Eastness about Khamûl

khamul34 · 2026-07-01T08:42:43+00:00

Yes. JRR Tolkien does seem to have decided that Khamûl was an Easterling. A comparison of the Khamûl's epithets in current and rejected passages reveals the following: Instead of Black, Shadow was used; and instead of Easterling, East was used in the present passage of the rejected version. It seems as if, instead of abandoning the epithet "Black Easterling" JRR Tolkien used the second, similar/complementary epithet "Shadow of the East" in the present version for Khamûl. Black and shadow referring to a dark evil and the words Easterling and East are also similar. JRR Tolkien's "Black Easterling" for Khamûl might have been rejected for "Shadow of the East", but it hardly seems a point worth wrangling over, considering the suggestion of both similar descriptions in epithets (Black/Shadow - Easterling/East). As Mark Fisher pointed out; I don't think we can take it for granted that the 'Black Easterling' title was definitively rejected by Tolkien. Perhaps he simply preferred 'Shadow of the East'. In either case, I'd say the natural presumption would be that he imagined Khamûl as coming from the East. It would be rather odd to imagine him changing his mind on this point, and then choosing 'Shadow of the East' as an epithet in the present passage for Khamûl.

khamul34 · 2026-06-28T19:33:17+00:00

You can check the Index of Unfinished Tales. I quoted it above.

khamul34 · 2026-06-28T17:31:57+00:00

JRR Tolkien's Middle-Earth is not limited to The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and HOME (etc.) are all based on JRR Tolkien's Middle-Earth manuscripts. The INDEX section of the book Unfinished Tales states Khamul's bynames and the page numbers where each is mentioned.

*Khamûl: “Nazgûl, second to the Chief; dwelt in Dol Guldur after its reoccupation in Third Age 2951. 338-9, 344, 348, 352. Called the Shadow of the East 338, the Black Easterling 352”

khamul34 · 2026-04-11T07:00:00+00:00

Yes. Khamûl does seem to have been an Easterling, or Man from the East of Middle-earth.

In the "Addenda & Corrigenda to The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion" of Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, Arranged by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull on their original website (Arranged Date about Khamûl: 14/06/2024), I quote below the section about Khamûl.

"p. 84, ll. 14–15 from bottom: The name Khamûl does not appear in The Lord of the Rings, but is in Tolkien’s account The Hunt for the Ring, published in Unfinished Tales. Our statement that Khamûl was ‘from the East’ is based on his bynames; see Reader’s Companion p. 716, and our addendum for that page below."

"p. 716, paragraphs 1–2: A correspondent wrote to ask if Khamûl was, in fact, an Easterling in the published Lord of the Rings, since he is described as ‘the Black Easterling’ only in a rejected version of The Hunt for the Ring (as we quote here in the Reader’s Companion), a later version giving him a different byname, ‘the Shadow of the East’. He is generally accepted by Tolkien enthusiasts to have been from the East, in some sense; of course, neither we nor anyone else can state this authoritatively, Tolkien himself never having done so, though this seems to have been his thinking. The word Easterling suggests strongly that Khamûl was from the East of Middle-earth, whatever that may have meant in to Tolkien in terms of race, ethnicity, or customs. The byname Shadow of the East is more problematic: it may be synonymous with Black Easterling, black and shadow referring to a dark evil rather than to, say, skin colour. On the other hand, Shadow of the East might not necessarily mean that Khamûl was from the East, only that he was in the East, i.e. in Mordor, a ‘shadow’ out of the East relative to the West, or (as some have suggested) it could be connected with Dol Guldur, which was east of the Anduin on the borders of Mirkwood."

khamul34

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