothecary Hayyana al-Azzi (it should be noted that the word “apothecary” at that time carried a slightly different shade than it does in our time: while it usually denotes now a hired seller pharmacological drugs with an average education, in medieval Asia, this profession was akin to a healer, astrologer and alchemist of required knowledge and hard-edged skills). Al-Hazraj presented himself in her home shortly before the birth of her son, who (this can be regarded as an act of reconciliation with Abdallah’s father who died over twenty years earlier) was given the name of Jabir.  
  
(Speaking of the descendants of al-Hazraj, one cannot help but a certain Pierre d'Azrade mentioned in the comments to the Book of Benath, one of the Pnakotic manuscripts, which states that "described the Mreda drug" that aids in wandering through the caves of Pnakotus that he "found in the secret place of the mosque dedicated to the Old Ones" and that he "Destroyed the pyramid of Amenemhet in Dakhshur in order to preserve its secrets." The family name – the French "D'Azrade" means the same as the Arab “Al-Hazraj” - and the apparent continuity of interests suggests that it is one of the descendants of Ibn Jabir. The French name should not be perplexing: since the Arab conquests in Europe and the Crusades that followed several centuries later, France’s contacts with the Arab world were very numerous and reciprocal; however, unfortunately, we don’t have any detailed pedigree or even approximate dates for Pierre d'Azrade’s life.)

Later, the younger Jabir moves to Kufa, not far from the ruins of Babylon, where he successfully followed in the footsteps of his famous grandfather and less famous father, becoming one of the most prominent alchemists, apothecaries, pharmacists, mathematicians and astronomers of the Eastern Arabia in the VIIIth-IXth centuries. Jabir al-Azdi has had many imitators, both Arab and European (in Europe, he was known under the Latinized name Geber), as a result of which only some of the two thousand works signed by his name, one can out of some two thousand works undersigned with his name, we can confidently say that a few belong to the famous grandson of al-Hazraj. Abu Abdullah Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan al-Azdi al-Sufi compiled comments on the Euclidean Principles and the Almagest of Ptolemy. He owned the "The book is about building an astrolabe" (the description of this device, received from Severi Sebohta, he obtained fromAbdullah al-Hazraj as a legacy along with some other books written by him or discovered in ancient libraries), Elegant Zij, The Book of the Position of the Luminaries, The Book of Mirrors, The Book of Poisons and Antidotes and The Book of Mercy.

Blessing the baby with long years of life (Jabir al-Azdi lived for 94 years - four years more than his grandfather and great-grandfather; according to another version, however, records only 82, but this, it will be agreed, is not a bad lifespan), Abdullah reached Basra, where, as mentioned above, he met with Hassan Al-Basri, who had become by that time the Qadi of this city. The theological circle grouped around him was the center of the intellectual life of Basra and the entire Umayyad state, and the authority of al-Basri himself was so high that traditionalists, rationalists and Sufis also ranked him among their teachers.

13. Saddam Ibn Shahab

In Basra, al-Hazraj met Saddam ibn Shahab, an Arab mystic, recently returned from the lands occupied by the Visigoths Caliphate (the area of present-day Portugal), having experienced visions and revelations, similar to those experienced by Abdullah himself and his Tibetan "Colleague" Idak Yung, and now in a state of deep doubt about Islamic dogma. Ibn Shahab was much younger than Ibn Jabir, but the latter was greatly impressed by the literary work of Saddam, now known as Dreams of the valley of Pnakot. Trying to learn to at least somehow control his visions, Ibn Shahab intuitively found some of the methods of working with a dream space, which are now widely available thanks to Carlos Castaneda and to the Dream Hackers. For some time, despite his youth, he became al-Hazraj’s teacher on lucid dreaming and his guide through the great expanses beyond Throk, the twilight valley of Pnakot and the labyrinths of Zin. Saddam himself, like a sponge, absorbed the stories about the Old Ones and the meditation practices used for awakening the “second attention,” as today's students of the dreaming would say, as well as survival techniques in the wilderness, that were poured out by Ibn Jabir and found an interested listener.

After parting with his student and teacher in one, Ibn Shahab soon retired to the Syrian desert, where he spent many years. The famous Sufi mystic of the 20th century, Idries Shah, tells in his book Oriental Magic, that in the time of the first Baghdad caliphs from the ‘Abbasid dynasty (50s of the VIIIth century) Saddam “never brought food with me into the desert, but at any time I could supernaturaly obtain water and fruit,” which pleasantly surprised stray travellers in the sands who attributed this to the participation of either jinn or Roc birds. Furthermore, using Ibn Jabir’s lessons, he wrote several works on the magick and mythology of the Old Ones, of which only fragments have survived to this day. " The Writings of the City of the Damned and the Forbidden Sacraments."

14. Appearance in Damascus and the curse of the Umayyads

Al-Hazraj himself, leaving Ibn Shahab in Basra, passed through Palmyra to Damascus, capital of the Umayyads. Reaching the city around 722, Ibn Jabir, with anger and indignation, learned that Yazid II, who had recently ascended to the throne, issued an edict ordering the destruction of all artistic images on the territory of the caliphate, thus violating the agreement concluded many years ago between Abdallah and Mu'awiya. According to Byzantine sources (Theoph.), He reached this decision at the instigation of a certain Jewish magician who predicted a long reign to the Caliph if he destroyed the icons. Archaeological evidence confirms that the Christian churches really suffered during this period, but the edict was directed against all, including non-Christian images, and therefore we believe that this magician was familiar with al-Hazraj and his prophecy, and had his own reasons to revert the blessing given to Mu'awiya.

So, Abdullah Ibn Jabir came to the residence of the Caliph and demanded an immediate cancellation of the edict, and as far as possible the return of the seized values ​​to their owners or compensate the cost of those irretrievably lost. . Enraged at this insolent "madman," Yazid nearly ordered him executed on the spot, but for some reason he was not only left alive, but also provided accommodation and the opportunity to engage in scientific research. However, Abdullah would not or could not return the blessing of the Umayyads. Yazid II died in 724, in the prime of life (we could not establish the reason , but in this case it is not significant). His successor, Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, hastily overturned the edict of Yazid, vainly hoping for a second blessing. He died a few years after al-Hazraj, and ten years later the ‘Abbasids, descendants of Ali, overthrowed and destroyed the Umayyads throughout the caliphate, except for Al-Andalus. It is significant that the Abbasids began their rule in Harran, a city in Northern Mesopotamia, not far from Abdallah ibn Jabir’s native Beth Arabaye.

15. Al-Azif

In Damascus, Al-Hazraj earned his livelihood in a somewhat strange way for such a respectable man: performing his poems in squares and collecting alms for his eschatological sermons. Around 722-723, he undertook one of the most thorough works. (and the only one that has come down to us, at least in fragments), a kind of testament, a book entitled Kitab Al-Azif (the Book of Al-Azif). Unfortunately, we do not have reliable information about what this name means. Some sources indicate that in Arabic, this phrase means the sounds made by cicadas and other nocturnal insects, which in folklore are often referred to as demons or jinn conversations, which connect this book with the history of the "Shaitanic verses", mentioned at the beginning of this biography. Islam historian al-Nihaya points to a similar version: "Aziful Jinn are the ringing voices of the jinn... the people of the desert regarded the howling of the wind as songs of the jinn." We came across a rather unusual translation: The Book of Healing, like the famous treatise by Ibn Sina (Avicenna). The Arabic-Russian dictionary of Baranov gives the following translation options: azif - coming (time); azifat is a terrible judgment, a general calamity. This version (The Book of the Future, the Book of Calamities or Book of the Last Judgment) seems to us more like the truth, given the eschatological character of this work.
The Necronomicon.

Various sources indicate that the original Al-Azif is made on human skin. We do not consider this version to be fully reliable, since residing in Damascus, al-Hazraj hardly had the opportunity to extract and process such quantities of this material. However, a thorough examination by us of the Greek list at our disposal revealed that the parchment of Theodoras Philetas’s beautifully preserved Greek manuscript, made, of course, by him, was made from the skin of Christian babies. Since the reconstruction of the text performed by the cult of “Cthulhu Zohavait Fseh”, based on the fragments we have at our disposal and references to other sources, the Greek list, discovered in 2006 during the excavation of an ancient Orthodox chapel located at about 53°. sh. and 29° c. d. (the so-called “Al-Hazraj Library”, where there was a number of other texts about the Old Ones)[vii], and materials from the labyrinths of Zin, which we publish in this edition, we do not see the point in detailing the information contained in it. In addition, we will return to the history of translations and publications of Al-Azif in the second part of this study. Here we will give only a brief assessment of the significance of this book, which it has had for his contemporaries and descendants - or could have, if it had not been unfairly forgotten by the world for many centuries. Just as Nostradamus used ritual magic to look into the future (deciphering his Centuries gave us the key to the location of the Greek Necronomicon), so Abdullah ibn Jabir used similar techniques to learn the past. For this reason, and also due to the lack of references, historians and scholars rejected Al-Azif, considering it to be devoid of scientific value.

Despite the fact that the book is replete with all sorts of superstitions, prejudices and syncretic (even eclectic) mythological images characteristic of the Middle Ages in general (sometimes it is difficult to understand which lines express the true views of the author, in which the legends he knows are presented, and which are just a metaphorical, poetic description of reality), in some places he was many centuries ahead of his time. When describing planets, the author uses the word "sphere," rather than "disk", as many medieval authors would have done (however, a couple of centuries before him about the spherical shape of the Earth and other planets was well known to Indian astronomers), and knows about the planet "Between the heavens of Saturn and the heavens of fixed stars", having a single satellite (i.e., about Pluto, discovered only in the 20th century). In the sura "Of Yidhra, Bringer of Dreams", al-Hazraj foreshadowed the evolutionary ideas of the XVIII-XIXth centuries (“And the slime became as a worm, and the worm as a serpent, and the serpent became as a troglodyte of the mountain forests, and the became as a man”; however, we do not exclude the possibility that he familiarized himself with similar ideas in earlier sources, like the Indian Aklo Tablets, written by an unknown author[viii] at the end of the 7th – beginning of the 8th c., where evolutionary views are described in further detail and clarity). The author hints at the multidimensionality of space, for which the visible part of it is just a projection. (modern scientists have only recently matched up to the rationale of this concept). The greatest interest of scientists has been provoked by a pair of supreme deities of the pantheon of the Old Ones - Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth. The first of these is the embodiment of endless chaos and expansion, the irrational extent of space and time. It is a single and indissoluble link between the past, present, and future. The second is, on the contrary, the personification of absolute compression, the concentration of time, space and matter in one point. Amazingly, these images from Al-Azif turned out to be consistent with the latest discoveries in the field of quantum physics and unified field theory, and attempts by scientists to model the processes that control the conditions of matter, as well as changes in space and time.

The delightful, as well as very poetic and mystical, sura "On Millenia-Old Kadath, the Unknown," where - unusually bold for his time and his country!- Ibn Jabir directly calls upon Man to stand on the same level with the gods and in the sura “About the Ahura, the Gods of Earth” he just as plainly states: "The dreams and visions of men, brought to life by their desires and moved by their will, forced the Ahura (gods) to manifest out of the fabric of space in the dark times of the beginning of Adam’s kin”. The intriguing suras “On the great Throk, the Somber Valley of Pnakot and the Labyrinths of Zin”, “On the Great Key” and “Opening the Eye of the Dreamer,” in which the poet (unfortunately, very fluently) denotes some techniques for working with lucid dreams. A number of features characteristic of Al-Azif and other texts from the Al-Hazraj Library bring this cosmology closer to the more well-known system, the Qabalah, which modern historians believe was born precisely in Babylonia and Byzantium in the 7th-8th centuries, when quite many midrash (interpretations of the Torah) show pronounced Qabalistic tendencies. Hopefully, readers - magicians and non-magicians, believers and atheists - will be able to find other interesting moments that make this book one of the most significant works on Arabic magick of the early Middle Ages.

It is worth noting, however, that, for all its fundamentality, Al-Azif is just a draft, an unfinished work, and has not passed the author’s final revision due to the death or disappearance of Ibn Jabir (we will go over this a little further). This (though not exclusively) can explain the varying roughness of the text, the incoherence of individual fragments, the lack of clear terminology in some places, the use of different names and epithets for the same entities or, on the contrary, the same for different entities. We believe that if al-Hazraj had lived a little longer, he would not only have brought the material to literary and philosophical perfection, but would also have endowed mankind with more than a single research work.

16. John of Damascus

Speaking about the life of al-Hazraj in Damascus, one cannot avoid mention another famous contemporary of his - John Mansur Damascene, a Christian saint, one of the fathers of the church, the first exposer of Islam, theologian and hymnographer. His father Ibn Serjun served in the Umayyad court with the rank “Great Logoet”, i.e. tax collector. Subsequently, he was replaced by John himself. According to legend, he studied with his brother Cosmas of Maiuma from a certain captive monk from Calabria (also named Cosma). Both of them showed extraordinary abilities: they easily learned grammar, philosophy, astronomy, and geometry, and after a while caught up with their mentor in the knowledge of Scripture. (which in this instance applied both to the Bible and the Qu’ran). After his father’s death, John became one of the advisers of the Caliph Umar II (period of rule from 717th to 720th) on issues of Christian faith.

In the period of iconoclasm (i.e., from 721, if we mean Muslim iconoclasm, or from 730, if Byzantine; most likely, we are talking about the latter) John defended the veneration of icons. He wrote a treatise: Three defensive words in support of the veneration of icons, in which iconoclasm is understood as a Christological heresy, and also for the first time made a distinction of “worship”, fitting only to God, and “veneration”, rendered to created things, including icons. The books of John´s books and their influence on people's minds enraged the Byzantine emperor. But, since the author was not a Byzantine subject, he could not be imprisoned or executed. The emperor resorted to slander. On his orders, a false letter was written on behalf of John, in which the latter allegedly offered his assistance to the emperor in conquering the Syrian capital. This letter was sent by the emperor Leo III to the Caliph. The Caliph, unaware of the forgery, ordered that John be removed from office, his right hand cut off and hung at the center of the city for all to see. In the evening, at the request of St. John, the Caliph ordered that the severed hand be returned to him. According to the Christian biography, the Damascene attached it to the joint and "began to pray before the icon of the Most Holy Mother of God and ask for healing." Exhausted, he supposedly “fell asleep in prayer and saw the Mother of God, who said that his hand was healthy, and ordered him to work hard for the glory of God. When he woke up, Saint John felt his hand and saw it healed.”

Undoubtedly, two such outstanding personalities in the same city could but be familiar, but hardly ascribe to the “miraculous” healing from the Mother of God: since Ibn Jabir (as we noted above), and Damascus were supporters of the use of images in a religious cult, and also since both were very well-educated people, fairly close communication started between them. Since the story of the severed hand lacks an accurate dating (no earlier than 730 and no later than 736 when John took the monastic tonsure in Jerusalem, while al-Hazraj died in 732), it is not clear whether the Sabean helped Damascus personally or the saint simply used the techniques taught to him by a magician. All these arguments, of course, make sense only if the Christian biography is true, at least factually. Otherwise, more likely, it could have been either an agreement of al-Hazraj, the Damascene and Caliph Hisham, reached by them for certain political purposes, or a skilfully induced illusion by Ibn Jabir or his disciple John. We also do not exclude the possibility that biography is replete with falsehood or error, and in this case nothing can be regarded as a historical fact but the fact of love and friendship between the two priests.

17. The Last Journey

Finally, we come to the last page in the life history of the magician, the poet and religious teacher Abdullah ibn Jabir al-Hazraj al-Ansari, the story of his death. Driven by premonitions about his approaching death, the “Mad Arab” donated almost all of his properties to complete the construction of the Damascus mosque, which gained great fame in the history of Arab-Muslim science as a true university, where they taught "All religious and secular sciences." He set up a caravan to the south in the hope of returning to the ruins of Irem. Perhaps he wanted to die exactly where he gained awareness of his purpose. (or, to put it in terms of Buddhism, Enlightenment); or perhaps he hoped to escape there from the Old Ones and their emissaries who were haunting him in both dream and reality; or else he wanted to find some missing pieces of mosaic there, to complement his vision of the world or to bring physical immortality. One way or another, nine days before his death, he (as we can tell from the text of Al-Azif) already had a distinct feeling that he was not meant to reach Irem: a solar eclipse was approaching, and he knew that he would not survive it.

That eclipse that allows us to accurately determine the time and place of death of al-Hazraj. It is believed that he died in 738 in Damascus, but the astronomical data do not allow us to accept this version: a total eclipse this year was observed only in the Alaska and Chukotka regions, and we cannot assume that even this great traveller might have reached so far North, except with the direct aid of the Old Ones. We have compiled a list of all eclipses from 720 to 750 (to encompass a larger period, in our opinion, made no sense) and found only three full eclipses that al-Hazraj could observe. The full phases of two of them, in 740 and 747, were visible over Ethiopia; the third, in 732, passed through the territory of Arabia approximately from Mecca to Qatar (as may easily be seen on the map, it s path passed across Damascus to Rub al-Khali and Irem). Thus, we can confidently say that death overtook Ibn Jabir in Arabia, near the borders of Rub al-Khali, on March 1, 732 (which is consistent with a number of other facts and dates, such as the edict of Yazid II, the beginning of the monasticism of John of Damascus, the instructions about the eventual translation of the manuscript into Greek, etc.), after noon, but before sunset (most likely, the time can be determined with greater precision, but we lack astronomical knowledge for this). As to the question of why the dates indicated by former biographers differ so much (730 as the year when Al-Azif began writing and 738 as the year of his death, and ninety years of life as opposed to eighty-three in traditional sources, although it would seem that a shorter lifespan should follow from an earlier date of death), we will come back to this matter, when we discuss the history of translations of the immortal creation of al-Hazraj; now let us mention some legends about the death of the Mad Poet and his posthumous fate.

18. The Ascension of Al-Hazraj

There were many sinister and contradictory rumours about his death or disappearance. A report (with reference to Ibn Khalikan’s draft to his famous work On the Deaths of Great Men) that he "was seized in broad daylight by an invisible monster, and rent horribly apart in front of a large number of terror-frozen witnesses."[ix] (in a more detailed version of the same tradition, which no longer retains references to the source, many additional details appear: “Once, when he was buying wine on the market, he was lifted into the air by some invisible creature of enormous size and strength, and his head, arms and legs were torn off from the torso and eaten, so that his whole body disappeared from sight in parts, leaving on the sand only splattered blood "). August Derleth[x] (indicating, by the way, his date for al-Hazraj’s death is much more accurate than Lovecraft’s: 731) says that Abdullah was brought alive by the Old ones or their servants to the Nameless City (which may imply Irem, or another city discovered by the Mad Poet in his wanderings[xi]), the secrets of which he had previously studied and described in Al-Azif. In punishment for the disclosure of these secrets, he was allegedly blinded, his tongue was pulled out and he was subsequently executed (These bloody details surprisingly intersect with the legend of the "Yemeni princess", with whom al-Hazraj allegedly fell in love in Sana'a, which is most easily explained by the cruel medieval "The spirit of the time"). We consider as more reliable the death records of al-Hazraj himself, recorded in the last surah of Al-Azif. As is clear from this text, on the eve of his death he is in a marching tent, on the way to Irem. “A silent night arrived in broad daylight,” says al Hazraj after hurried instructions to descendants.  “The howling jackals quiet and barely visible... The stars grow dim in their places, and the moon, with a curtain drawn back, shows the flame of the sun before me. Jackal-headed Ghouls urround my sanctuary. Ghouls surround my sanctuary. Sorcerous rays intersect the walls and the canopy of my tent, and the light beyond its limit has lost its brightness. The wind has risen. The dark waters stir.” Thus, death overtook him when the complete eclipse phase had passed, and no “fear-stricken witnesses,” mentioned by the venerable Ibn Khalikan, were present. We cannot confidently say whether Al-Hazraj died from terrible visions that rent his heart apart, from old age, or whether he was killed by a man or some other creature. We can’t even say for sure whether he died on that day or merely “went missing”, although some credible sources indicate that his body was taken by the same caravan to Rub al-Khali, where he was buried[xii]. Al-Hazraj himself, shortly before his death, expressed a firm belief that he had gained physical immortality and would be taken to the lands of the Old Ones, as happened with Idris (Enoch). Appealing to internationally acknowledged freedom of conscience and religion, we call this event the Ascension of Al-Hazraj and equate it to Buddha’s Paranirvana (for if it was possible for Jesus to be resurrected, and for Muhammad to be transferred in one night from Mecca to Jerusalem can we expect any less of al-Hazraj, the prophet of the Old Ones?). It is this day that the followers of the Prophet of the Old Ones perceive as the beginning of a new, Cthulhuistic chronology.

Before we move on to the translation history of Al-Azif,[xiii] we will note some interesting historical events that followed the death of the Sabean mystic. Already in October 732, the battle of Poitiers took place, in which the combined forces of the Franks under the command of Karl Martel defeated the Arabs, stopping the advance of Islam in Western Europe, and in 739 the Franks drove the Arabs out of their lands. In 740, the Byzantine army of the emperor Leo III the Isaurian also triumphed over the Arabs at Akran. This battle put an end to the Umayyad conquests in the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire. In 743, the Berber tribes of Spain revolted against the Arabs, and within one year of this, four caliphs took their place successively. In 745, Constantine V returned Byzantium to Northern Syria, in 746, he fought the Arab fleet off the coast of Crete and returned Cyprus to the empire. In 747, supporters of Abu Muslim revolted in the Merv oasis, in 748 there was an uprising of the people in Armenia. Finally, in 750, after three years of struggle, the Umayyad troops were finally defeated by the ‘Abbasids. Caliph Mervan II fled to Egypt and died there. The Abbasid dynasty assumed the Caliph's throne and transferred the capital to Baghdad. The Umayyads and their supporters were ruthlessly destroyed. The curse of al-Hazraj acted quickly, inexorably and firmly...




[1] Among the followers of the Old Ones it is considered that the original of this text was written between the end of the 3rd, and the beginning of the 2nd, millennium BC., and is based upon original sources from Astlante   (Atlantis).  However, a number of stylistic details make it possible to consider such dating doubtful.  Apparently, it emerged in the midst of a certain Gnostic sect from the Mediterranean in the early centuries of the Christian era, and evidence of the coming "Son of Man" was interpolated by its authors, most likely in order to grant it “Antiquity” and authority among the Christian Gnostics.  This text was included among the scriptures of one of the Gnostic schools of Beth-arabayeh, to which Al-Hazraj's mother belonged.




NOTES:

[i] Be forewarned: I have been working on this translation from a language I most emphatically do not understand, using only various translation software, throughout a span of time that has actually allowed for the software to improve noticeably. There will most likely be several errors, but I have polished and cross-referenced the material exhaustively.
[ii] The cult of “Cthulhu Zohavait Fseh”, whose outstanding library contains the source materials for both this essay and their conjectural reconstruction of Philetas’ Necronomicon.
[iii] This refers to the Appendices of the Necronomicon research papers as published by the “Cthulhu Zohavait Fseh”.
[iv] This disciple, Ibn Marut, has been dubbed Abdul Ben Martu in the variant Greek Necronomicon text widely published and by Simon.
[v] His travel through Sinai might be the time of his encounter with Sheikh Fakhreddheen, as described in the Ninth Narrative.
[vi] This may be the period referred in the Vatican Manuscript -partially published by Pietro pizzari in Necronomicon: Magia Nera in un Manoscritto della Biblioteca Vaticana (Atanor, Rome, 1993)-, when al-Hazraj’s ship –although Al-Azif indicates that it hailed from Constantinople- sank and he was rescued by the one who would become one of his teachers, who initially took him as a translator and scribe.  
[vii] An Earlier draft of the present essay added the following information at this point; it might be worth wondering why it was excised?: “[Babruysk District, a raion in the region of Mogilev, Belarus]”
[viii] A copy of the Aklo Tablets known to us through Tani Jantsang identifies their autor as one Pesh-Hun.
[ix] This paragraph, also quoted by Dr. Venustiano Carranza in Necronomicon: Nuova Edizione con Sconvolgenti Rivelazioni e le Tavolette di Kutu (Fanucci, Rome, 1994), p.49, as well as -slightly paraphrased- by H.P. Lovecraft in his “History of the Necronomicon” (The Rebel Press, Oakman, AL, 1938), is originally from one of two drafts written by Ibn Khallikan about the “Mad Arab”, both redacted from the final version of his The Obituaries of Eminent Men and History of the Sons of the Epoch (Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-anbāʾ abnāʾ az-zamān), compiled between 1256 and 1274. The draft said quote comes from was for the first time published in Ars Necronomica, in June 2012, as “Many terrible and conflicting things: TheDeath of Abdul Alhazred According to Ibn Khallikan”. 
Ibn Khallikan’s other discarded draft was translated and published by Siyah Qalam as the brief ebook (or ebooklet; it’s only ten-pages long) Ibn Khallikan’s Biography of Alhazred (Amazon Digital Services, 2013). A third draft has since surfaced, an expanded version of sorts, but I have refrained from publishing it until certain problems are cleared up).
[x] Since I have only read August Derleth’s The Trail of Cthulhu in a Spanish translation, I had to re-translate the quote to English; I’ll greatly appreciate if anybody would provide the original quote, from the chapter “The Keeper of the Key”.
[xi] Alhazred’s three visits to the Nameless City are recorded in the Sixth Narrative of the Dee Necronomicon and in Donald Tyson’s The Wanderings of Alhazred (both of which the authors appear to consider mostly apocryphal), and in the Vatican manuscript (of which they appear to remain unaware altogether).
[xii] Laban Shrewsbury, in Cthulhu in the Necronomicon (Miskatonic University press, 1938), and August Derleth in “The Keeper of the Key”.
[xiii] The section with comments on the main translations of Al-Azif, while interesing, has only a few worthwhile insights for the knowledgeable Necronomicon historian. I may translate them in the future, after far more intriguing materials and projects.

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