Introduction

The passage I have chosen for this assignment is the story of the Fisherman and the Demon in The Thousand and One Nights translated by Haddawy (2018). The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories with the story of the Fisherman and the Demon surrounding a fisherman who fishes up a jar containing a demon. The demon threatens to kill the fisherman who is able to trick it into going back into the jar where it is imprisoned due to the power of the lead seal on the jar stopper. While demons are present throughout many of the tales in the Thousand and One Nights, this passage features a  particularly vivid physical description of the demon, illustrated in part by modern illustrations as will be seen in one of the secondary artefacts. A unique feature of this monster (the demon), is that it is both otherworldly powerful and is controlled and imprisoned through religious power. The primary artefact I will examine is the <a href = "https://spatial-humanities.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/42975">Inscribed Seal</a>. This gemstone is inscribed with text written in reverse and has significance as both a traditional seal for signature purposes (Allan, Sourdel, and Ed, 2012) and as a ‘talisman’, an amulet, charm or other object that is intended to provide the owner protection stemming from the inscription on the object (Ruska, Carra de Vaux, and Bosworth, 2012).

The lead seal that imprisons the demon in the passage is described as “bearing the mark of a seal ring” (Haddawy, 2018, pg. 624) where the seal itself is “of Solomon the son of David” (Haddawy, 2018, pg. 627). I make the argument that the Demon in this tale is unique among the medieval monsters we’ve examined in that it is depicted as stronger than the other monsters while having its power limited and controlled by the religious power of the small talisman. This small object, the seal ring, invokes Solomon's religious power to control the demon and has an interesting property in that the seal ring is able to imprint this power onto whatever medium the seal is made from (in this specific case, the lead stopper that plugs the jar up).

As a note, the monster in question is described as a "Demon", "Jinn", "Jinnee" and "Genie" throughout different publications and analysis. I will be referring to the monster as a "Demon" as the Haddawy translation of the tale does.