Al-Ahmar, the Red King of Jinn: The Adjuration That Commands Him — Translated From Arabic for the First Time

Deep in a medieval Arabic manuscript — one of the handful of primary sources that preserve the operational tradition of the seven jinn kings — there is a four-line formula that the tradition holds will compel al-Ahmar, the Red King of the jinn, to answer. The formula has a name, a structure, and a theology. The manuscript specifies the conditions under which it is to be recited, the authority by which it operates, and what the practitioner may expect when it works. Until now, this material existed only in Arabic. It has never appeared in English — until the Sihr Muluk al-Jann translation published by John Friend Publishing in 2026.

This article is not a how-to guide. It is a record of what the manuscript says.

Who Is Al-Ahmar? The Red King in the Seven-Kings Tradition

The seven kings of the jinn are one of the organizing structures of the Arabic Solomonic tradition — for the full framework, see How to Summon the Seven Kings of Jinn. Each king rules a day of the week and a planet; each has a color, a domain of power, and a set of divine names by which he is bound. The system maps the seven classical planets — Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn — onto seven spirit-kings whose authority runs through every hour of every day.

Al-Ahmar is the king of Tuesday and of Mars.

His name means “The Red One” — a direct reference to Mars, the red planet of Babylonian and Hellenistic astronomy, the planet of war, fire, and iron. Al-Ahmar governs conflict, coercion, and the overcoming of enemies. He is not merely associated with these domains as a symbolic figure; within the manuscript tradition, he is understood as the living regent through whom Martian spiritual power flows into the sublunar world. When Mars rises on Tuesday morning, al-Ahmar’s hour begins. When a practitioner needs to move something by force — to break a binding, to scatter enemies, to impose one will upon another — the manuscript directs him to al-Ahmar.

He is, of the seven kings, the one most frequently mentioned in the tradition’s warnings about improper invocation. The Mars-king is not forgiving of errors. The Sihr Muluk al-Jann is explicit about this, and the cautions surrounding his adjuration are more detailed than those attached to any of the other six.

Among the seven, al-Ahmar also carries one of the clearest traces of the pre-Islamic planetary tradition. Mars as the martial planet, red in color, governing war and metal — this is a cosmological inheritance that flows directly from the Babylonians through the Greeks through the Arabic astronomers of the Abbasid translation movement into the medieval jinn-king manuscripts. The practitioner holding the Sihr Muluk al-Jann in hand is, whether he knows it or not, handling a tradition with roots reaching back two thousand years before the manuscript was written.

The Adjuration: What the Manuscript Says

The Sihr Muluk al-Jann preserves the adjuration to al-Ahmar with unusual directness. Where some passages in the manuscript are technically dense — chains of divine names, tables of planetary hours, instructions for the preparation of talismanic seals — this particular formula is brief, structurally clear, and immediately comprehensible.

Here is the text as it appears in the manuscript (p. 217 of the JFP edition), in full:

Adjuration to the Red King: Answer, O King al-Ahmar! By the power of these names, obey!

Ajib ya al-Malik al-Ahmar! Bi-quwwati hadhihi al-asma’ ati’!

اأجب يا الملك الأحمر بقوة هذه الأسماء أطع

The formula contains four operative elements in two lines. “Answer” (ajib) is the command to appear. “O King al-Ahmar” is the naming — identification is the precondition for compulsion in every Solomonic system. “By the power of these names” is the authority clause — the formula does not work by the practitioner’s own power but by the power of the divine names that bind al-Ahmar. “Obey” (ati’) is the command to comply.

The manuscript pairs the formula with two physical seals: a numerical seal and a triangular seal with names inscribed at each vertex and a central name of power at the center. The translator’s note in the JFP edition clarifies that these seals are reproduced as images from the source manuscript — not reconstructed or invented, but photographically preserved.

This is the complete surviving text of the Red King adjuration as it appears in this manuscript. The translator has noted lacunae elsewhere in the Sihr Muluk al-Jann where the source is illegible; the adjuration passage is intact.

What “By the Power of These Names” Actually Means

The phrase bi-quwwati hadhihi al-asma’ — “by the power of these names” — is the theological linchpin of the formula, and it requires unpacking. The “names” referred to are not simply labels. In the Arabic Solomonic tradition, divine names carry operative force. They are understood as real concentrations of divine power, not metaphors or representations.

The theoretical framework draws on classical Islamic theology regarding the Asma’ al-Husna — the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, each of which describes a genuine divine attribute. In the Solomonic operational tradition, these names, combined with additional sequences of “barbarous names” (asma’ ‘ajamiyya) transmitted through the manuscript tradition, form the authority-chain by which spirits are bound. When al-Ahmar is commanded to obey “by the power of these names,” the names are not a rhetorical flourish. They are, within the tradition’s own logic, the actual mechanism of compulsion.

The Sihr Muluk al-Jann includes an extended section titled “The Grand Table of Barbaric Names and Their Permutations” (p. 46 of the JFP edition) and a separate chapter on “The Science of the Seven Names and Their Angelic Servants” (p. 113). Both bear directly on what “these names” means in the Red King adjuration. The full chain of names that precedes and follows the compact formula on p. 217 — the adjuration is a culmination, not a standalone — is detailed in those sections.

This is not magic by personal will. It is compulsion by delegated divine authority.

The Conditions the Manuscript Specifies

The adjuration does not stand alone. The Sihr Muluk al-Jann is explicit that it operates within a framework of conditions, and the Red King’s adjuration carries stricter requirements than several of the others.

The planetary timing is non-negotiable. Al-Ahmar is the king of Tuesday. The operation must begin on a Tuesday, and — according to the manuscript’s planetary correspondence tables — ideally in the first or second planetary hour of Tuesday (Mars’s own hours, in the traditional unequal-hour system). An operation addressed to al-Ahmar on a Wednesday in Jupiter’s hour is not simply suboptimal; the manuscript implies it is addressed to the wrong authority. For the complete planetary-hour timing system, see Planetary Hours for Jinn Summoning.

The incense requirement is specific. The Sihr Muluk al-Jann includes a detailed planetary correspondence and incense table (p. 16 of the JFP edition) listing the appropriate incense for each day and each king. For Martian operations, the manuscript specifies particular resins associated with fire and Mars. The incense is not merely atmospheric; it is understood as a material component of the contact, a signal to the spirit that the proper conditions have been established.

Ritual purity (tahara) is required throughout. The practitioner must maintain the state of full bodily purity — the complete ablution, not merely the partial purification of ordinary prayer — for the duration of the operation. The Sihr Muluk al-Jann includes a chapter titled “The Path of Spiritual Conduct” (p. 12) that specifies what this means in practice. It is not a casual requirement.

Finally, the triangular seal must be prepared correctly. The manuscript specifies that the seal is “drawn with the names inscribed at each vertex, and within it the central name of power is placed.” The preparation of this seal precedes the recitation of the adjuration. The adjuration without the seal is, by the manuscript’s own logic, incomplete.

Compelling a Spirit: The Theological Frame

The word used in the adjuration — ati’, “obey” — is the language of legitimate authority, not of sorcery. This distinction matters enormously for understanding what the Sihr Muluk al-Jann is and is not.

Arabic Solomonic magic is not a tradition of independent magical power. The practitioner does not compel al-Ahmar by his own will or by some inherent occult force. He compels him by the authority of Solomon (Sulayman), to whom God explicitly granted power over the jinn — the Quran records this in 38:37-38 and 21:82-83, not as legendary but as established fact within the tradition’s cosmology. Solomon’s authority over the jinn is a Quranic given. The practitioner who invokes it is appealing to a divinely ordained hierarchy.

This means that within its own internal logic, the adjuration to al-Ahmar is not an act of sorcery (sihr in the pejorative sense, which the Islamic tradition condemns). It is an act of taskhir — subjugation or compulsion of spirits through God’s authority as transmitted through Solomon. The manuscript’s title, Sihr Muluk al-Jann, uses sihr in a technical rather than pejorative sense; the translator’s note in the JFP edition addresses this terminological distinction directly.

The practitioners who used these formulas — and the manuscripts circulated; they were used, not merely collected — understood themselves as operating within divine sanction, not against it. Whether one accepts that claim or not, it is the claim that structures the entire operation, including the adjuration to the Red King.

Why This Text Has Not Been Available Until Now

The Sihr Muluk al-Jann is dated by the JFP edition to approximately the 14th–16th century CE and is attributed to an anonymous author — a common feature of this genre of manuscript, where the practical knowledge mattered more than authorial credit. The text circulated in manuscript form within the Arabic-speaking world and was never translated into a European language in the medieval or early modern period. Unlike the parallel Solomonic tradition that reached Latin Europe through the Toledo translation school, the Arabic jinn-king operational texts traveled an entirely separate path and remained inaccessible to non-Arabic readers until the present edition.

This is the first complete English translation of the Sihr Muluk al-Jann. It includes the full text of all seven king protocols, the supporting sections on divine names, planetary correspondences, and incense, the talismanic seals reproduced as images from the manuscript, and translator’s notes on the most technically complex passages.

For the magic squares associated with each of the seven kings, including al-Ahmar’s, see Seven Magic Squares for Seven Jinn Kings. For anyone seriously interested in the history of Solomonic magic — not the 17th-century European version filtered through the Toledo translation school, but the original Arabic operational tradition in its own language and its own cosmological framework — this is the primary source.