Nasnas

In Arab folklore, Nasnas (Arabic: نسناس, romanized: nasnās, plural nisānis) is a monstrous creature. According to Edward Lane, the 19th-century translator of One Thousand and One Nights, a nasnas is "half a human being; having half a head, half a body, one arm, one leg, with which it hops with much agility".

In Somali folklore there is a similar creature called xunguruuf (Somali pronunciation: [ħunguruːf]). It is believed it can kill a person by just touching them and the person would be fleshless in mere seconds.

It was believed to be the offspring of a jinn called a Shiqq (الشق) and a human being.

A character in "The Story of the Sage and the Scholar", a tale from the collection, is turned into a nasnas after a magician applies kohl to one of his eyes. The nasnas is mentioned in Gustave Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

See also

• Fachan
• Monopod (creature)

Sources

• Robert Irwin The Arabian Nights: a Companion (Penguin, 1994)
• Jorge Luis Borges The Book of Imaginary Beasts (Penguin, 1974)

References

This page was last edited on 1 March 2024, at 15:06