Āl (Al), the childbirth spirit

The āl is a figure of folk belief in Iran, Armenia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, feared as a danger to women in childbirth. In Persian belief she lives in springs and comes to a new mother left alone.

Wikipedia describes the al, or hal, as a kind of demon found in folk belief across Armenia, Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia, one that interferes with childbirth and human reproduction. Its names vary: Armenians and Kurds say alk; in Tajikistan and Afghanistan it is ol, hāl or xāl; Turkic speakers in Central Asia say almasti or albasti; the Dards say halmasti. Wikipedia says European writing first records it in the mid-19th century.

Persian Wikipedia calls Āl, also named zā'ou-tarsān, a female div who lives in springs. In popular belief, it says, if a woman who has just given birth is left alone, Āl comes to her and torments or harms her.

Mardiros Ananikian, writing on Armenian mythology in 1925, said the Als reached the Armenians through the Syrians or the Persians, who also believed in them and regarded them as childbirth demons. He linked the name to the Babylonian Alu, one of four collective Babylonian terms for evil spirits, and said the Al of Armenians and Persians resembles, in some ways, Lilith of Jewish lore and the Greek Lamia. These links are his.

Bahram Bahramian, director of the film Āl, told Cinemaye Ma in 2010 that he and his team did not feel like strangers in Armenia. He said Āl was known in old times as a jinn that attacked pregnant women, and that Iranians and Armenians share deep roots in the belief: Armenians once held it as strongly as Iranians do and kept the same customs.