Tash (Narnia)

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Tash is a fictional character found in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. He is referred to in The Horse and His Boy, and appears in The Last Battle. He is the main deity of the land of Calormen, south of Archenland which forms a southern borderland for Narnia. Tash is represented as a skeletal creature with four arms and a head like a vulture.

Commentary

It's suggested in the book that he is opposed to Aslan; by implication, he is Satan to Aslan's Christ-like representation. This is illustrated by the reactions of the main characters to his presence: they talk of smelling a foul smell and of the air growing cold when he passes near to them. There is a common link between Tash and the various "pagan" deities which were worshipped in ancient Biblical times, such as Baal, Molech, Nisroch, and others. It is notable that Nisroch, depicted in a form similar to that of Tash, appears in Edith Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet, a book with which Lewis was familiar and from which he borrowed a number of other concepts that appear in the Chronicles of Narnia. 'Tash' and 'Aslan' are respectively the Turkish words for 'stone' and 'lion'. Here is a deliberate reference by C. S. Lewis to a false (stone) god and the true God (lion). Tash's physical description is modelled after the eagle headed sun god Ashur, a diety worshipped by the Assyrian Empire, from whose priesthood the king of Assyria was supposed to descend.

Though the Calormenes' society is a meld of biblical Egypt, ancient Persia (and perhaps Rome as well), it bears some resemblance to medieval Muslim societies, and in a few minor aspects the worship of Tash seems like a parody of Islam. One character says, "In the name of Tash the irresistible, the inexorable - forward!", which resembles the Islamic formula, "In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate". The Calormenes also have a custom that every time they mention their ruler, the Tisroc, they add, "may he live for ever", which resembles the Muslim custom of saying, "peace be upon him", after mentioning Muhammad.

However, the Calormenes' religion differs vastly from Islam. It is polytheistic, and the central figure, Tash is highly unlike the Muslim conception of Allah. Tash is not a god, but a straight-forward devil, making the Calormenes' religion Narnia's equivalent of demonolatry. Lewis, who had a considerable knowledge of both Islam and demonolatry, was unlikely to confuse the two when writing the chronicles of Narnia. Lewis even praises some aspects of Islam in his book Mere Christianity, while always condemning demonolatry.

Nevertheless, this aspect of the Narnia stories has proven offensive to some Muslims and problematic to some non-Muslims. Even when these stories were published in the 1950s, when people were less concerned about "political correctness", some people were slightly surprised that Lewis had adopted this approach. It has been claimed that Lewis was given a copy of the Thousand and One Nights as a child and disliked it. #redirect

It should be noted that those Calormenes who have done good in the name of Tash are rewarded after their death for having really honoured Aslan; likewise those Narnians who do evil in Aslan's name are counted as having done that evil in the name of Tash. This illustrates Lewis's inclusivist belief that the idea being worshipped, and the honesty with which it is worshipped is more important than the name by which it is referred to. This is made clear in The Last Battle, where an honest Calormene soldier enters "Aslan's World".

*The Chronicles of Narnia* by C. S. Lewis The World of Narnia
Peter \| Susan \| Edmund \| Lucy \| Eustace \| Jill \| Digory Kirke \| Polly \| Caspian \| Aslan \| Reepicheep \| Shasta \| Aravis \| Bree \| Shift \| Tash \| Tisroc \| Tumnus \| White Witch \| Puddleglum
Books	List of characters in The Chronicles of Narnia>Characters	Creatures	Places

Tash (Narnia)

Commentary

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