The History of the Necronomicon A short story written by H.
P.
Lovecraft.
Original title,
Al-Azif.
Azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound,
Made by insects,
Supposed to be the howling of demons.
Composed by Abdul Alhazred a mad poet of Sana'a in Yemen,
Who is said to have flourished during the period of the Umayyad Caliphs,
Circa 700 AD.
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 Kaliye or Empty Space of the Ancients,
And Dana 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 Eben Kalekan,
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 fabulous Erem,
Or City of Pillars,
And to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town,
And secrets of a race older than mankind.
He was only an indifferent Muslim,
Worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.
In A.
D.
950,
The Azif,
Which had gained a considerable,
Though surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age,
Was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetus 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 made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages,
And the Latin text was printed twice,
Once in the 15th century in black letter,
Evidently in Germany,
And once in the 17th,
Probably 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 site 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.
D.
Was never printed,
And exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript.
Of the Latin text now existing,
One,
15th century,
Known to be in the British Museum under lock and key,
While another,
17th century,
Is in the Bibliothèque 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 rumored 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 organized ecclesiastism.
Reading leads to terrible consequences.
It was from rumors 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 AD at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred.
Translated to Greek 950 A.
D.
As Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetus.
Burnt by Patriarch Michael 1050.
Greek text.
Arabic text now lost.
Holos translates Greek to Latin 1228.
1232 Latin edition and Greek suppressed by Pope Gregory IX.
14.
Black Letter Printed Edition,
Germany.
15.
Greek Text Printed in Italy.
16.
Spanish Reprint of Latin Text.
