Nazgûl

Nazgûl
Tolkien's legendarium character
Aliases	The Nine Úlairi (in Quenya) Black Riders Fell Riders Ringwraiths
Book(s)	The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), The Return of the King (1955), The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980)

The Nazgûl (from Black Speech nazg, "ring", and gûl, "wraith, spirit", possibly related to gul, "sorcery"), also called Ringwraiths, Ring-wraiths, Black Riders, Dark Riders, the Nine Riders, or simply the Nine, are characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. They were nine men who succumbed to Sauron's power and attained near-immortality as wraiths, servants bound to the power of the One Ring and completely under the dominion of Sauron. They are first mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, originally published in 1954–1955. The book calls the Nazgûl Sauron's "most terrible servants".

According to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the Nazgûl arose as Sauron's most powerful servants in the Second Age of Middle-earth. They were once mortal men; three being "great lords" of Númenor. Sauron gave each of them one of nine Rings of Power. Ultimately, however, they were bound to the One Ring and completely enslaved by the will of Sauron.

Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron's. And they became forever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Úlairi, the Enemy's most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death. — The Silmarillion, "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age", 346

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