In order to account for a Greek title to a work by an Arab, Lovecraft later claimed that the Necronomicon was the Greek translation of a work in Arabic entitled Al Azif—a term he cribbed from Samuel Henley’s notes to William Beckford’s Vathek (1786), where azif, referring to the buzzing of insects, is defined as “a nocturnal sound . . . believed to be the howling of demons.”
