The Legend Of Genies Explained

Say you're as lucky as Aladdin or Captain Tony Nelson, and you find a bottle in the sand. You open the bottle, and out pops a jinni. Should you start making wishes? Probably not. Sure, Aladdin did receive help from two different jinn in One Thousand and One Nights, but if you look at one

Say you're as lucky as Aladdin or Captain Tony Nelson, and you find a bottle in the sand. You open the bottle, and out pops a jinni. Should you start making wishes? Probably not. Sure, Aladdin did receive help from two different jinn in One Thousand and One Nights, but if you look at one of the other jinn from the collection, a very different picture emerges.

In the tale of "The Fisherman and the Jinni," an old man fishes up a bottle containing a pretty peeved jinni who was trapped by the great sorcerer Solomon. The jinni offers the man a wish of sorts — but only one and only a very specific one: the way in which he dies. See, the jinni had planned to kill whoever released him. Don't worry, though, the old man was sly and tricked the jinni back into his bottle.

Traditionally, jinn could be controlled by magicians. Even under a master's control, however, a jinni wasn't some all-powerful being. It would be more like having an indentured servant who happened to have a few powers of their own. Granted, having a servant with powers like possession, super speed, super strength, and so on could be a major asset to a magician, but that didn't automatically put jinn in the business of making every desire come to fruition. It's widely known among believers that it's best to stay out of jinni's way.

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