In a tradition from the Prophet, it is said, "The Jánn were created of a smokeless fire."[19] El-Jánn is sometimes used as a name of Iblees, as in the following verse of the Ḳur-án:--"And the Jánn [the father of the Jinn; _i.e._ Iblees] we had created before [_i.e._ before the creation of Adam] of the fire of the samoom [_i.e._ of fire without smoke]."[20] Jánn also signifies "a serpent," as in other passages of the Ḳur-án;[21] and is used in the same book as synonymous with Jinn.[22] In the last sense it is generally believed to be used in the tradition quoted in the commencement of this paragraph. There are several apparently contradictory traditions from the Prophet which are reconciled by what has been above stated: in one, it is said that Iblees was the father of all the Jánn and Sheyṭáns,[23] Jánn being here synonymous with Jinn; in another, that Jánn was the father of all the Jinn,[24] Jánn being here used as a name of Iblees. "It is held," says El-Ḳazweenee, a writer of the thirteenth century, "that the Jinn are aërial animals, with transparent bodies, which can assume various forms. People differ in opinion respecting these beings: some consider the Jinn and Sheyṭáns as unruly men, but these persons are of the Moạtezileh [a sect of Muslim freethinkers]; and some hold that God, whose name be exalted, created the Angels of the light of fire, and the Jinn of its flame [but this is at variance with the general opinion], and the Sheyṭáns of its smoke [which is also at variance with the common opinion], and that [all] these kinds of beings are [usually] invisible[25] to men, but that they assume what forms they please, and when their form becomes condensed they are visible."--This last remark illustrates several descriptions of Jinnees in the "Thousand and One Nights," where the form of the monster is at first undefined, or like an enormous pillar, and then gradually assumes a human shape and less gigantic size. It is said that God created the Jánn (or Jinn) two thousand years before Adam (or, according to some writers, much earlier), and that there are believers and infidels, and every sect, among them, as among men.[26] Some say that a prophet, named Yoosuf, was sent to the Jinn; others, that they had only preachers or admonishers; others, again, that seventy apostles were sent, before Moḥammad, to Jinn and men conjointly.[27] It is commonly believed that the preadamite Jinn were governed by forty (or, according to some, seventy-two) kings, to each of whom the Arab writers give the name of Suleymán (Solomon); and that they derive their appellation from the last of these, who was called Jánn Ibn Jánn, and who, some say, built the Pyramids of Egypt. The following account of the preadamite Jinn is given by El-Ḳazweenee.--"It is related in histories that a race of Jinn in ancient times, before the creation of Adam, inhabited the earth and covered it, the land and the sea, and the plains and the mountains; and