Analysis

The demon in the story of the Fisherman and the Demon is, as highlighted in the literary analysis and the illustration secondary artefact, a massive and powerful entity with incorporeal form. These persistent and defining details are contrasted by the method which is used to defeat the demon. Small talismanic seals, like the primary artefact examined previously, hold enough power, through the invocation of God, to stop and control the demon. I argue this method of defeating the monster is different from many other medieval monsters as other monsters were defeated by powerful or sneaky human heroes instead of religious powers.

The cunning of the fisherman to trick the demon into going back into the jar, where it is then imprisoned by Solomon’s seal, is not a unique instance of human cunning outsmarting a monster. It is the cunning of Sekandar in the Shahnameh to use poisoned offerings to defeat a “mountainous dragon” that slays the monster (Firdawsī, 2016). Similarly, Kallimachos defeats his dragon by killing it in its sleep with its own sword (Betts, 1995, pg. 48). For these monsters, it is sneaky and cunning humans that defeat them through physical means.

Beowulf’s defeat of Grendel is purely due to his physical power as he slays Grendel in physical combat. Grendel in Beowulf is also specifically not deterred by religious prayers, as attempts to pray to Gods and shrines are described as unsuccessful (Heaney, 2018, 180-188). The translator’s footnotes say that the poet interprets the prayer’s failures as the result of them praying to the wrong (i.e. not biblical) God(s) but the prayers nevertheless are not able to deter Grendel’s killing spree. In the story of the Fisherman and the Demon, it is specifically the seal created with Solomon’s seal ring that imprisons and defeats the demon (Haddawy, 2018, pg. 624). Solomon’s seal represents the “magic based on the authority of the Qur’an”, the religious power “given by God, [that] allowed [Solomon] to subjugate the jinn” (Hamilton, 2023). It is this religious power being the key to the demon’s defeat that makes the demon different from other medieval monsters who are able to be defeated by humans through power or cunning. It is also the demon’s otherworldly power and incorporate form that may actually require it to be defeated through religious power. The monsters mentioned previously are all defeated through physical means, be it hand to hand combat or sneaky poisoning, whereas the demon is fought through religious power as the demon may not even have a tangible form to slay.

What makes the seal ring’s powers to defeat the demon truly unique is the seal ring’s property of reproducibility. Seal rings were used to create seals in a wide variety of materials from “the crudest articles … such as a shell, a piece of bone” all the way to the most precious of minerals, “gold or silver” (Ruska, Carra de Vaux, and Bosworth, 2012). Each seal created using Solomon’s ring is a physical manifestation of the religious powers described by Michelle Hamilton in the Seal of Solomon (2018). The seal ring, when used for talismanic purposes, is believed to provide protection through “religious formulas” (the inscriptions) once stamped (Inscribed Seal, accessed 2023) meaning the talismanic seal ring imprints the protective power on each seal that is created. Such reproducible religious power that is able to defeat the demon separates this monster from other medieval monsters who ravage populations until defeated physically by heroes.