History of the Necronomicon

Publication History
The following entries include the first publication of this work and any publications currently in print.
A History of the Necronomicon, Oakman, AL: The Rebel Press, 1938, 2–4.
Miscellaneous Writings. Ed. S.T. Joshi. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1995, 52–53.
H.P. Lovecraft: The Fiction. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2008, 621–622.
The Other Gods and More Unearthly Tales. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2010, 267–269.
Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre. London: Gollancz, 2011, 1–3.
H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2011, 621–622.
The History of the Necronomicon H. P. Lovecraft
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 secretsof a race older than mankind.