Somewhere between theology and folk practice, between the formal cosmology of classical Islamic scholarship and the dusty practicality of people who needed results, a genre of Arabic manuscript emerged that preserves what might be the most operationally detailed tradition of spirit-contact in any medieval culture. These texts do not merely assert that the jinn exist. They name them. They specify which day of the week each king rules, which planet governs him, which divine names compel his appearance, and what happens — in explicit and sometimes alarming terms — if you get the protocol wrong.
This essay sets out what those manuscripts record: who the jinn are, who the seven kings of jinn are, and how to summon a jinn as the texts themselves describe it — presented as a matter of historical and textual record.
Who Is the King of the Jinn?
The manuscripts translated in this series answer with seven kings, not one. The al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a ranks them as the greatest of the spiritual beings who serve the practitioner, each tied to one of the seven days and one of the seven planets.
Kitab al-Ajnas sets them out in a table headed “The Kings of the Seven Days,” with each “Earthly King” beside a “Celestial Angel”: al-Mudhhab for Sunday, Murra for Monday, al-Ahmar for Tuesday, Barqan for Wednesday, Shamhurash for Thursday, Zuba‘a al-Abyad (Zawba’a) for Friday and Maymun for Saturday. The epithet al-Abyad, “the White,” is not tied to Friday alone: the same book’s chapter on Monday calls Murra “the White King,” the reading the roster below follows.
In these texts each of the seven is paired with an angel, and the Kitab al-Ajnas even provides for disobedience: “If any king of the jinn disobeys you, whether celestial or terrestrial,” the operator speaks its burning invocation and “angels of light will descend to you.”
Other volumes also give the title to single figures among the believing jinn: the Mujarrabat al-Ruhban gives it to Ibn Sa’duya (see Good Jinn Names below), and the Shams al-Ma’arif describes a servant named Abu Yusuf as “one of the believing kings of the jinn.” Each king’s full Arabic name and angel is set out in the real names of the 7 jinn kings.
What the Manuscripts Actually Say
Before anything else, a necessary caveat: the tradition of the seven jinn kings is not a single fixed text. It is a current running through dozens of manuscripts, and the details shift from one to the next. The names of the seven kings are broadly consistent across the tradition, but their spellings, their planetary assignments, and their particular domains of power vary depending on the manuscript, its period, and its regional origin.
What follows is drawn from the tradition as it appears across the genre, including the texts John Friend Publishing has made available in English — the Sihr Muluk al-Jann and the al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a — and the secondary scholarship that has documented this material.
With that established: here is what the manuscripts say.
Who Is a Jinn? The Djinn of Arabic Folklore and of the Manuscripts
Before the kings, their subjects. The jinn — often spelled djinn in older English — are the hidden beings of Arabic folklore and of the Quran, and the operative manuscripts start from the same premise as scripture. Sihr Muluk al-Jann states it plainly: God “created the jinn from smokeless fire and created Adam from clay,” and made the earth a dwelling for both. The same passage gives the principle on which every summoning rests — that the spiritual beings “are compelled to obey the one who adjures them by God’s names.”
The manuscripts do not pretend the question is simple. Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani’s Shams al-Anwar, in its chapter “On the Service of the Jinn,” records that the scholars of the art disagreed: some held that the jinn are made of smokeless fire and possess bodies of fire, some that they are spirits able to take on many forms, and some that they are spiritual beings appointed by God to serve those who call on them by their names — and that some among them are believers and some disbelievers.
The al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a sorts them by element instead: fire jinn (al-marid), “red in appearance, powerful and fierce”; air jinn (al-ifrit), swift and capable of flight; water jinn of the rivers, seas and springs, associated with the Moon; and earth jinn beneath the surface, associated with Saturn. Over all of them, the text says, stand the seven kings of the jinn, “each associated with one of the seven days and one of the seven planets.”
Good Jinn Names: The Believing Jinn
Readers often ask for good jinn names — a list of benevolent spirits. The manuscripts keep no such list, but they do set the believing jinn apart. The Shams al-Ma’arif gives an operation for one who wishes “to take brothers from among the believing jinn,” and the Mujarrabat al-Ruhban names a king of them outright: “Ibn Sa’duya is the king of the believing jinn and the best among them.”
For the names of jinns attached to each of the seven kings — with their epithets, angels and colors — see The Real Names of the 7 Jinn Kings.
The Seven Kings: Names, Days, Planets
The seven kings of the jinn are associated with the seven classical planets in an exact correspondence that mirrors the planetary week. This is not coincidental — the Arabic astrological tradition, inherited from Hellenistic sources via the great translation movement of the 8th–10th centuries, organizes time and matter into a seven-fold planetary hierarchy, and the jinn-king tradition slots directly into this framework.
The most commonly attested roster in the manuscript tradition runs as follows:
Al-Mudhhab (“the Golden One”) is associated with Sunday and the Sun. He is typically described as a king of great brilliance, governing wealth, honor, and the illumination of hidden things. His color is gold or yellow, and his sigil appears in manuscripts as an elaborate figure sometimes resembling a stylized human form.
Murra al-Abyad (“Murra the White,” sometimes listed as Murra separately from Abyad) is associated with Monday and the Moon. The white color and lunar association connect this king to matters of water, travel, dreams, and the hidden world of the night. Some manuscripts list Murra and Abyad as a single king; others treat them as distinct figures. The textual situation is genuinely ambiguous.
Al-Ahmar (“The Red One”) is associated with Tuesday and Mars. As the martial planet’s regent, al-Ahmar governs warfare, conflict, and the coercion of enemies. He is among the more feared of the seven, and manuscripts that describe the dangers of improper invocation tend to emphasize the consequences of incorrectly summoning the Mars-king.
Barqan is associated with Wednesday and Mercury. Mercury’s quicksilver character in Arabic astrology — governing speech, writing, commerce, and trickery — shapes this king’s domain. Barqan appears in manuscripts concerned with eloquence, with the unlocking of secrets, and with the operation of certain kinds of influence over the minds of others.
Shamhurash is associated with Thursday and Jupiter. The Jupiter-king is among the most prestigious figures in the tradition — Jupiter being the planet of religious authority, scholars, and kings — and Shamhurash appears in texts concerned with the acquisition of spiritual knowledge, the settling of legal disputes, and the gaining of favor from powerful persons.
Zawba’a is associated with Friday and Venus. The Venusian domain covers love, beauty, harmony, and the reconciliation of enemies.
Maymun (“The Fortunate” or “The Blessed”) is associated with Saturday and Saturn. Saturn in classical Arabic astrology governs agriculture, slow processes, the dead, and hidden underground things. Maymun is often described as the most difficult king to work with — Saturn’s heavy, cold nature making him resistant to human petition — but also, in some manuscripts, the most powerful when successfully contacted.
A key scholarly caution: these attributions are drawn from the general manuscript tradition, but individual texts vary. Some manuscripts place the kings in a different order; some substitute or add names; some assign different planetary rulers. Anyone working seriously with this material should consult the primary sources rather than any single secondary summary.
The variation is visible even inside a single book. The al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a’s own Table of Spiritual Compositions for the Days assigns Shamhurash to Sunday, Murra to Monday, al-Ahmar to Tuesday, Barqan to Wednesday, Shamhurash again to Thursday, Zawba’a to Friday and Maymun to Saturday, each with a cardinal direction — a different Sunday king from the roster above. Anyone comparing the seven jinn kings across sources should expect such shifts.
The weekdays and planetary hours of the seven jinn kings are set out in full in Seven Jinn Kings, Days of the Week, and Planetary Hours, and the Mars-king has his own study in Who Is al-Ahmar? The Red King of the Jinn.
The Conditions: What the Practitioner Had to Do
The most striking feature of the jinn-king summoning literature is not the names — it is the protocol. These are not casual operations. The manuscripts specify conditions of preparation that would, by modern standards, constitute a serious ascetic practice.
Ritual purity (tahara) was non-negotiable. The practitioner was required to be in a state of complete bodily purity — the full ablution (ghusl), not merely the partial wudu of ordinary prayer. Some texts specify that this purity had to be maintained for the entire period of the operation, which could extend over several days.
Fasting was standard. The manuscripts specify varying periods — three days, seven days, forty days in the most demanding versions — during which the practitioner abstained from certain foods or from food entirely. Meat was commonly prohibited. Sexual abstinence was required. Some operations specified the avoidance of any contact with women, or with anyone in a state of ritual impurity.
Isolation (khalwa) features prominently. The practitioner retreated to a place of seclusion — ideally a clean room that had not been used for mundane purposes — and remained there for the duration of the working. This isolation served both ritual and practical purposes: it concentrated the practitioner’s intention (niyyah) and removed him from distractions that might break the conditions of purity.
The timing was determined by planetary correspondences. Operations dedicated to al-Mudhhab were begun on Sunday, ideally in the first planetary hour of Sunday — the hour governed by the Sun. The practitioner had to calculate these hours using the traditional system of unequal (seasonal) hours, which varied by latitude and season. Getting the timing wrong was understood to undermine the operation.
The Invocations: What Was Actually Said
The manuscripts preserve specific prayers, divine names, and Quranic verses to be recited during the operation. These were not improvised. They were fixed formulas, transmitted from teacher to student, copied with the care that any sacred text received.
The structure of these invocations typically follows a pattern: opening with Quranic recitation (most commonly al-Fatiha and specific verses chosen for their relevance to the working), proceeding through an address to God invoking the divine names by which the jinn-king was bound, and then the specific petition to the king himself — naming him, stating the purpose of the contact, and specifying what was being requested.
Critically, the authority structure of these operations is always Solomonic. The practitioner does not summon jinn by his own power or in his own name. He summons them by the authority of Solomon (Sulayman), to whom God granted power over the jinn, and ultimately by the authority of the divine names that bind both Solomon and the jinn. This framing is not merely rhetorical — it is the theological mechanism by which practitioners justified the practice as consonant with Islam rather than contrary to it.
How to Summon a Jinn: The Protocol of the Radiant Jewels
The general description above can be checked against a specific text. The al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a (The Radiant Jewels), attributed to Ali Abu Hayy Allah al-Marzuqi, sets out how to summon the seven kings of jinn in a fixed order. In its own words: “First, invoke God Most High by His greatest names. Then invoke the angels by their names. Then command the jinn kings by their names. Then state the purpose of the summoning. Then recite the binding oath that compels obedience.” Read as a sequence, the manuscript’s procedure runs as follows:
- Preparation. The comprehensive invocation for summoning the jinn kings is to be used only after “all the preliminary conditions” are complete, with the practitioner “in a state of the highest spiritual purity.”
- The invocation. The practitioner calls on God by the sanctity of His names and asks that the kings of the jinn appear “in a form that is gentle and not terrifying, by the permission of God Most High.”
- The divine names. He then recites the particular divine names forty-two times and waits in silence. The sign, the text says, “may come as a gentle breeze, a fragrance, a light, or a voice,” and he must not show fear.
- The address. When the king appears, he is greeted “with respect and authority” — “Peace be upon you, O servant of God” — told the purpose of the summons, and adjured by the prescribed divine names.
- The terms and the seal. The practitioner negotiates the terms of service, recites the sealing invocation, and dismisses the king “with respect and gratitude.”
- Renewal. A binding is not permanent: it “must be renewed at regular intervals (typically every seven days or every lunar month)” by reciting the renewal formula and fumigating the talisman that bears the seal of the covenant.
That last step is a reminder of how material the work is. Fumigation runs through every stage, and the recipes are gathered in The Incense Recipes of the Arabic Grimoires.
What Happened If You Got It Wrong
The manuscripts are not reassuring on this point. Operations conducted without proper preparation, or with impure intention, or with errors in the formulas, are described as producing unpredictable and potentially dangerous results. The jinn-kings, in this tradition, are not malevolent by nature — they are bound by Solomonic authority and by divine decree — but they are also not patient with practitioners who approach them carelessly.
The consequences described range from minor disruption (the operation simply fails, nothing appears) to active harm. Some manuscripts warn that improperly summoned jinn may not leave, or may mislead the practitioner, or may bring harm to the practitioner’s household. For the specific adjuration formula used to command al-Ahmar, see Al-Ahmar, the Red King of Jinn.
These warnings serve multiple functions in the text. They protect the tradition by raising the bar for casual practitioners. They explain failures without undermining the system (if nothing happened, you did it wrong). And they reflect a genuine theological position: spiritual forces of this magnitude are not toys, and the manuscripts treat them accordingly.
The Solomonic Authority Structure
What distinguishes the Arabic jinn-king tradition from simple demonology is its integration into the broader Solomonic cosmology that runs through the Quran and the classical Islamic interpretive tradition. The Quran explicitly affirms that God subjected the jinn to Solomon’s authority (Quran 38:37-38, 21:82-83) — this is not folklore but scriptural fact within the tradition. The jinn-king manuscripts are, from their own perspective, not magical texts but operational handbooks for working within a divinely ordained order.
This matters for understanding why these texts survived. They were dangerous to the authorities not because they were simply superstitious, but because they made a serious theological claim: that the Solomonic authority over spirits was a real and transmissible power, accessible to properly trained human practitioners. If that claim was correct, then the person who could summon al-Mudhhab on a Sunday morning in the first planetary hour of the Sun was not a sorcerer — he was a practitioner of a legitimate science.
72 Jinn Names? Why the Arabic Tradition Counts Seven Kings
Searches for “72 jinn names” come from the Western Goetia, which lists seventy-two spirits with their ranks and seals. The Arabic manuscripts are organized differently. Their hierarchy is headed by seven kings, one for each planet and day; beneath them stand their tribes, followers and servants, and the operative texts work with long tables of names rather than a fixed list of seventy-two.
Sihr Muluk al-Jann devotes chapters to “Conjuration of the Jinn by Their Names” and to “The Grand Table of Barbaric Names and Their Permutations,” and its sequence of investitures includes “The Investiture of King Maymun,” “The Delegation of the Golden King and His Seal,” and a chapter headed “The Seventh King: ‘Azra’il.” How the seventy-two Goetic spirits relate to this older Arabic material is the subject of The Goetia’s Arabic Root.
The Actual Source Texts in English
Two of the texts that preserve this tradition are now available in English translation for the first time.
Sihr Muluk al-Jann: Magic of the Jinn Kings — detailed protocols, names, and invocations for the jinn kings.
al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a: Radiant Jewels for Summoning Kings of Jinn — a companion text focusing on the invocation protocols and the structure of the Solomonic authority framework.
In the series, The Complete Magic of the Jinn Kings is the book of jinn kings proper — an anonymous manuscript whose subtitle calls it a work “On the Magic of the Seven Kings of the Jinn.” Its companion, al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a (also written al Jawahir al Lami’a), is the jinn summoning book of the series and the source of the protocol summarized above.
For the seven planetary magic squares, see Seven Magic Squares for Seven Jinn Kings. For the planetary-hour timing system, see Planetary Hours for Jinn Summoning. These are primary sources. They are not modern reconstructions or interpretive guides. They are translations of manuscripts that have been circulating in the Arabic tradition for centuries, made available in English for the first time by John Friend Publishing.
For the scholarly background on the seven jinn kings in Islamic cosmology and their manuscript tradition, see the relevant sections in Matthew Melvin-Koushki’s work on medieval Islamic occultism, and the entries on jinn in the Encyclopaedia of the Quran. The Wikipedia article on Jinn provides a useful entry point into the primary sources.
