Nasnas

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Nasnas" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. You can help. The talk page may contain suggestions. (June 2018) This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

In Arab folklore, Nasnas (Arabic: نسناس, romanized: nasnās, plural nisānis) is a monstrous creature. According to Edward Lane, the 19th-century translator of One Thousand and One Nights, a nasnas is "half a human being; having half a head, half a body, one arm, one leg, with which it hops with much agility".

In Somali folklore there is a similar creature called xunguruuf (Somali pronunciation: [ħunguruːf]). It is believed it can kill a person by just touching them and the person would be fleshless in mere seconds.

It was believed to be the offspring of a jinn called a Shiqq (الشق) and a human being.

A character in "The Story of the Sage and the Scholar", a tale from the collection, is turned into a nasnas after a magician applies kohl to one of his eyes. The nasnas is mentioned in Gustave Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

See also

• Fachan
• Monopod (creature)

Sources

• Robert Irwin The Arabian Nights: a Companion (Penguin, 1994)
• Jorge Luis Borges The Book of Imaginary Beasts (Penguin, 1974)

References