in that dish. When the disciple visits him, the shaykh tells him, “My hand was in the dish,” and he believes him, although they had been a month’s journey apart. The shaykh had remained where he was, and his hand had not grown longer. Rather, the jinnī had presented an image to both the shaykh and the disciple, until each thought that one of them was with the other. What was actually present with each was only what the jinnī had depicted and made him imagine.

When a shaykh served by a jinnī is asked about a matter hidden from him—whether a theft, someone who has died and whose condition he is asked to report, an illness affecting women, or something else—the jinnī may depict it for him. He shows him an image of the stolen property, and the shaykh says, “You have lost such-and-such.” Then, if the owner of the property is held in high regard and the shaykh wishes to direct him to his stolen property, the shaykh depicts for him the person who took it or the place where it is. They go there and find it just as he said.

Most of them, however, display an image of the property without having it at hand, because the person who stole it also has a jinnī serving him. The jinn fear one another just as humans do. If the jinnī identifies the thief, the thief’s allies come and harm him. Sometimes he does not identify him because the thief and his accomplices serve and bribe him. The same happens among humans to someone who knows thieves: he may know the thief but not identify him, either because of some benefit he hopes to obtain from him or because he fears him. But if the stolen property belongs to a powerful man whom he fears and whose favour he seeks, he identifies the thief. This and similar things are instances of their benefiting from one another.

The jinn are bound by religious obligations just as humans are, and Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was sent