The Nazgûl Explained — The Nine Ringwraiths, the Witch-king and Their Rings

Quick Answer: The Nazgûl, also called the Ringwraiths or Black Riders, are the nine mortal Men who accepted the Nine Rings that Sauron made for Men. The rings gave them long life and power and slowly turned them into wraiths, unseen and enslaved to the One Ring. Their chief is the Witch-king of Angmar; only one other, Khamûl the Easterling, is named. Nazgûl is Black Speech for "Ring-wraiths", but the places they haunted carry Elvish names: Minas Morgul, Dol Guldur, Mordor.

Of all the servants of Sauron, none frighten readers more than the Nine. They are not monsters in the way orcs, trolls, or dragons are. They were once men, kings and sorcerers and warriors, and the horror of them is what they became. This guide covers who the Nazgûl were, where they came from, what their rings did to them, the history of the Witch-king, the differences between Tolkien's books and Peter Jackson's films, and the Elvish names written over the places where they lived.

It is part of our series on the peoples and creatures of Tolkien's world. For the full map, start at the Races of Middle-earth complete guide.

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Who Were the Nazgûl?

The Nazgûl were nine Men of the Second Age who received the Nine Rings of Power. The Silmarillion, in the chapter "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age", says that Sauron gave nine rings to mortal Men, the race most easily ensnared by the desire for power. Those who took them became mighty in their day: kings, sorcerers, and warriors. They gained glory and great wealth, and they did not die.

That last gift was the trap. Each ring prolonged its bearer's life far beyond the span of Men, but the life became unbearable. One by one, sooner or later according to their strength and the good or evil of their wills at the start, they faded. They became invisible to all but the one who held the ruling ring, and they entered the realm of shadows. In the end they were Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow, his most terrible servants.

The Silmarillion adds one more detail that is often missed: three of the Nine were great lords of Númenórean race. This matters, because it means the Nazgûl were not simply barbarian chieftains bought with gold. Some were descended from the same people as Aragorn. If you want the background of that people, read our guide to Men of Middle-earth and the language of Númenor in Adûnaic, the Númenórean tongue.

Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings dates their first appearance to around the year 2251 of the Second Age. From then until the end of the Third Age, more than three thousand years later, they served Sauron.

The Nine Rings and How They Worked

The Rings of Power came from the smiths of Eregion, the elves called in Sindarin the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the People of the Jewel-smiths. Sauron, in a fair guise, taught them his craft. They made many rings with him, and the Three were made by Celebrimbor alone. Sauron then forged the One in secret in Mount Doom, to rule all the others. When the elves perceived him, they hid the Three, and war followed. Sauron took most of the remaining rings, and he gave seven to the Dwarves and nine to Men. We cover that history and the famous verse in detail in The One Ring Inscription and the Black Speech Explained.

The Nine did not work like a reward. Every Ring of Power bound its bearer to the One, so whatever a Nazgûl did, Sauron could see and bend. The rings gave:

• Unnaturally long life. Not new life, as Gandalf explains to Frodo in "The Shadow of the Past", but mere continuance, stretched thin.
• Invisibility. The wearer slowly fades and passes into the unseen world. That is why the Black Riders wear cloaks: their bodies are no longer visible, and the robes give them a shape.
• Power over others. Their kingdoms prospered while they lived as Men.

And the rings took everything else. In the Third Age the Nazgûl no longer held their own rings at all. Sauron had gathered the Nine to himself. Gandalf tells the Council of Elrond that Sauron holds the Nine, and the Ringwraiths were bound through them.

What the Ringwraiths Could Do

Tolkien describes the Nazgûl through their effect on others rather than through spells. Their weapons were fear and despair.

Terror. Their presence alone breaks courage. Soldiers of Gondor drop their weapons and throw themselves down when the winged Nazgûl pass over the Pelennor. Sindarin has words for exactly this kind of dread: del, "horror", and gorgor, "extreme horror, terror, haunting fear", the word inside Cirith Gorgor, the Haunted Pass into Mordor.

The Black Breath. Those who come too near a Nazgûl fall into a dark sleep or sickness. Faramir, Éowyn, and Merry all suffer from it after the siege of Minas Tirith, and Aragorn heals them with athelas in the Houses of Healing.

Sight and smell. In daylight the Nazgûl see poorly. They see shadows of the living world and sense the living by smell and by the pull of the Ring. In the dark they perceive more. This is why, on the road through the Shire, the Black Rider sniffs at the hobbits hidden under the roots of a tree.

The Morgul-blade. On Weathertop the Witch-king stabs Frodo with a knife whose broken tip works inward toward the heart. Had it reached it, Frodo would have become a wraith himself, under the dominion of the Nine. Elrond removes the shard at Rivendell.

They also had weaknesses. They feared fire and water, especially the River Bruinen, and they were vulnerable to the name of Elbereth. Most importantly, they were not invincible fighters in a fair fight: their power was the power of dread, and folk who could stand against that dread could resist them.

The Witch-king of Angmar

The Lord of the Nazgûl was the greatest of the Nine. The Return of the King calls him the Morgul-lord, the Captain of Despair, and the Witch-king of Angmar. His Mannish name is never given.

Angmar and the Fall of the North

Around the year 1300 of the Third Age, Appendix A tells us, the Witch-king came north and founded the realm of Angmar beyond the Ettenmoors. The northern kingdom of the Dúnedain, Arnor, had already split into three lands, Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur. Angmar warred against them for centuries. Rhudaur fell under its sway, Cardolan was laid waste, and the Barrow-downs were filled with evil spirits sent from Angmar.

In 1974 the Witch-king took Fornost, the capital of Arthedain, and the North-kingdom ended. A year later an army from Gondor under Eärnur, together with elves from Lindon and Rivendell, defeated Angmar at the Battle of Fornost. The Witch-king fled, and Glorfindel, the elf-lord of Rivendell, spoke the famous prophecy: that the Witch-king would not fall by the hand of man. Readers learn only much later how precisely that would come true.

Minas Ithil Becomes Minas Morgul

The Witch-king went back to Mordor and gathered the other Nazgûl. In 2002 they took Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon, a Gondorian fortress in the mountains on the border of Mordor. It became Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery, and from then on the Witch-king was the Morgul-lord.

In 2043 he challenged Eärnur, now King of Gondor, to single combat, and again in 2050. The second time Eärnur rode to Minas Morgul and was never seen again. With him the line of kings of Gondor failed, and the Stewards ruled until Aragorn returned. That is the reason Minas Tirith had a Steward instead of a King at the time of the War of the Ring.

The Pelennor Fields

On the 15th of March in the year 3019 the Witch-king broke the gate of Minas Tirith. Gandalf stood alone against him in the gateway, and at that moment the horns of Rohan sounded and the Witch-king turned away to meet them. On the field he struck down King Théoden, and Dernhelm stood over the fallen king. Dernhelm was Éowyn, Théoden's niece, in disguise.

Merry, hidden on the ground, stabbed the Witch-king behind the knee with the blade he had taken from the Barrow-downs. Tolkien tells us the blade was made long ago by the Men of Arnor in their war against Angmar, and that no other blade would have dealt so bitter a wound to that foe. With the spell that knit his unseen sinews broken, Éowyn drove her sword between his crown and mantle, and he was destroyed. No man killed him: a woman and a hobbit did. Glorfindel's prophecy was fulfilled.

Khamûl and the Other Seven

Readers often ask for the names of all nine. Tolkien never supplied them. Only one other Ringwraith has a name: Khamûl, called the Black Easterling and the Shadow of the East. He appears in Unfinished Tales, in "The Hunt for the Ring", as the second of the Nine, after the Witch-king. He commanded at Dol Guldur in Mirkwood, and he was the Rider who came to Hobbiton and questioned the Gaffer, then followed the hobbits to Bucklebury Ferry.

The other seven are nameless in every published text. Lists of names that circulate online come from games and card sets, not from Tolkien, so treat them as inventions.

The Black Riders in The Fellowship of the Ring

In the summer of 3018 Sauron learned from Gollum that the Ring was held by a hobbit called Baggins in a land called the Shire. He sent the Nine out of Minas Morgul, disguised as riders in black on black horses.

Their path is one of the best chapters of suspense Tolkien wrote:

1. The Shire. Khamûl reaches Hobbiton the night Frodo leaves Bag End, and the Riders follow the hobbits through the Woody End.
2. Bucklebury Ferry and Crickhollow. A Rider reaches the ferry just after the hobbits cross. Later the Riders attack Frodo's empty house at Crickhollow.
3. Bree. The Riders' agents raid the Prancing Pony.
4. Weathertop. Five Riders, led by the Witch-king, attack the camp on Amon Sûl. Frodo puts on the Ring, sees the wraiths as they are, cries out to Elbereth, and is stabbed.
5. The Ford of Bruinen. Glorfindel puts Frodo on his own horse, Asfaloth. At the Ford the river, commanded by Elrond and given the shape of horses by Gandalf, rises and sweeps the Nine away. Their horses drown, and the Riders return to Mordor on foot, unseen.

When they return in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, they ride winged creatures that Tolkien calls fell beasts. These are not dragons, and they are not eagles; the eagles of Manwë are their opposite, as we explain in the Great Eagles of Middle-earth. For the true dragons of Middle-earth, see Dragons of Middle-earth.

Book Versus Film

Peter Jackson's films kept the core of the Nazgûl and changed several details. If you know the films first, these are the differences worth knowing.

The films are also the reason most people imagine the Nazgûl screaming. Tolkien does give them a terrible cry, but the screech is the work of the film sound designers. Saruman's real dealings with Sauron are a separate story; see Saruman, Isengard and the Elvish language and our guide to the Wizards of Middle-earth.

What Does "Nazgûl" Mean?

Nazgûl is a word of the Black Speech, the language Sauron devised in the Dark Years for all who served him. Appendix F says that after his first overthrow it was forgotten by all but the Nazgûl themselves. The word splits into two parts:

• nazg, "ring", the same word that appears three times in the One Ring inscription.
• gûl, glossed as "wraith" or "ghost".

So Nazgûl is simply "Ring-wraiths". For every attested word of Sauron's language, read Black Speech words: the Orkish vocabulary Tolkien actually wrote. The orcs who spoke debased forms of it are covered in Orcs and Goblins of Middle-earth.

A small linguistic curiosity: the Black Speech gûl looks exactly like the Sindarin word gûl, "black arts, sorcery". The two belong to different languages, and whether Tolkien meant any connection between them is something scholars discuss cautiously. What is not in doubt is that the Elves used their own word gûl in the names of the Nazgûl's strongholds.

The Nazgûl in Elvish

The Nine have no attested Sindarin name. The Quenya name Úlairi appears in The Silmarillion; it is the term the Elves used for the Ringwraiths, and the exact analysis of the word is not settled in Tolkien's papers, so we give it as a name rather than with a word-for-word gloss.

What the Elvish tongues give us in abundance are the names of the places the Nine haunted. Each of them is a real Sindarin compound you can read once you know the parts. Glosses are from our Elvish word database, sourced from Eldamo.

A few of these deserve a word of explanation.

Morgul. The most important Elvish word in the Nazgûl story. It combines the element mor-, "black, dark", the same element as in Mordor ("Black Land"), with gûl, "sorcery". Minas Morgul is literally the Tower of Black Sorcery, the Morgul-blade is the sorcery-knife, and the Morgul Vale is the valley of sorcery. Note the C in Sindarin is always hard, and the stress falls on the first syllable. Our Sindarin pronunciation guide covers the rules.

Minas Ithil. Before it was Minas Morgul, the fortress was the Tower of the Moon, built to match Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun, which later became Minas Tirith. The rename from Moon to Sorcery is the whole tragedy of the place in two words.

Dol Guldur. The Hill of Sorcery in southern Mirkwood, where Sauron hid as the Necromancer and where Khamûl later commanded.

Fëa. The Quenya word for the soul or spirit. It is useful for understanding what the rings did: a mortal's spirit is meant to leave the world at death, and the Nine Rings held their bearers' spirits in the world long after they should have gone.

You can try any of these words, or your own phrases, in our free English to Elvish translator, which shows Quenya and Sindarin side by side with the Tengwar script.

Why Tolkien's Ringwraiths Still Work

The Nazgûl are the clearest picture in Tolkien of what the Ring does to anyone who uses it. Gandalf tells Frodo in the second chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring that a mortal who keeps one of the Great Rings does not die but does not grow or obtain more life; he merely continues, and fades. Bilbo, after sixty years, already feels thin and stretched. Gollum is a wreck. The Nine are where that road ends.

They also stand for a specific temptation. Every one of them accepted the ring because it offered power, and each believed he could use it. That is the same argument Boromir makes at the Council, and the same reason Gandalf and Galadriel refuse the Ring when Frodo offers it. Tolkien's own letters return again and again to this idea: the Ring corrupts the good intentions of its user as surely as it rewards the bad ones.

The elves are the counterpoint. Their Three rings were never touched by Sauron, and their names for the haunted places, morgul, gorgor, del, show a people who named evil precisely without being ruled by it. Our guide to the Elves of Middle-earth covers who those elves were and why they spoke two languages.

Timeline of the Nazgûl

Writing the Names in Tengwar

The Elves wrote with the Tengwar of Fëanor, and the names in the table above are a good first exercise. Minas Morgul uses only simple letters. Ithil lets you practice the TH sound, which has its own letter. Start with our Tengwar alphabet guide, then write the names by hand in Tengwar Scribe. If you would rather see your own name in Elvish script, the Tengwar name generator does it in seconds.

People Also Ask

How many Nazgûl were there? Nine. Sauron gave nine rings to mortal Men, and each bearer became one of the Ringwraiths.

Were the Nazgûl Men or Elves? Men. The Nine Rings were given only to mortal Men. Three of them were great lords of Númenórean race, according to The Silmarillion.

Can the Nazgûl be killed? Not by ordinary means. They can be scattered, as at the Ford of Bruinen, and their horses can be killed. The Witch-king was destroyed by Éowyn and Merry, and the rest perished when the One Ring was unmade.

Why couldn't a man kill the Witch-king? Glorfindel prophesied after the Battle of Fornost that he would not fall by the hand of man. He was brought down by a hobbit's Arnorian blade and a woman's sword.

What is the Elvish word for the Ringwraiths? The Silmarillion gives the Quenya name Úlairi. The places they ruled have Sindarin names: Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery, and Dol Guldur, the Hill of Sorcery.

Learn the Language Behind the Names

Almost every place name in this story is Sindarin, the everyday Elvish tongue of Middle-earth. Once you learn its handful of building blocks, mor, gûl, minas, dol, dor, cirith, maps of Middle-earth start reading like sentences. Tolkien built the language first and the stories around it, which is why the names fit so exactly. For an overview, start with what language the elves speak in The Lord of the Rings and Quenya vs Sindarin.

Learn Elvish free — 10 lessons, no card required. Tengwar's Elvish course teaches attested Quenya and Sindarin vocabulary, pronunciation with native-style audio, and the Tengwar script, one short lesson at a time. Start learning Elvish and read the next map of Mordor in the language its names were written in.

Related Reading

• Races of Middle-earth: the complete guide
• The One Ring Inscription and the Black Speech Explained
• Black Speech Words: the Orkish Vocabulary Tolkien Wrote
• Wizards of Middle-earth: the Istari
• Gandalf's Elvish Name: Mithrandir
• Men of Middle-earth
• Balrogs of Middle-earth
• Tolkien's Elvish Languages: the Complete Guide
• Elvish Dictionary: Common Words
• Lord of the Rings Elvish Phrases