Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Zar in North Africa
Dr. Warren Larson delivered a lecture on the Folk Islamic Zar Cult in North Africa during a CIU course. Here, Larson presents the Zar Cult in North Africa, the demographics, what needs are perceived to be met, and the rites and rituals involved among the Zar.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Zar in North Africa
Now we’re on to, Zar which is lecture 19 and this is a a spirit, of course. It’s one of the one of the spirits so called, in the Muslim world. It’s a type of possession cult, and, it’s often induced. Usually, female clientele, with a sheikha officiating And, Zweimer says all in Mecca practice it. That may not everyone may not agree to that.
But I’m, when I’m in Germany, teaching at our our sister’s school in Korntow, which is just out of outside of Stuttgart, where I go every year or have for the past 10 years, When I’m talking about Zar, I call on a friend of mine who is a former Muslim from the Sudan, And, since Zar is prominent in, the Sudan, I call on him and he talks about Zar, also gives his testimony, and, so that is much appreciated. But I wanted to refer to also to just alert you to Janice Bode’s book, Wounds and Alien Spirits, Women, Men, and the Zara Cult in Northern Sudan. So you can see that, she’s specifically zeroing in there on, that part of the world, the Sudan. Zweimer thinks it’s a little bit broader than that, as we will see in a minute, but, there are some interesting things about the czar and one of them is it seems to meet some social needs. Social needs of of women and, there is some ecstasy, some erotic dance that’s involved that you would never, think of women doing, that is, Muslim women, but they get sort of liberated and worked up into this and there is some erotic dance that’s involved.
There is a give and take. In other words, there is the the the idea that that, you gain something but you also give something. In other words, there is some danger and some, I guess, some risk or some sacrifice, but also some, something you take home with you, some benefit obviously, and note that there is no exorcism. In other words, there’s no attempt here to get rid of this spirit. You know, we gotta exercise this thing.
We gotta get rid of it. There’s nothing of that. They’re just sort of making use of it. It it doesn’t not, you know, tell you a lot about folk practices, you know, this manipulate manipulation thing, we can gain some benefit out of this. So I think that it it must meet some felt needs.
There’s always a question, isn’t there? You know, in other words, is this, does this really meet felt needs? And, because Satan is such a hard taskmaster, isn’t he? In other words, he, is a taker and he’s not a giver. So, what exactly happens?
In other words, he does deceive and he does, trick people and lie to them and and so on, but there is some treatment here of, sick people, sick persons, primarily we’re talking about women here, and it it this, this process may be done for a czar bride. Now not a real bride as when a woman gets married, but she’s like a bride in in some of the things they do, the dress she wears and some of the of the preparation. Charms are given. And, I have here a a note that says they’re regional found in Egypt, Sudan, and as already alluded to this, etcetera. I have a note here that says according to Samuel Zwaymer, who is no dummy, worked in parts of the worked in the Middle East, where he actually went to Bahrain over a 100 years ago, but then he worked in Egypt.
He says on page, I guess it is 228 of his book, the influence of animism on Islam. He says the particular form of this belief called zar is unique in other ways than those pointed out by, doctor McDonald. Evidence continues to accumulate that we deal here with a form of animistic worship, which alongs, although so long and so often concealed from Western eye that is, infidel observation is found in Mecca I’m sorry, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Egypt, and the Sudan. East and West Arabia. Listen to this.
Persia, Malaysia, and India. No direct witness, to the existence of this superstition among Chinese Muslims has come from travelers and missionaries, but it would not surprise me to find it also in Yunnan and Kansu provinces. So, Zweimer may be wrong on the the, extent of this. In other words, but he does think that it’s broader than the Nile. Some of our anthropologists today think that the czar is just along the Nile there, Egypt, Sudan, and places like that.
But Zweymer had the idea that if even if it wasn’t called czar, there is a wider a wider use. And, you know, Zweymer would be right. Zweimer was, was pretty sharp and I had a lot of experience, a lot of research. One thing we note is that the anthropologists, they do live with people. They know a lot about, what people do.
They don’t seem to know often much about Islam itself, but but they do, you know, try to figure out what people practice. So, there you have it, Zara. And, there is a ceremony. Now let’s think a little bit about this ceremony. Interestingly enough and this shows you, you know, how Islam is, you know, they they use use the Quran and it’s often, the Fatihah is used.
That’s the first Surah, the the opening Surah, that’s what it means, al Fatiha, the opening. This is used in the ceremony itself for Zarr. Praise be to Allah, the cherisher and sustainer of the worlds. Most gracious, most most merciful master of the day of judgment, thee do we worship, and thine aid we seek. Show us the straight way, the way of those in whom thou hast bestowed thy grace, those whose portion is not wrath, and who go not astray.
So the fatiha used in this, and as we know, fatiha is used in the daily prayers that Muslims, do, you know, some of them do 5 times a day or more in some cases, but the fatiha is used there. There is some curious antiques of the possessed, you know, some erotic dancing, sacrifice, drinking of hot blood, if you can imagine, and I’m sure you can. Zweymer talks about that too on page 233 and 234 of his book, that I just quoted, just referred to. Here you have, a picture of the musicians. They’re men, by the way.
Everything else, the, those doing the dancing are women, but, men are there playing the music. You know, often music is isn’t a it’s part of, of the possession, part of the, of the spiritism. And, here is, by the way, you can, we’ll look at this in a minute, but you can Google tsar and find all kinds of, you know, pictures and information on it. Illustrations of Baladi, which I understand Baladi is, dance in Cairo. The names czar, you know, the the the names that are given to this this spirits are such like, El Sudani, stands for Sudan, El Saidi in in upper Egypt, or El Dayir, the Copts.
Notice that the Copts, seem to participate in this, And, sometimes the name of particular qualities are given to the spirit like Red Sultan, and that might reflect, the kind of illness suffered by the victim. In other words, if if she’s, suffering from hemorrhages, that’s the name that we’d be given. Again, Cynthia Nelson has written about this, an anthropologist who has, taught in the American University in Cairo. Now when a woman suffers various things, and, you know, when women suffer all kinds of things, I, sometimes grieve and think about the suffering of Muslim women around the world and I blog quite often about them. I’m concerned about them.
Some when, you know, they gained some freedom in Saudi Arabia and, one thing or another, I blog about them, but also blog about their suffering and their, the things that they have to endure. A woman might suffer be accident prone. In other words, always getting hurt. She might have seizures, and seizures, of course, are common to everyone, epileptic seizures or whatever. She might be sterile, in other words very very common, for women is in the Muslim world is, at least, it’s it’s more common than than you think, not having not being able to have a baby, not being able to conceive.
Okay. What does a woman do? Or there might be marital strife, trouble with a husband, or she might not have a husband, you know, wants to get married, and, so she goes to the sheikh. He says, you’ve got this trouble. What you need to do is you need to, do this ritual, do the zar.
And so he, he likes to take a hanky or something like that, a colored hanky, and he, takes her hanky or whatever it is and puts it ties it in a knot, puts it under his pillow and then, says come back the next day. So he has that pillow that under his mattress or his, his pillow or somewhere, and, he is supposed to dream of the spirit in the woman. And what he says to the woman is that one of the things you’ve got to do, besides this other stuff, is you’ve got to have a czar ceremony. And it’s sort of like a wedding. Some of the things that they do is sort of like a wedding.
But the evening before the czar ceremony, the sheikh goes to the patient’s home with musicians, and those musicians, as we’ve said, are men. And the bride, which is she’s less sort of like a bride, is dressed in white, and the sheikh, wraps bread and stuff or salt in a hanky, ties it on her arm as a pact with spirit money. You know, this is the money he’s given, this is always, you know, a costly thing, and, there are male dancers, apparently, some, at least musicians. I don’t know about the dancers, but at least the musicians. And the woman in in the trance is lending her body to the to the master, and apparently no longer really responsible.
And so there’s lots of jumping and dancing around, and 1 by 1, women join in to this, this procession. If this, this possession is this ceremony is never done during Ramadan, and then aft thereafter, the woman is required. In other words, she she has to keep on attending ceremonies. In other words, so, her neighbor has a ceremony for a particular problem and so she’s gotta go too. So you see you have a pretty, you’re you’re you’re assured of a clientele.
One thing I wanted to ask was, just discuss and think about was that this this author here, Janice Bode, who teaches at the University of Toronto, an anthropologist, she says that, you know, this is this zone is not too harmful. I’m a little troubled by that. I have wondered about some other things that Janice Bodey has or says. I remember her saying and reading in a newspaper in Canada, that she says that the circumcision is not all that bad either. In other words, female circumcision, which I think is a terrible practice in its its more and more terrible the degree to which it’s done, but but but that’s also something she said.
But she says that the practice of the czar is not too harmful and what she means, I think, is that this spirit, you know, it’s induced and then when they’re, through with it and they then they, they quieten down and and everyone’s had a good time and their needs have been met and healing is might come. I don’t know. But I I think, you know, if we were face to face, we could talk about this, but I think according, to a Christian, our idea is that it’s never a neutral thing. In other words, Satan, some way or another, he gets his he gets his control of us, and so to dabble in this in any way, shape, or form is wrong, harmful, and dangerous. So, I think that, because she’s a secular person, she doesn’t know the Lord, she doesn’t profess to be a Christian, I think that she’s wrong here, but I’ve just that by the book I used to require for my people who took this class, but but, some of the students complained that it was pretty heavy going.
You know, you can, just by the way, you can, Google on this subject, and I have before me an article that I printed out some time ago called Egyptian music, colon, czar, tradition, gives a woman, I think I’m not for sure what the next word is moment at center stage and was found in the Christian Science Monitor and it goes on to say that, you know, fundamentalist Islam has stamped on this as they naturally would, because they think it’s nonorthodox And, so that it it goes on to say that there are only 25 czar performers left in the country. Now that would be a surprise, because, these things go on under the surface. Zar, it says, is a song and dance ritual. See? And I think that’s what Baladi means, basically, is a dance that historically has been used in a healing rite.
It’s the only musical tradition from Egypt in which women hold the most important roles. In fact, the act itself is intended to be a mode through which women can experience freedom and release anxieties and tensions without being restricted by the social norms of their conservative upper Egyptian culture. The music with this distinctly, African sound became threatened after religious hardliners deemed the practice on Islamic is on Islamic, and today there are only about 25 performers left in the country. So you can be sure that the Muslim brotherhood, but even more importantly, the Salafi, al Salafiya, would be against this thing totally. It goes on to say that, you know, that some people have a bad idea of the czar, because of media portrayals that describe it as an exorcism ritual that communes with evil spirits.
But these preconceived notions quickly disappear as soon as Egyptians come to see Zara. They like it. Oh my god. It’s beautiful. And so, this person, the star of the show, says that she’s learned zar from her mother.
So there you see the, the conflict, between, those who wanna keep it up, but then, fundamentalist Islam or at least, those who call themselves orthodox want to stamp on it.