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.
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),
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...
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.
