ABSTRACT
The Zar cult flourishes in Ethiopia (whence it may derive its name), Somalia and Djibouti, the Sudan (where the generic spirit is also known as ‘red wind’), and to a lesser extent in Egypt, North Africa and the Gulf states (see Lewis et al. 1991). Other expressive common names for the spirits and the conditions they cause are ‘constitution’ or ‘power’ and in Ethiopia, ‘shackles’. It is closely linked historically to the Bori cult in northern Nigeria, Niger, and other parts of Islamic West Africa. In Ethiopia it involves Christian and Muslim populations, elsewhere its setting is entirely Muslim. The cult appeals particularly to urban women, and men of historically low or subordinate status (as in the case of the related Sudanese Tumbura cult), or to powerless individuals who are confronted with seemingly insurmountable identity conflicts. The basic assumption here is that the spirits concerned have the power to invade the bodies of humans who are then ‘possessed’. The human vessel incarnates the possessing spirit.
