Dwelling and healing with saints and jinn in the haunted landscapes of Palestine

Abstract

The Jinn of Islamic and Middle Eastern popular mythology play a role in maintaining spatial divisions between sacred and profane space, public and protected areas, and acceptable and exceptional behaviour. Though research on jinn continues to be of importance in cross-cultural psychology, the rich relationship between jinn and place has largely been lost or severed. This paper seeks to restore this link through an examination of the relationship between unseen spirits and place in Palestine and throughout the Levant (Bilad ash-Sham). Drawing upon both European and Palestinian historical ethnographic writing, as well as oral history interviews with Palestinian elders, this paper examines spatial practices that can attract, prevent, or heal harm from jinn and other unseen forces, as well as places where such spirits dwell, including graveyards, caves, wells, sacred trees, and shrines. Jinn play a dual role in helping to protect the sanctity of these places, while also threatening to violate the intimate space hearth and home. In this way, jinn play an important role in both establishing, and at times blurring and negotiating social mores and their related physical boundaries. In examining how jinn threaten the sanctity of homes and bodies, but also how place-dwelling spirits help to heal bodies and sooth souls, this paper moves beyond mere metaphorical understandings of spectral geographies to understand the material implications of unseen and imagined forces. By doing so, this paper builds upon recent research exploring the deep connection between the environment and spiritual/sacred understandings of place.