Khamûl

Of the Nine Ringwraiths, only one ever received a personal name from J.R.R. Tolkien: Khamûl. He never appears by name in The Lord of the Rings. The name survives in Unfinished Tales, in the late working notes of "The Hunt for the Ring," where Tolkien calls him the Shadow of the East, the Black Easterling and the Second Chief, second only to the Witch-king of Angmar. Khamûl was one of the six Ring-bearers who weren't Númenórean, probably a man of Rhûn, if Tolkien's earlier label holds, whose people fought Gondor for an Age. From 2951 of the Third Age he held Dol Guldur in Mirkwood, across the Anduin from Lothlórien. In September 3018 he rode into the Shire, questioned Gaffer Gamgee at nightfall, and hunted Frodo from Hobbiton to the Bucklebury Ferry, the Nazgûl keenest at sensing the Ring and the most confused by daylight. Yet Tolkien never settled where Khamûl came from, or whether he led the Nazgûl after the Witch-king fell on the Pelennor Fields.

Published

23 October 2026

Runtime

31 min 20 sec