ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 contextualises the female fertility practices noted at Aw-Barkhadle by placing them within the broader fertility practices in Somali society. A number of rituals are explored: infertility treatment or baanashada dumarka, the Siti ceremony, the wagar ritual, the fertility bath, zar (spirit possessions), the fertility bath, the istunka (stick fight) and gudniin (female circumcision). New anthropological research into these rituals offers a fresh perspective by investigating these practices from the viewpoint of fertility. For example, I examine zar in terms of women’s need for the treatment and how the zar itself is related to the baanashada dumarka (an infertility treatment which involves the use of medicinal plants). This leads into a discussion of zar as part of the pre-Islamic and pre-Christian ritual systems of the Horn of Africa and how it may even in ancient times have signified Waaq, the Sky-God. I also discuss ritual celebrations of womanhood through the Siti commemoration of Eve and Fatima and the female veneration of female religious ancestors. The text explores the relationship between ancestral worship and the notion of sacred fertility. It investigates both the women’s use of the wagar, a wooden anthropomorphic sculpture used for fertility purposes, and its relationship with the site of Aw-Barkhadle and child protection. It suggests that the wagar may be a depiction of the Sky-God, worshiped in this region before Saint Aw-Barkhadle arrived. The Sky-God belief was one of the pre-Islamic beliefs of the Cushitic speaking peoples in this region and it is even today followed by many Eastern Cushitic speaking communities. The origin of the practice of gudniin/female circumcision (also known as Pharaonic circumcision) in the Horn of Africa, where many believe it originated, is discussed and a possible association is drawn between its ritual aspects, fertility rituals and what I call a ‘divine kinship’. I suggest that gudniin/female circumcision may have been a medium through which to gain sacred fertility via the sacrifice of the profane for the sacred; in other words, via a sacrificial transaction between the divine and the human.
The fertility bath takes place during Somali nomadic weddings and during the inauguration of the head of a clan or a sub-clan chief (those with, for example, the ranks of Ugas, Garaad, and Caaqil) before the caleemo saar rituals (‘putting leaves on new chiefs). I argue that the caleemo saar too is a stage in the rituals associated with sacred fertility.
