Genies are more than wish-granting lamp dwellers or mystical floating spirits. How genies are made is a story steeped in ancient legend with many variations emerging over time. The first tales about djinn are as much as 6,000 years old, so you can imagine that discovering just how genies are made is a difficult task.
Making Genies Real
The jinn are actually an entire race of beings, not just a few spirits floating here and there, and certainly not rare beings trapped in lamps. They were said to have been made long before humans and inhabited all corners of the Earth, from land to sea to mountain. They had governments and laws and religion, and they lived full lives as any person might today.
Early Islamic legends state that God/Allah made genies just as He made humans. Mankind was built from clay, but the race of jinn were made from scorching desert wind.
The Quran poetically describes it as “fire free of smoke,” or smokeless fire. Their wind/fire nature gives genies an ethereal quality humans lack. They can’t always be seen, but their effects on the world are very real.
Jinn flourished for 25,000 years but soon became arrogant and disobeyed the divine rules. Allah sent angels to punish them, destroying many jinn and scattering those that were left to hidden corners of the land.
Origin of Genies
Although the facts about how genies are made and what they are differ from story to story, most origin stories of genies do agree on a few details. Jinn are usually associated with the wind and the desert, for example. Some tales say genies even travel on the wind and can appear or disappear as easily as a breeze.
Jinn are often called deities or demons even though this isn’t technically true. We can describe them as spirits, but keep in mind that they’re more than just ghosts that haunt cemeteries.
Jinn also like to play tricks on people, though they are rarely flat-out evil. Think of them as mischievous, like an April Fools prankster that’s always up to something.
All of these facts about genies are based on myths and legends, of course. But many people believe that jinn still walk the Earth today.