Qarinah

The qarina is the female spiritual double that, in popular Islamic belief, is born at the same moment as every man and accompanies him until death. Its masculine counterpart, the qarin, belongs to every woman: the double is always of the sex opposite to the person's. The Quran uses the word in four passages (4:38, 37:51, 43:36 and 50:23), where it names the mate who attends a human being and who will testify about him on the Day of Judgement. Al-Tabari, in his commentary, settles the matter bluntly: the qarin or qarina is each person's shaitan, appointed to have charge of them for as long as the world lasts. A tradition preserved by al-Shibli in the Kitab akam al-marjan adds the qualification that rescues the human creature: there is not one of you who does not have his qarina of the jinn and his qarina of the angels. Of the Prophet himself it is told that he surpassed Adam in this, that his qarina, though an unbeliever, became Muslim by God's help, whereas Adam's remained faithless.

Except in the case of the prophets, the common teaching is that the double is in every case jealous, malignant and the cause of physical and moral ill, save so far as it is warded off by religion or by magic. Its envy prevents love between husband and wife, produces barrenness, kills the unborn child and, in children as in adults, is the cause of untold misery. A wife fears above all her husband's qarina, and a husband his wife's qarin. It is generally invisible, though those with second sight can see it. It gets the better of a person when sleep overcomes them, and to it, not to oneself, is charged the prayer omitted through carelessness or forgetfulness. It is born with the person, grows as the child grows and, in the most widespread opinion, dies when they die; others hold that it enters the grave with the body. The belief runs through everyday speech: to send someone away, Egyptians say bukh anta wa huwa, 'go thou and he', where the second pronoun names the double.

Tradition assigns her no fixed face and no attire; what it does record insistently is that the qarina wanders by night in the shape of a cat, and sometimes of a dog or another household animal. The belief that she dwells in a cat's body after nightfall was so widespread in Egypt that neither Copts nor Muslims dared to beat or injure a cat after that hour, for fear of thrashing somebody's double. During the seven days that follow a birth the mother is forbidden to strike a cat: if she does, it is held that she and the child will both die. This animal shape, and not any particular human figure, is the iconography tradition grants her, and it explains why the qarina is not described as an apparition in gown and jewels but as something that crosses a darkened room and merges with the household animal.

The defence is organised around the number seven and around iron. The expectant mother visits the sheikha, the local wise woman, three months before the birth so that she may prescribe the remedy, and before the delivery an amulet is prepared of seven grains of seven different cereals, sewn into a bag that is put on the newborn. On the seventh day candles are lit and set in a jug of water beside the child's head. Where several little ones have died in a family, the mother and the surviving children wear iron anklets. Verses of the Quran are also written with musk water, and at the moment of conception bismillah is pronounced, which is believed to keep the child from being overcome by its double. The qarina must not be confused with Umm al-Sibyan, the child-witch: tradition distinguishes the two and at the same time links them, for Umm al-Sibyan is said to be jealous of the mother and to use the child's own qarina to make an end of it. Nor is she the masculine qarin, who attends women and with whom she forms a symmetrical pair.