Zār
- Origin
- A community healing ritual carried mainly by women, said to have begun in East Africa and practised in Egypt, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula (Makan), and on Iran's southern coast, where zar is one of the winds people believe in (Iranica). Scholars have argued for a Horn of Africa origin and for Persian roots (Wikipedia). The earliest dated record in these sources is a 16th-century Ge'ez manuscript, the first known use in Ethiopia of the word zar for a possessing spirit (Wikipedia).
- How we treat it
- The label covers zar as a rite living practitioners perform, including its public musical form (Umm Sameh, Egyptian Streets). It makes no claim that spirits or winds possess anyone, and it does not adopt outside framings of the rite, such as the Speak the Wind publisher's word cult, which the book's reviewer objected to.
- Routes out
- Practitioners first: Umm Sameh of Mazaher in her own words (Egyptian Streets) and Makan, the Egyptian centre whose page presents Mazaher. Then Encyclopaedia Iranica for the Iranian coast, Wikipedia for history and spread, and a photobook review for the Hormuz islands.
Zār is a healing rite of drumming and dance, led and attended mostly by women, practised in Egypt, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula; on Iran's southern coast, zar is one of the winds people believe in. The leader of Egypt's Mazaher ensemble says the rite has gone public through its music.
Umm Sameh, a musician who leads the well-known zar ensemble Mazaher, was quoted by Egyptian Streets in 2018 saying that people have left behind the old way of holding a zar and opened it up to the public through its music. The Egyptian Center for Culture and Art (Makan), on its page about Mazaher, calls zar a healing rite held by the community, with drumming and dance. Women carry the tradition and make up most of those taking part, while men play secondary roles.
Makan says the rite is said to have begun in East Africa. It is fading in Egypt but thriving elsewhere in East Africa and across the Arabian Peninsula. Makan says zar sits in the underground culture, because religious authorities, the government and the official elite of culture all shun it. Because of that, Makan says, it has lived on as a subculture in its first form, largely left alone.
On Iran's southern coast, on Qeshm Island for example, Encyclopaedia Iranica reports a belief in winds that may be harmful or calm, and Muslim or unbelieving. The unbelieving winds are held to be the more dangerous, and zar is counted among them. Iranica lists many kinds of zar, among them Maturi, Bibi and Namrud, and says most are thought to bring disease, discomfort and sometimes grave illness. The photographer Hoda Afshar's book Speak the Wind covers this belief on the islands of the Strait of Hormuz. Its publisher suggests the practice may have been carried to Iran by the Arab slave trade, from southeast Africa. Jörg Colberg, reviewing the book for Conscientious Photography Magazine, objected to the publisher calling it a cult.
Wikipedia says early 20th-century scholars traced zar to the Horn of Africa, while others argued for Persian roots: Frobenius thought zar and bori, a similar Hausa practice, both came from Persia, and Modarressi (1986) proposed a Persian source for the word. Per Wikipedia, the word zar first appears in Ethiopia for a possessing spirit in a Ge'ez manuscript of the 16th century.
"Scholarship in the early 20th century attributed Horn of African origin[11] to the custom, although there were also proposals suggesting Persian or other origins. Thus, Frobenius suggested that zār and bori, a comparable cult in Hausa culture, were ultimately derived from a Persian source. Modarressi (1986) suggests a Persian etymology for the term.[12] The first known instance of the word zār used in Ethiopia to refer to a possessing spirit is from a 16th-century Ge'ez manuscript."
- Mazaher, Egyptian Center for Culture and Art (Makan), via Wayback Machine
- ZĀR, Encyclopaedia Iranica
- Tapping Into Spirits and Celebrating Women: Egyptian Zar, Egyptian Streets (2018)
- Speak The Wind (review of Hoda Afshar's photobook), Jörg Colberg, Conscientious Photography Magazine