Hatif

Hatif (Arabic: هَاتِف, lit. 'calling, shouting') is a voice that can be heard without one's discovering the body that made it.[1]

Al-Jahiz wrote that the Bedouin believed that important messages could be transmitted without a visible medium. The receiver would hear the message in realtime without seeing the speaker. Al-Masudi focused on the psychological backgrounds of this phenomenon, and explained the hatif as a hallucination caused by loneliness.[2] However, according to al-Jahiz, belief in hatif was so widespread among the Bedouin, they were perplexed if people doubted their existence.[3]

Such hatif was also attributed to jinn by pre-Islamic Arabs. This way, they talk to humans or avenge murder on a fellow jinn by driving the murderer insane.[4]

Hatif doesn't necessarily come from humans or jinn, but also from ghosts, dwelling near graves to remind humans of their mortality or announce their death.[5]

In modern Arabic, the term hatif is also used for a telephone, due to invisible communication.

See also

References
  1. Abdelfattah Kilito Arabs and the Art of Storytelling: A Strange Familiarity Syracuse University Press 2012 ISBN 978-0-815-65286-1 p. 92
  2. Tobias Nünlist Dämonenglaube im Islam Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015 ISBN 978-3-110-33168-4 p. 327 (German)
  3. Tobias Nünlist Dämonenglaube im Islam Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015 ISBN 978-3-110-33168-4 p. 327(German)
  4. Amira El Zein: The Evolution of the Concept of Jinn from Pre-Islam to Islam. p. 113
  5. Werner Diem, Marco Schöller The Living and the Dead in Islam: Epitaphs as texts Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004 ISBN 9783447050838 p. 158


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