Ifrit

A class of jinn in the Arab record, distinguished from the lesser orders by power, longevity, and rank. The figure appears in the Qur'an in *Surat al-Naml* (27:39), where an *ifrit* of the jinn offers to bring the throne of the Queen of Sheba before Solomon could rise from his place. Edward William Lane's *An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians* (1836) records the nineteenth-century Cairene household understanding of the *ifrit* as a powerful and malicious order, often associated with the place of violent death. Lane's annotated translation of *The Thousand and One Nights* (1859) catalogues the figure across the Arabic folktale corpus, where the *ifrit* appears as adversary, captive, and vassal alike.

The Cairene tradition recorded by Lane held that the ifrit arose at the site where blood was shed unjustly, and that a knife driven into the ground at that spot, reciting the proper verses, would bind the figure. The folklore distinguishes the ifrit from the marid, the ghul, and the lesser jinn; the rank is treated, in the older sources, as a matter of natural order rather than figure of speech.