#saksar island

[cuties-in-codices]

the inhabitants of saksar island

in a turkish edition of zakariyya' al-qazwini's "aja'ib al-makhluqat" ("the wonders of creatures and the marvels of creation"), anatolia or persia, 1717

source: Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibl., Cod. orient. 342, fol. 83v

[ebrithilbowser-blog]

Inhabitants of Saksar island and other demons who sit on people

I just read about an interesting creature from al-Qazwini’s “Wonders of Creation” (this guy never fails to amaze) that lives on the mythical island of Saksar, alongside some classic cynocephali. al-Qazwini tells about a sailor who escapes from the cynocephali, who tried to fatten him up in order to eat him, by hiding in a tree. But there he is attacked by this guy:

The creature looks like a person, but is said that its legs are boneless and like snakes. It wraps those legs around the neck of the sailor and rides around on his shoulders. He cannot get the demon off and is ridden around like a horse so that the rider can reach fruit from the trees. The sailor finally frees himself by making the demon drunk on “grape-juice”, which loosens its legs.

The creature, like many described by Al-Qazwini, also appears in Taceddin Ahmedi’s İskendernāme, a book about the adventures of Alexander the great. Here, it’s part of an army of demons that Alexander fights in Khorasan. It wraps its legs around Alexanders neck like a “strap of leather” so he couldn’t speak a prayer to free himself. The demon is finally defeated by an angel that appears from heaven.

My only source on both of theese accounts is a paper by Serpi̇l Baǧci which you can find here. But I couldn’t help but notice similarities to a creature from German folklore called the “Aufhocker”. It jumps on the back of a person and gets heavier and heavier until the person dies of exhaustion. Only is you come home before you succumb to it, you can survive.

I think there are also parallels to night hags who sit on sleeping people, causing nightmares and sleep paralysis. Wikipedia has a list of similar creatures from cultures all around the world (which makes sense, as sleep paralysis is an universal phenomenon), including Persian and Turkish examples, but those sound nothing like the thing al-Qazwini and Ahmedi described, so I’m not sure if there’s a connection between demons who sit on sleepers and those who sit on wanderers. If anybody knows more about examples of the latter, of which I cannot find as much, it would be much appreciated.