History of the
Necronomicon
by Howard Phillips Lovecraft
from Dr.Cracker'sProgrammerPage Website
Original title Al-Azif -- azif being the word used by
the Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be
the howling of daemons.
Composed by Abdul Al-Hazred, a mad poet of Sanaa, 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
al Khaliyeh, or "Empty Space" of the ancients and "Dahma" 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 a nd
unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have
penetrated it. In his last years, Al-Hazred dwelt in Damascus, where the
Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or
disappearnce (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is
said by Ebn Khallikan (12th century 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 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 deities whom he called
Yog-Sothoth and
Cthulhu.
In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable though surreptitious
circulation amongst the philosphers 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 Olaus Wormius (1228) made a Latin translation
later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice - once in the
15th century in blackletter (evidently in German) and once in the
17th (probably Spanish); both editions being without identifying
marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographic 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 (there is, however, a vague account of a secret copy
appearing in San Francisco during the present century but later perishing by
fire); 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. [John] Dee was never
printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original MS.
Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th century) is known to be
in the British Museum under lock and key, which another (17th
century) is in the Bilbiotheque Nationale at Paris. A 17th
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 Aires.
Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a 15th
century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a
celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumor credits the
preservation of a 16th 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 ornaised
eccleciasticism. 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.
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