They must grant you Three Wishes ('And ix-nay on the Wishing for More Wishes!'), which they may or may not screw up horribly. (Originally, at least part of those items only acted as a means to summon the genie and didn't actually contain it). In popular Western media, genies are immortal beings almost invariably trapped inside a lamp or a bottle, often materializing through a puff of smoke. note On a related note, linguists have proposed that that the word Iblis is etymologically derived from the Ancient Greek word Diabolos. in other words, he's their version of Satan (and in fact is sometimes called Shayṭān or Shaitan). Iblis, by the way, never repented, and in fact swore that he would corrupt mankind. During exorcisms, the genie is given the option to convert to Islam, leave the body of the human or die. Genies in Islam can also possess humans for a variety of reasons - they might have a crush on the human, or they might just be a jerkwad. In Islamic theology, God told the Djinn that they should bow to man's superiority, but their leader, Iblis, refused to do so thus, a good chunk of them ended up imprisoned by Suleiman and other holy men in lamps and such and forced to grant wishes. Belief in genies is still common in the Middle East today. There are even various types of djinn, not unlike how The Fair Folk comprises many different creatures. Genies are creatures of free will they can be good or evil and may even be religious (there are Muslim genies, Christian genies, Jewish genies, etc.), and when there are enough of them around, they can form a Wainscot Society, sometimes living invisibly alongside humans. They might grant you a wish if you free them, or they might have been bound to something like a ring or a lamp and forced to obey the orders of anyone who summoned them. (At least a couple of genies there being done in by a rock to the head.) They were sometimes trapped in bottles. However, they can be killed by mundane means, if the Arabian Nights is any indication. They are also extremely long-lived and highly skilled in magic. They are said to be made of 'smokeless fire', perhaps something along the lines of Energy Beings.

They are (usually) invisible beings that are actually more like humans than we realize - they are born, grow up, marry, have children and eventually die. In Middle Eastern folklore and Islam, genies ( jinn, Arabic for 'hidden') were the first beings with free will, created out of 'smokeless fire' by God before he created the First Man out of clay.

How to breed genie monster legends