**2. Owls in Arabian tradition of Iraq and Syria**

The symbolics of animal species have some contradictory representations in the literature of different ethnic groups and cultures. These symbols could represent peace, desire, and friendship, while others could be a sign of hostility in some people's beliefs [37]. One of the animals with the greatest contradictions is the owl. An animal that, despite its many denunciations in some cultures, has its own position, albeit a negative one. Owls have been known by the Arabian culture as those wild birds with two horns on top of the large head, broad face, great fierce piercing eyes, curved

*Queens of the Night, the Owls of Iraq and Syria - Species, Current Distribution,… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109571*

beaks, and powerful legs equipped with sharp talons. Owls mostly inhabit ruins and caves in deserts and wadies, taking their prey at night with secretive behavior, noticed when heard with their heart-taking hoots rather than being visually seen.

In Islamic belief, the owl came from the birds of prey characterized by their hooked beaks, rounded heads, and very short necks. The eyes are immobile and large surrounded by feathers attached to them. They fly slowly and have an accurate hearing sense [37, 38].

The Arabian zoologist, Ibn Musa Al-Damiri (1370–1405) mentioned in his Life of Animals (Ḥ*ayāt al-*ḥ*ayawān al-kubrā*) book that owls at night have more power, dominant and hostile on other creatures; they are nocturnal, attacking other birds' nests' prey on their eggs and nestlings. They are also known for their secretive loneliness and their hostility toward crows as intrinsic behavior. Based on different Arabian tribal distribution, owls are known by several Arabic names, for example, *Boom*, *Umm al-Sharab*, *Umm al-Sabian*, *Umm al-Saeed, Abu Al-Manhal*, *Abu Malik,* and others. Allouse [9] also mentioned several Arabian common names for many owl species recorded in Iraq, for example, "*Buha"* for Eagle Owl, "*Khibil"* for Tawny Owl, "*Hama*" for Western Barn Owl, and "*Thabaj*" for Scops owls and likewise.

Moreover, owls in the Arabian culture are symbols of bad omen and embodiment of evil spirits that are roaming in deserts and abandoned places at night to impersonate the wandering people. In their traditional knowledge, the Bedouins of the Iraqi and Syrian deserts are considering owls as flying spirits of dead warriors, who are seeking revenge when they hoot. In other stories, owls are considered as a sign of misfortune, which is horrified and feared by Arabs. They believed that owls bring death when perched on a person's house. Even more, "*follow the owl which leads you to the ruin*", an old Arabian proverb describing owls as a sign of destruction. For decades, owls with their fierce and protruding eyes resembled *satanic* birds; therefore, they are persecuted to be used in sorcery whenever and wherever possible (Al-Sheikhly [39]). Nowadays, superstitions related to owls as being a sign of misfortune and death were refuted and acquitted by the Islamic religion, which highlighted their ecological importance in controlling rodents and the outbreak of zoonotic diseases. However, many communities around the Arabian region are still deemed in the beliefs of the pre-Islamic period, unfortunately (see Conservation issues).
