According to the Alawi sect, the jinn are part of the “circle of time”, belonging to a period preceding the creation of mankind. Therefore before humans, the hinn, binn, timm, rimm, jann, and jinn resided on the earth. These six periods symbolize negative progress, until humans emerge; thus the first letters of the first four circles mean Habtar (here referring to the personification of evil) and the latter referring to jann and jinn as subordinates of the devil. The following circle divides human history, starting with Adam and ends with Muhammad, the period in which humans now live.
Alternatively, hinn have been said to be associated with air and another creature, binn, with water in a document called “Revelations of ʻAbdullah Al-Sayid Muhammad Habib”. In the same document, hinn and binn are said to be extinct, unlike jinn.
According to Ibn Kathir, the hinn belongs together with the jinn to those creatures who shed blood on earth before humankind, causing the angels to question God’s command to place Adam as a viceregent.[5] In his work Al-Bidāya wa-n-Nihāya, he relates that the Hinn and binn were exterminated by the jinn, so that the jinn could dwell on the earth.
Although many sources describe the hinn and binn as powerful gigantic primordial creatures, Al-Jahiz mentions them as a “weak type” of demons in his Kitāb al-Ḥayawān
