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