Abdul Alhazred aka Mad Arab is the author of the Kitab al-Azif better known as the Necronomicon.
H. P. Lovecraft[]
According to Lovecraft's "History of the Necronomicon" (written 1927, first published in 1938), Alhazred was:
- a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Umayyad Caliphate caliphs, circa 700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secret of Memphis, 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.
In 730, while still living in Damascus, Alhazred wrote a book of ultimate evil in Arabic, al-Azif, which would later become known as the Necronomicon. Those who have dealings with this book usually come to an unpleasant end, and Alhazred was no exception. Again according to Lovecraft's "History":
- 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 the fabulous Iram of the Pillars|Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of The Nameless City|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.
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