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The Rain Rituals as Rites of Spirtual Passage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Nadio Abu-Zahra
Nadio Abu-Zahra
Affiliation:
Oxford University
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Extract

The Sahel of Tunisia is part of the arid zone that extends from Morocco to Afghanistan. People in this region profess the religion of Islam. Their views on the links between divine power, human actions, and rain are based on the Quran and are expressed in the rain prayers (salat a1-isrisqa') prescribed by the Prophet and therefore common to all of them. This article refers to North Africa, centering on the village of Sidi Ameur in the Sahel of Tunisia.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 1988 , pp. 507 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Miss P. E. Hodgkin for reading the final draft of this paper, and Dr. H. al-Modarressi who drew my attention to sources I should otherwise not have known. I thank the Canada Council for kindly financing my second expedition to Tunisia in 1972. I am grateful for the kind help of the librarians of interlibrary loan and of the Oriental reading room of the Bodleian Library. I transliterate Tunisian words as uttered and not as they ought to be written. In translating Qur'anic verse, I made use of A. J. Arberry's translation in The Koran Interpreted (London: Oxford University Press, 1964). All numbers of quoted Qur'anic verses are based on the al-Azhar system of numbering, as found in the edition of 1390 A.H. (Cairo: Al-Hay'a al'amma li-shu'un almatabi' al-amiriyya).Google Scholar

1 Rain prayers are practised in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, the Sudan, North Africa, Saudi Arabia (The Guardian, London, 6 January 1981), and in Iran (Encyclopaedia of Islam [Leiden, 1978], p. 1978). Miss P. E. Hodgkin also tells me that rain prayers took place in Timbuktu.Google Scholar

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24 Qur'an VI:98, XVI:10, XXIV:34.Google Scholar

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30 Menouillard, “Pratiques,” 305. In Tunisian daily speech hiya is used to indicate an immediate action to take place.Google Scholar See also Marçais, and Guiga, , Glossaires, Vol. VIII (1961), p. 4222.Google Scholar

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53 “El-wad” means rain; Marçais, Textes, p. 203.Google Scholar

54 These lines are identical with part of the song sung in Takrouna for Mother Tambu; MarçaisGoogle Scholar, Ibid., pp. 24–26.

55 Bukhari, p. 104.Google Scholar

56 Menouillard, “Pratiques,” 303–4.Google Scholar

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59 Bukhari, pp. 108–14.Google Scholar

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63 Marçais, , Glossaires, Vol. VI (1959), pp. 1625–27;Google ScholarMonchicourt, “Rogations,” 68.Google Scholar

64 Marçais, Textes, p. 18.Google Scholar

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66 Bel, “Quelques rites,” p. 80.Google Scholar

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73 “Al-tasawwur al-sha'bi lil-ju'wa alshaba' fi ba'd al-bilad al-'arabiyya,” Alif: Journal of Coniparative Poetics, 7 (Spring 1987). Forthcoming article on “al-Hubb aw al-nur 'inda zuwwar alSayyida Zaynab fi-l-Qahira,” Alif, 8 (Spring 1988).Google Scholar