ON THE ORIGIN OF THE EGYPTIAN ZAR.
The celebration of zār is a common practice in Cairo and, I believe, in all other Egyptian towns at the present day. The word itself needs some explanation. In Spiro’s vocabulary of the colloquial Arabic of Egypt it is translated by “negro incantation” and no plural or derivation is given. It was suggested to me by an Egyptian that it meant “visitation” and came from the Arabic verb zāra, “he visited,” but this does not seem probable, nor does Dr. Schnouck Hurgronje favour this view. In the Sudan I only found the word zār used to mean the ceremony, the spirits themselves being spoken of as asaid, “masters”; and it is used in this sense by Niya Salima (Madame Ruchdi Pasha) in Harems et Musulmanes d’Egypte. There seems no doubt that the word is Abyssinian, though it appears that its meaning has changed during its travels. Originally it meant a spirit, and thus secondarily in a special sense the magician who communicates with the spirits. According to Plowden a zār is “a magician and medicine man, a man who by spells, or through being spirited away by them in his childhood obtains the power of intimate communication with those beings and is regarded as one of them.”[1] Herr P. Kahle in his interesting article on Zaf Beschworungen in Der Islam, 1913, occasionally uses the word to mean spirit as well as the ceremony performed; his observations were made among the lower classes in Cairo and Luxor. Mr. Rex Engelbach, who kindly placed at my disposal some
- ↑ W. C. Plowden, Abyssinia and the Galla Country (London, 1868), p 264.
