The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult

The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult PDF Author: G. P. Makris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781032411897
Category : Khartoum Region (Sudan)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This book offers a historically-sensitive ethnography of the zar tumbura spirit possession cult, associated with descendants of African slaves who live mainly in the area of Greater Khartoum, Sudan. It considers the history and transformations of tumbura, from the nineteenth-century slaving era through to the present post-Islamist autocracy"--

The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult

The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult PDF Author: G. P. Makris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781032411897
Category : Khartoum Region (Sudan)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book offers a historically-sensitive ethnography of the zar tumbura spirit possession cult, associated with descendants of African slaves who live mainly in the area of Greater Khartoum, Sudan. It considers the history and transformations of tumbura, from the nineteenth-century slaving era through to the present post-Islamist autocracy"--

The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult

The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult PDF Author: GERASIMOS. MAKRIS
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032394039
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book offers a historically-sensitive ethnography of the zār ṭumbura spirit possession cult, associated with descendants of African slaves who live mainly in the area of Greater Khartoum, Sudan. It considers the history and transformations of ṭumbura, from the nineteenth-century slaving era through to the present post-Islamist autocracy. The chapters examine the ṭumbura spiritual universe and ceremonial life, its relation to the more popular female cult of zār borē and to other now extinct forms of celebrating the zār spirit(s), as well as ṭumbura's combination of possession, sorcery, ancestor worship, and ṣūfī piety. Based on long-term fieldwork, the study shows how successive generations of subaltern cult devotees construct a positive self-identity based on an alternative reading of Sudanese history. The author explores the edges of Sudanese Islamic religiosity and probes the limits of anthropological classifications concerning religious experience. Situating ṭumbura in its wider context, the book discusses subaltern modes of historicity in their articulation with dominant conceptions of history, traces the legacy of slavery and the role of memory, and invites comparisons with Middle Eastern, Sahelian, and even New World societies regarding stigmatised identities, slavery, race, memory and history. It will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, history, religious studies, Islamic studies and African studies.

Social Change, Religion, and Spirit Possession

Social Change, Religion, and Spirit Possession PDF Author: Gerasimos Makris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arabs
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult

The Sudanese Zār Ṭumbura Cult PDF Author: Gerasimos Makris
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003802591
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This book offers a historically sensitive ethnography of the zār ṭumbura spirit possession cult, associated with descendants of African slaves who live mainly in the area of Greater Khartoum, Sudan. It considers the history and transformations of ṭumbura, from the 19th-century slaving era to the present post-Islamist autocracy. The chapters examine the ṭumbura spiritual universe and ceremonial life, its relation to the more popular female cult of zār borē and to other now extinct forms of celebrating the zār spirit(s), as well as ṭumbura’s combination of possession, sorcery, ancestor worship and ṣūfī piety. Based on long-term fieldwork, the study shows how successive generations of subaltern cult devotees construct a positive self-identity based on an alternative reading of Sudanese history. The author explores the edges of Sudanese Islamic religiosity and probes the limits of anthropological classifications concerning religious experience. Situating ṭumbura in its wider context, the book discusses subaltern modes of historicity in their articulation with dominant conceptions of history, traces the legacy of slavery and the role of memory and invites comparisons with Middle Eastern, Sahelian and even New World societies regarding stigmatised identities, slavery, race, memory and history. It will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, history, religious studies, Islamic studies and African studies.

Social change, religion and spirit posession

Social change, religion and spirit posession PDF Author: G. P. Makris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Academic theses
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Wombs and Alien Spirits

Wombs and Alien Spirits PDF Author: Janice Boddy
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299123138
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Based on nearly two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Muslim village in northern Sudan, Wombs and Alien Spirits explores the zâr cult, the most widely practiced traditional healing cult in Africa. Adherents of the cult are usually women with marital or fertility problems, who are possessed by spirits very different from their own proscribed roles as mothers. Through the woman, the spirit makes demands upon her husband and family and makes provocative comments on village issues, such as the increasing influence of formal Islam or encroaching Western economic domination. In accommodating the spirits, the women are able metaphorically to reformulate everyday discourse to portray consciousness of their own subordination. Janice Boddy examines the moral universe of the village, discussing female circumcision, personhood, kinship, and bodily integrity, then describes the workings of the cult and the effect of possession on the lives of men as well as women. She suggests that spirit possession is a feminist discourse, though a veiled and allegorical one, on women's objectification and subordination. Additionally, the spirit world acts as a foil for village life in the context of rapid historical change and as such provides a focus for cultural resistance that is particularly, though not exclusively, relevant to women.

Changing Masters

Changing Masters PDF Author: G. P. Makris
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810116986
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
The spirit possession cult of zar tumbura has a devoted following among Muslim descendents of slaves and other subalterns in the Sudan. In Changing Masters, G. P. Makris studies zar tumbura as part of a wider zar complex for what it reveals about shifting ethnic identities in the modern Sudan. More generally, his work exposes the processes subordinate groups use to assert a positive identity that counters the identity conferred upon them by the dominant culture. Makris engages the tumbura devotees of the area of Greater Khartoum in an animated discussion of their understanding of themselves and their world. Using oral histories, songs associated with the various spirits, and accounts of ceremonies he witnessed, he shows tumbura to be a response to victimization first in slavery and later by subordination. It functions as a counterdiscourse challenging the dominant discourse of the ex-slaveholding classes and enables its practitioners to assert a separate, alternative identity. This assertion, embodied in the idiom of possession, is achieved through a continuous reworking of meaning as it is imparted by religion, descent, and historical consciousness.

Women's Medicine

Women's Medicine PDF Author: I. M. Lewis
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Despite the large-scale destruction of traditional practices throughout the world, the Zar-Bori spirit-healing cult continues to hold tremendous meaning for some women in West Africa, the Sudan and North Africa, and even in the more progressive countries such as Tunisia, Kuwait, Egypt and the Gulf States.

Historical Dictionary of the Sudan

Historical Dictionary of the Sudan PDF Author: Robert S. Kramer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810861801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 621

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Book Description
The Republic of the Sudan was long the largest country in Africa and, according to the general consensus, also one of the least successful in many ways. This was not entirely its fault since it lay along the fault line between Muslim and Christian Africa and between the Nile Valley civilizations and African Sudanic cultures. This partly explains the long and bloody warfare waged by the Southerners to achieve independence, which they did in July 2011. So this hefty book actually covers not one but two states. This fourth edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Sudan does so, first, through a lengthy and detailed chronology tracing its relatively few successes and numerous failures. The introductory essay does an admirable job of putting it all in perspective. But the most informative part is the dictionary, with now over 700 entries for this fourth edition. They deal with important personalities, politics, the economy, society, culture, religion and inevitably the civil war. There are also appendixes and an extensive bibliography.

Zar

Zar PDF Author: Hager El Hadidi
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617977713
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
An examination of the history and waning culture of zar in Egypt, and the world in which Muslim women negotiate relations with spirits Zar is both a possessing spirit and a set of reconciliation rites between the spirits and their human hosts: living in a parallel yet invisible world, the capricious spirits manifest their anger by causing ailments for their hosts, which require ritual reconciliation, a private sacrificial rite practiced routinely by the afflicted devotees. Originally spread from Ethiopia to the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf through the nineteenth-century slave trade, in Egypt zar has incorporated elements from popular Islamic Sufi practices, including devotion to Christian and Muslim saints. The ceremonies initiate devotees—the majority of whom are Muslim women—into a community centered on a cult leader, a membership that provides them with moral orientation, social support, and a sense of belonging. Practicing zar rituals, dancing to zar songs, and experiencing trance restore their well-being, which had been compromised by gender asymmetry and globalization. This new ethnographic study of zar in Egypt is based on the author’s two years of multi-sited fieldwork and firsthand knowledge as a participant, and her collection and analysis of more than three hundred zar songs, allowing her to access levels of meaning that had previously been overlooked. The result is a comprehensive and accessible exposition of the history, culture, and waning practice of zar in a modernizing world.