Khamûl the Easterling Explained: The Second of the Nine Ringwraiths

Quick Answer: Khamûl is one of the nine Nazgûl, and the only Ringwraith other than the Witch-king that Tolkien ever named. He appears in "The Hunt for the Ring" in Unfinished Tales, where he is "the Black Easterling", the Shadow of the East and second in rank to the Witch-king. In the late Third Age he held Dol Guldur in Mirkwood, and Tolkien's notes make him one of the Black Riders who hunted Frodo in the Shire. Tolkien gave no meaning or language for his name, and almost nothing about his life before the Ring.

Khamûl is having a moment. The Rings of Power Season 3 casts Zubin Varla as "Khamûl the Easterling", and many viewers are searching his name for the first time. The honest answer is short: Tolkien wrote only a few paragraphs about him, and most of the "lore" online is invention. This page separates the two, and then looks at the language around him.

For the Nine as a group, start with The Nazgûl Explained. For the language their name comes from, see Black Speech Words.

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Who Khamûl Is

Khamûl is a Ringwraith: a mortal Man who took one of the Nine Rings that Sauron gave to Men, and was slowly consumed by it until he became a wraith bound to Sauron's will. The Nine are also called the Black Riders, and in Black Speech the Nazgûl.

What sets Khamûl apart is simply that he has a name. The Lord of the Rings never names any of the Nine except by title. The Witch-king of Angmar is the Lord of the Nazgûl, and the others are faceless. When Christopher Tolkien published his father's notes in Unfinished Tales (1980), one more name appeared: Khamûl.

Three facts come with the name in those notes:

• He is an Easterling. Tolkien calls him "the Black Easterling."
• He is second of the Nine. He ranks directly after the Witch-king.
• He is "the Shadow of the East." It is a title, not a translation of his name.

That is the whole of his identity in Tolkien's published work. His original kingdom, his human name, his family and the date he received his Ring are never given.

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Where Tolkien Wrote About Him

Everything canon about Khamûl comes from one place: "The Hunt for the Ring," a chapter of Unfinished Tales in Part Three. It is not a finished story. It is a set of drafts and notes, written after The Lord of the Rings, in which Tolkien worked out exactly what the Black Riders were doing in the summer and autumn of 3018, while Frodo was preparing to leave the Shire.

Christopher Tolkien presents a main narrative and then "other versions" from different manuscripts, and some details shift between them. That matters for Khamûl, because a few of the most-quoted facts about him come from those secondary notes rather than the main text. Where this page relies on them, it says so.

Nothing about Khamûl appears in The Silmarillion, The Hobbit or the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings. He is a Ringwraith known from Tolkien's working papers, not from the published novel.

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The Second of the Nine

The Nine Rings were given to Men in the Second Age. The Silmarillion ("Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age") says that those who used them became mighty in their day: kings, sorcerers and warriors. In time each became invisible to most eyes and fell under the dominion of the One Ring. Tolkien adds in the same chapter that three of them were great lords of Númenórean race; he does not say which three.

Khamûl's rank as second is the only thing that orders the Nine beyond the Witch-king. It explains why, in the notes, he commands when the Witch-king is elsewhere. It does not tell us whether his Ring was the second one made or the second one given; Tolkien says nothing about that.

Every Ringwraith shared the same fate. Their own will was gone, their bodies faded, and their power rose and fell with Sauron's. When the One Ring was destroyed in 3019, the Nine were destroyed with it. Khamûl, wherever he was at that moment, would have ended with the rest. Tolkien does not narrate his end separately.

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Lord of Dol Guldur

After Sauron was driven out of Dol Guldur by the White Council in 2941, the year of The Hobbit's Battle of Five Armies, Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings records that in 2951 he sent Nazgûl to reoccupy the fortress in southern Mirkwood. "The Hunt for the Ring" names Khamûl as the commander there.

So for the last seventy years of the Third Age, the Ringwraith in charge of the old fortress of the Necromancer was Khamûl. From Dol Guldur the shadow pressed on the Woodland Realm of Thranduil to the north and on Lothlórien across the Anduin. When the War of the Ring came, Dol Guldur's armies attacked both, and after Sauron's fall Galadriel threw down its walls. For the forest itself, see Mirkwood and the Woodland Realm.

The name of that fortress is Elvish, not Black Speech. Dol Guldur is Sindarin: dol "hill, head" and guldur "sorcery, black arts." The Elves named the place for what it became.

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The Black Riders in the Shire

The most quoted part of Khamûl's story is his role in the hunt for Frodo. In The Fellowship of the Ring a Black Rider comes to Hobbiton and questions the Gaffer, Sam's father, about "Baggins." Later a Rider stops on the road and sniffs the air while Frodo hides under a tree, and on the night of the escape Riders reach the Bucklebury Ferry just after the hobbits have crossed.

In the novel none of these Riders has a name. The notes in "The Hunt for the Ring" are where the identification comes from. As Christopher Tolkien presents them, the Rider who came to Hobbiton and questioned the Gaffer was Khamûl, and the pursuit that followed the hobbits toward the Ferry was his. Because these details sit in the drafts rather than in a finished text, treat them as Tolkien's working account rather than settled narrative.

The same notes describe Khamûl as especially quick to sense the presence of the Ring, yet less sure of himself away from his stronghold and in daylight. Tolkien uses this to explain why the Riders came so close to the hobbits again and again without catching them. These are paraphrases of draft notes, not quotations from the novel.

What is not in Tolkien at all: any scene of Khamûl speaking, any description of his face or armor, and any personal duel with a named hero. If you have seen such scenes, they come from games, card sets or adaptations.

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Rhûn and the Easterlings

"Easterling" is the name the peoples of the West used for the Men who lived east of the great forest and the inland Sea of Rhûn. Most of them were enemies of Gondor in the Third Age, drawn into Sauron's service. In the First Age, Easterlings also came into Beleriand; some served Morgoth and some betrayed the Elves at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Rhûn itself is Sindarin for "East."

Tolkien never developed the Easterlings in detail. He gives some peoples names (the Balchoth, the Wainriders), describes their raids on Gondor in the Appendices, and leaves it there. He wrote no Easterling language, and there is no record of their customs, gods or kings. For an overview of the Men of the East and South, see Men of Middle-earth.

This is why Khamûl's origin is so open. Calling him an Easterling tells us the direction he came from and little more. It does not mean he was a king of the Balchoth or of any people we know. Any story that names his kingdom, his capital or his dynasty is filling a blank Tolkien left.

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Canon Versus Fan Invention

Because so little is written, Khamûl attracts invented lore. Here is how to sort it.

The "Easterling king" idea is the most common example. It is a natural guess, since The Silmarillion says the Ring-bearers were kings and sorcerers and warriors, but Tolkien never says which Khamûl was. Games such as Middle-earth: Shadow of War and the old Middle-earth Collectible Card Game gave the Nazgûl backstories and names; those are licensed inventions, not Tolkien.

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What the Name Khamûl Means

The short answer: we do not know, and Tolkien did not say.

The name appears without any etymology. Tolkien gave no translation, and he did not say which language it belongs to. It is not Elvish. Its sound, with kh and a long û, fits the harsher names of Tolkien's eastern and evil peoples, and some fans guess it is Black Speech or an Easterling tongue. Those are guesses. Tolkien never published an Easterling language, and no Black Speech dictionary of his includes the word.

How to say it, as far as Tolkien's general spelling rules guide us: kh is the sound in Scottish "loch" or German "Bach," not a plain k, and û is a long "oo." Many readers say KHAH-mool. Tolkien left no note on its stress.

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The Language Around Khamûl

His own name is a blank, but the words around him are well attested, and they come from two different languages: Sauron's Black Speech and the Elves' Sindarin and Quenya.

Nazgûl is Black Speech. It joins nazg "ring," the word in the Ring inscription, with gûl, glossed in Tolkien's notes as a wraith or spirit enslaved by sorcery. The Elves named the places these beings ruled in their own tongue.

Notice the two gûl rows. Black Speech gûl "wraith" and Sindarin gûl "sorcery" look the same, and Tolkien connected them in his notes. That is why Minas Morgul, the Witch-king's city, and Dol Guldur, Khamûl's fortress, share an element with the name of the Nine. The full list of what Tolkien wrote in Black Speech is in Black Speech Words, and the inscription itself is analyzed in The One Ring Inscription.

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Khamûl in the Films and Rings of Power

Peter Jackson's films. Khamûl is not named in The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit films. The Ringwraiths at Hobbiton, the Ferry and Weathertop are unnamed figures in black. In The Hobbit films the Nazgûl appear as spirits sealed in tombs in the High Fells of Rhudaur; that sequence is film-only and has no source in Tolkien.

The Rings of Power. In The Rings of Power (Season 3 teaser and casting announcements, July 2026), Zubin Varla plays Khamûl the Easterling. The season opens five years after the fall of Eregion, shows the forging of the One Ring, and premieres on Prime Video on 11 November 2026, with further episodes on 18 and 25 November. Beyond his name and casting, the show's version of Khamûl has not been described, so this page does not guess at his story. If the series gives him a kingdom, a human name or a history, that will be the show's invention: Tolkien never wrote one. The show's earlier seasons already spent time in Rhûn, so an Easterling Ring-bearer fits the ground it has laid. For what languages to listen for, see our Rings of Power Season 3 Elvish preview.

A note on timing. In the books the Nine are Men who received their Rings in the Second Age and only slowly became wraiths. A show set in the Second Age can depict Khamûl as a living man, or as one beginning to fade. Either way, his first appearances will be ahead of anything Tolkien described.

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People Also Ask

Who is Khamûl in Lord of the Rings? He is one of the nine Nazgûl and the only one besides the Witch-king that Tolkien named. Unfinished Tales calls him the Black Easterling and the Shadow of the East, second of the Nine.

Is Khamûl in the Lord of the Rings book? Not by name. His name and role come from Tolkien's notes in Unfinished Tales, published in 1980.

What does the name Khamûl mean? Tolkien did not publish a meaning or language for it. It is not Elvish, and online etymologies are guesses.

Is Khamûl in The Rings of Power? Yes. Season 3 casts Zubin Varla as Khamûl the Easterling. The season premieres on 11 November 2026.

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Read the Names the Elves Gave to the Dark

Khamûl's own name has no meaning we can recover, but the places he ruled carry Elvish names you can read: Dol Guldur, Minas Morgul, Rhûn. Our Learn Elvish course teaches the Sindarin and Quenya behind them, and the Tengwar name tool will write any name in Elvish script.

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Related Reading

• The Nazgûl Explained — The Nine Ringwraiths, the Witch-king and Their Rings
• Black Speech Words: Every Attested Word of Mordor's Tongue (and What's Fan-Made)
• The One Ring Inscription: What It Actually Says (And Why It's Not Elvish)
• Men of Middle-earth: Edain, Númenóreans, Gondor, Rohan and More
• Mirkwood and the Woodland Realm: Greenwood, Dol Guldur and Thranduil's Halls
• Rings of Power Season 3 Elvish Preview — What Languages to Expect
• Races of Middle-earth: The Complete Guide to Every People and Creature
• Westron: The Real "Common Speech" of Middle-earth (Why the Hobbits Don't Speak English)
• Tengwar Alphabet: Complete Guide to Tolkien's Elvish Writing System