Evil eye (nazar)
A charm against the evil eye, the harm that an envious or admiring look is believed to do. Its best-known form is the Turkish nazar boncuğu, a blue glass bead with an eye in rings at its centre, hung on children, animals and homes.
Meaning
The Turkish word nazar means a look, and Turkish uses nazar etmek, “to cast the eye”, for looking with envy at something admired and so harming it, the Encyclopedia of Islam of the Turkish Diyanet Foundation (TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi) explains. Words of admiration and praise count as nazar too. The Jewish Virtual Library describes the same belief in Jewish tradition as ayin ha-ra, “the evil eye”: that some people can harm others just by looking at them. Frederick Elworthy, whose book on the evil eye appeared in 1895, wrote that the origin of the belief “is lost in the obscurity of prehistoric ages”.
Origin and history
Where the belief began is disputed. The folklorist Alan Dundes, as the TDV encyclopedia summarises his work, argued that it came from Mesopotamia and rests on a contrast between water as life and drought as death: the evil eye dries things up, so a mother’s milk stops, children sicken and crops and trees wither.
The charms against it take many forms. The TDV encyclopedia lists eyes and hands, horseshoes, crescents and suns, figures of animals, and necklaces of blue beads and rings hung on animals and children, and notes that blue, red and yellow are all believed to protect. Elworthy saw blue glass on camels: “The commonest protection is a string of coarse blue-glass beads hung on his neck.”
Is the evil eye good or bad?
In the belief, the evil eye is the harm, and the eye bead is the protection against it. The TDV encyclopedia describes three kinds of amulet: showy objects worn over clothing or hung where they can be seen in a house, to draw the glance to themselves; protective signs worn under clothing, to turn the glance back; and written formulas. Religious authorities differ over the charms. The TDV encyclopedia notes that hadith accept the evil eye as real (“if anything could outrun fate, it would be the evil eye”) and recommend seeking refuge in God from it. Islamweb, a fatwa site, rules that hanging a khamsa or any other amulet to repel the evil eye is impermissible, and may be shirk (idolatry).
The eye and the hand
The same fear lies behind the hamsa and the khamsa. The Jewish Virtual Library lists the counter-charms of Jewish folk practice: a mirror or a colour, red or blue, to turn the glance back on its source, and an outstretched hand to stop its rays. The British Museum’s note on a silver khamsa says that belief in the protective power of hand amulets dates back millennia.
The evil eye today
The Jewish Virtual Library notes that blue paint and a metal amulet shaped like an open hand are still widespread in Oriental Jewish communities. Among Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, praise is still qualified with keyn ayen hore, “may there be no evil eye”, shortened to kaynahora, and a red band tied round a newborn’s wrist or neck comes from the same fear. The TDV encyclopedia notes that protective eyes and hands are usually made of silver, and are sometimes tattooed on the body. Unicode, the standard for text on computers, has a character for the bead: U+1F9FF, NAZAR AMULET.
See also
Sources
- Nazar (TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi), Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı
- Evil Eye, Encyclopaedia Judaica, via the Jewish Virtual Library (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise)
- The Evil Eye (Elworthy, 1895), Frederick Thomas Elworthy, 1895, John Murray
- Pendant, amulet (hand of Fatima or khamsa), RRM46563, The British Museum, Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World
- Hanging amulets is prohibited regardless of the person’s intention, Fatwa 262186, Islamweb
- Unicode Character Database: NamesList.txt, Unicode Consortium
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research