The ghul

Al-Masudi, in Muruj al-dhahab, transmits what the Arabs claimed about the ghul (ghoul), a creature that appears to them in lonely places and takes various forms. This is a presentation of a belief that spread among them. It is not the museum's own account. ²

They say that its legs are the legs of a she-goat. When the ghoul confronted them in the wilderness, they would recite rajaz verses, and it would flee from them into the bellies of the valleys. ²

Al-Masudi mentions that a group of Companions, among them Umar ibn al-Khattab (may God be pleased with him), witnessed it. He reports that Umar saw it on a journey to Syria before Islam, and struck it with his sword. ²

• Some philosophers related that it is an abnormal, deformed animal not governed by nature.
• A group in India held that they are persons who appear at the rising of the forty-eight constellations known as the bearers of the ghoul's head; Ptolemy and Abu Ma'shar mention them.
• The Arabs distinguished between the sa'la and the ghoul, and counted the qutrub and the ghaddar as mischievous types in Yemen, the Tihama, and the upper Egyptian Sa'id.

²

Al-Masudi also gives, citing the historians, a lineage for the jinn and the places where they dwell. The details are in the book.