object:1f.lovecraft - The History of the Necronomicon
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
Original title Al Azif—azif being the word used by Arabs to designate
that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of
daemons.
Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said
to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700
A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of
Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of
Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space” of the ancients—and
“Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be
inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this
desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who
pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in
Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his
final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting
things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to
have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured
horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his
madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or
City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain
nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older
than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown
entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.
In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’
surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was
secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople
under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain
experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by
the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but
(1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages,
and the Latin text was printed twice—once in the fifteenth century in
black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob.
Spanish)—both editions being without identifying marks, and located as
to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work
both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly
after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic
original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his
prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in
Italy between 1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a
certain Salem man’s library in 1692. An English translation made by Dr.
Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the
original manuscript. Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.)
is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another
(17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. A
seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and
in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the library
of the University of Buenos Ayres. Numerous other copies probably exist
in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form
part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still
vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek
text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it
vanished with the artist R.U. Pickman, who disappeared early in 1926.
The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries,
and by all branches of organised ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to
terrible consequences. It was from rumours of this book (of which
relatively few of the general public know) that R.W. Chambers is said
to have derived the idea of his early novel The King in Yellow.
Chronology
Al Azif written circa 730 A.D. at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred
Tr. to Greek 950 A.D. as Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas
Burnt by Patriarch Michael 1050 (i.e., Greek text). Arabic text now
lost.
Olaus translates Gr. to Latin 1228
1232 Latin ed. (and Gr.) suppr. by Pope Gregory IX
14... Black-letter printed edition (Germany)
15... Gr. text printed in Italy
16... Spanish reprint of Latin text
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