really a serpent supposed to occupy one of the tombs. The birthday festival of this serpent saint takes place during the month following Ramadhan, and lasts about eight days. This festival is attended by crowds of devotees, including large numbers of sailors who encamp about the shrine during the festivities. At other times pilgrimages on behalf of those suffering from certain ailments are made to come to the tomb. Professor Sayce in an article on the subject published in the Contemporary Review for October, 1893, quotes at length from various travelers who have mentioned this serpent-saint of Islam in their writings. Professor Sayce then describes in detail the immediate surroundings of the two domed shrines, one of which belongs to the "wife" of the serpent. Near the shrines is a cleft of the rock which was probably the "grotto" inhabited by the "saint" before the shrine was erected. Sheikh Heridi occupies as high a place in the esteem of the native to-day as he did in the days of Paul Lucas and Norden. His birthday festival is attended by crowds of devout believers. Many stories are still told of the miraculous powers of the Saint, who is declared to be a serpent as "thick as a man's thigh." If treated with irreverence or disrespect, it breathes fire into the face of the offender, who forthwith dies. It is very jealous of its wife's good name; those who show her disrespect are also put to death by the saint. The belief that if the serpent is hacked to pieces each piece will rejoin, still survives, and it is held that any one clever enough to note the place where the blood flowed, would become wealthy, because there he would find gold. The professor points out that Sheikh Heridi may be regarded as the successor of Agathodaemon - the ancient serpent-god of healing. Belief in his miraculous powers is as strong to-day as it was in the days of the Rameses or Ptolemies. At the entrance to the quarry through which pilgrims have to pass on their way to the shrine, Professor Sayce discovered engraved in large Greek letters in the stone the words En'ayaw which, he says, indicate that during the Greek period, the place was sacred, and that a divinity must have been worshiped here. It may be safely assumed that that divinity was none other than the sacred serpent now Sheikh Heridi under another name. CHAPTER XII THE ZAR: EXORCISM OF DEMONS - That is to say, Among the older Lane apparently spite of his curi "WITHIN only a comparatively short period of years," says Professor Macdonald, "quite easily within thirty years, I should say we have come to know that practically all through the Moslem world there is spread an observance exactly like the Black Mass in Christendom. it is a profane parody of a sacred service. travelers you will find no reference to this. knew nothing of it, nor did even Burton, in ous knowledge of the most out-of-the-way and disrespectable sides of Islam. What it travesties is the Darwish zikr. Now, practically throughout all Islam there is a kind of a parody of this, in which the beings whose intervention is sought are what we would broadly call devils. Yet when we speak of Moslem devils, we must always remember their nondescript character and that they are continually confused with the jinn, and so come to be on a dividing line between fairies, brownies, kobolds, and true theological devils. Devil-worship, then, in Islam and in Christendom are two quite different things. In Islam there is no precise feeling of rejection of Allah and of blasphemy against his name. It is, rather, akin to the old Arab 'taking refuge with the jinn' (Qur. lxxii, 6), denounced, it is true, by Mohammed as a minor polytheism, but compatible with acceptance and worship of Allah. Perhaps it might be described most exactly as a kind of perverted saint-worship. But its form is certainly a parody of the zikr, though with curious addi tions of bloody sacrifice, due to its African Voodo origin." 1 The exorcism of demons is a universal desire where the belief in their power and malignity is so strong as we have seen it to be in Moslem lands, but the particular form of this belief, called the Zar, is unique in other ways than those pointed out by Dr. Macdonald. Evidence continues to accumulate that we deal here with a form of Animistic worship which although so long and so often concealed from western, i.e., infidel observation, is found in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Egypt, the Soudan, East and West Arabia, Persia, Malaysia, and India. No direct witness to the existence of this superstition among Chinese Moslems has come from travelers or missionaries, but it would not surprise me to find it also in Yunan and in Kansu provinces. "Three things good luck from the threshold bar So runs an Egyptian ditty on the lips of suffering womanhood which links these together as a trinity of evil. The origin of the word is disputed. Dr. Snouck Hurgronje says that it is not Arabic and has no plural.2 But in Eastern Arabia, especially in the province of Oman, the word has a plural and the plural form, Zeeran, is preferably used. Moreover I have been told that the word is Arabic and denotes "A (sinister) visitor" (zara yezuru) who makes his or her abode and so possesses the victim. "All Moslem nationalities in Mecca," he says, "practice the Zar. Even if they gave it another name in their own country they very soon adopt the word Zar, although the national differences continue." The best account of its origin and character is that given 1" Aspects of Islam," pp. 330–332. 2" Mekka," Volume II, p. 124. To by Paul Kahle, although he deals mainly with Egypt.3 his account and the fuller experiences related by women missionaries in Egypt and Arabia I am indebted for the particulars given in this chapter. One of the best accounts of the actual ceremony is that given by Miss Anna Y. Thompson of the American Mission in Egypt. She writes: "There are places where women go to have these Zar spirits appeased, but generally a woman who can afford the expense of the occasion will have the performances in her own house. Formerly, I thought that only hysterical women were 'possessed,' but men also may have demon possession, and even children. Indeed, in some parts of the city of Cairo the little girls have this as a performance in their play in the streets. "There are different kinds of demons, and it is the business of the sheikhas to determine which sort (or sorts) are in their patient. Yawning and lassitude go with possession, also palpitation, a stinging sensation, and sometimes rheumatism and nausea. Instead of going to a doctor for medicine, the patient goes to a sheikh, who takes a handkerchief belonging to the sick person and puts it under her pillow at night. The sheikh or mashayikh (plural), who appear to her during the night, are those who are making the trouble. A day is appointed, a bargain is made about the kind and expense of the ceremony, and all friends who are afflicted by these particular demons are invited to assist in the festivities. "One of our Bible-women was permitted to attend a Zar in one of the houses where she was accustomed to read the Bible, so a number of the missionaries went with her to the place, which was an old building near the Bab-el-Shaaʼrieh quarter. Women were sitting round on mats in the court, Paul Kahle, “Zar-Beschwörungen in Egypten" in Der Islam, Band III, Helt 1, 2. Strassburg, 1912. 4 See Moslem World, July, 1913. |