North African Folklore

North Africa — the long coast of the Maghreb, the Nile valley, the central Sahara, the high mountains of the Atlas — is one of the most folklorically complex regions in the world. The Arab conquerors of the seventh century did not arrive on a blank slate. They arrived on lands that had been the home of the Berber and the Coptic, the Punic and the ancient Egyptian, the Greek and the Roman, the Byzantine and the Vandal. Each of these earlier peoples left a deep imprint on the folklore of the region, and the North African village of today is a rich, living museum of all of them.

The North African folk tradition is the inheritance of four great streams:

• The Ancient Egyptian inheritance, going back to the third millennium BCE, present in the irrigation systems of the Nile, in the surviving folk memory of Isis and Osiris, in the Coptic calendar, and in the pharaonic revival of the modern period.
• The Berber inheritance, the oldest continuous tradition of the region, present in the yaz of the Kabyle, the tahenndja of the Tuareg, the village assemblies of the Riffian, and the mountain festivals of the Berber-speaking world.
• The Arab inheritance, brought in the seventh century, with the Quran, the sunna, the great Sufi brotherhoods, the saint-cult of the marabout, the mawlid of the saints, and the Thousand and One Nights in its North African setting.
• The Coptic inheritance, the Christian inheritance of the Nile, going back to the first centuries, with the saints’ days of the Coptic calendar, the monastic tradition of the Wadi Natrun, the music of the Coptic liturgy, and the zar possession ceremony.

The Djinn of the Desert

The most pervasive of all North African folk figures is the djinn, the creature of fire and air described in the Quran, the most powerful of all the spirits of the desert. The Quranic djinn are present alongside humanity from the creation, and the shayṭān (the devils) are the rebellious among them. The folkloric djinn of the desert are a richer and more various crowd: the ghoul who eats the traveller, the ifrit of great power and great pride, the marid of the high seas, the jann of the household wall.

The desert itself is the geography of the djinn. Every ruin, every well, every old tree, every crossroads is the home of a djinn, and the names of the great djinn are local to the villages. The great stories of the djinn are told in the Thousand and One Nights — Aladdin, Ali Baba, the fisherman and the jinni — and in the desert tales of the Bedouin.

The Saint Cults of the Maghreb

The saint cult of the Maghreb — the marabout tradition — is the most distinctive of all North African folk traditions. A marabout is a holy man, often a descendant of the Prophet, who is credited with the baraka, the blessed power. The marabout’s tomb, the qubba, is a place of pilgrimage, and the village’s annual moulid is the festival of the saint. The great saints of the Maghreb include Moulay Idriss I of Fez, the founder of the first Moroccan dynasty, Sidi Abderrahman of Algiers, the saint of the sea, Lalla Aziza of the Berber countryside, the great mother of the village.

The marabout tradition is a Sufi tradition, a popular form of Islamic mysticism. The great Sufi brotherhoods of the Maghreb — the Qadiriyya, the Tijaniyya, the Shadhiliyya, the Senussiyya — are the orders to which the great saints belong. The zikr (the remembrance of God) of the brotherhoods is itself a folkloric event, with its own music, its own songs, its own dances, and its own saints’ tombs.

The most important of the mawālid is that of Moulay Idriss at Fez, the festival of the founder of the city, with the procession of the great brass lamps, the drumming of the ṭabla, the chanting of the Quran, and the firing of the great gun of the Kasbah. The great mawlid of Cairo — that of al-Husayn, in the heart of the city — is the most solemn; the mawlid of al-Badawi at Tanta is the largest. The Moroccan mawlid of Moulay Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani is a week-long festival of music, dancing, and Sufi poetry.

The Berber Inheritance

The Berbers — the Imazighen, the “free men” — are the oldest continuous inhabitants of North Africa. The Berber-speaking world stretches from the Siwa Oasis of the Egyptian Western Desert, through the Aures Mountains of Algeria, the Kabyle highlands, the Riffian coast, the Middle Atlas, the High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas, the Toubkal massif, and the Saharan oases to the Tassili N’Ajjer of southern Algeria and the Ahaggar of southern Algeria. The Berber folk traditions are the most distinctive in North Africa, and the most distinct from the Arab.

The Berber calendar is the oldest in North Africa, going back to the Libyco-Berber era. The Berber new year, Yennayer (12–14 January), is celebrated in villages from the Aures to the Atlas, with the preparation of the taguella (the flat bread of the country), the tahellelt (the ritual of the kid), and the yaz (the gathering of the village). The Berber of the oases celebrate the tahenndja, the zituna (the date of the harvest), and the thayurgha (the great feast of the year).

The Berber of the mountain — the Kabyle, the Riffian, the Chleuh of the High Atlas, the Berber of the Djerba island of southern Tunisia — are the keepers of the great yaz, the village assembly in which the men discuss the affairs of the community. The yaz is held under the great tree, the agdal, of the village, and is the central folkloric institution of Berber society. The Berber are also the keepers of the ahwach (the dance of the Aures and the Souss), the ahidus (the dance of the Berber of the Middle Atlas), the abra (the dance of the Berber of the Souss), and the great cycle of the Tin Hinan, the great mother of the Tuareg, the founder of the dynasty of the kel Ahaggar.

The Berber religion before the Arab conquest — the pagan religion of the Imazighen — left a deep imprint on the modern North African folk tradition. The djinn, the rilwa (the spirit of the river), the targuist (the spirit of the wild), the amghar (the priest of the village) — all are pre-Islamic in origin, and all are still present in the modern folk practice.

The Ancient Egyptian Inheritance

The ancient Egyptian inheritance is most visible in the Nile valley, in the great temple of Karnak and Luxor, in the valley of the kings, in the great mortuary traditions of the pharaohs, and in the modern Egyptian folk memory. The Egyptian Pharaonism of the twentieth century — the work of the Egyptologist Selim Hassan, the novelist Taha Hussein, the painter Mahmoud Mokhtar — brought the older inheritance into the modern Egyptian imagination. The survival of the figures of Isis and Osiris in the older folk memory of Upper Egypt is one of the most striking continuities in the world.

The Coptic calendar, the Christian calendar of the Nile valley going back to the first centuries, is the other great inheritance. The Coptic months — Tut, Babah, Hatur, Kiyah, Tubah, Amshir, Barmhat, Barmudah, Bashans, Ba’nah, Abib, Misra — preserve the ancient Egyptian names. The Coptic festivals of the year — the Nayrouz (the Coptic new year, 11 September), the Christmas (7 January), the Epiphany (19 January), the Great Lent, the Easter, the Pentecost — are among the great folkloric events of the Egyptian year.

The Tuareg of the Central Sahara

The Tuareg of the central Sahara — the kel Ahaggar, the kel Aïr, the kel Dinnik, the kel Gossi — are the great folkloric custodians of the inland desert. The Tuareg are the Blue Men of the Desert, the indigo-veiled warriors, the masters of the taghremset (the great caravans), the ahellil (the long song of the oasis), and the tisla (the women’s wedding songs). The Tuareg of the Ahaggar are the keepers of the great Tin Hinan, the great mother, the founder of the dynasty, whose tomb at Abalessa is the central monument of the Tuareg world.

The Tuareg traditions of the tindi (the praise-name), the tilad (the song of the camel), the esbat (the leather satchel of the amulet), and the taghremset (the caravan of the salt and the gold) are among the great folk traditions of the world. The Tuareg of the Tassili N’Ajjer are also the keepers of the great rock art of the central Sahara, the painting of the giraffes and the elephants and the men with the round heads, the oldest art of the world.

The Thousand and One Nights in North Africa

The Thousand and One Nights — the Alf Layla wa-Layla — has a special place in the North African folk tradition. The frame-story, of Shahrazad telling tales to Shahriyar, is itself a North African story, set in the court of the Sāsānian kings. The tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sinbad the Sailor are the most famous to the European reader, but the Nights also include the folk tales of the desert, the stories of the qāḍī (the judge), the ḥakawātī (the storyteller), and the ḥāra (the alleyway). The Nights is the great archive of the medieval Arab folk tradition, and it is still being told in the cafes of Cairo, Tunis, Fez, and Tangier.

The ḥakawātī — the storyteller of the cafe — is the modern heir of the Nights. The ḥakawātī sits on the great cushion, the masarra (the storyteller’s dagger) at his side, and the ṭabla in his hand. He tells his tale for an evening, the tarjama (the coffee) of the cafe at his back, and the audience around him. The tradition of the ḥakawātī is now in the care of the great storytellers of the Café de l’Épée in Tunis, the Café El-Fishawi in Cairo, and the Café Clock of Fez.

The Coptic Christian Folk Tradition

The Coptic Christians of the Nile valley are the keepers of a folkloric system going back to the first centuries. The Coptic calendar is older than the Gregorian. The Coptic liturgy, sung in the Coptic language, is the only surviving liturgical use of the language of the pharaohs. The Coptic monastery of Abu Mena, the Coptic monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai, the Coptic monastery of Saint Anthony in the Red Sea hills, are among the great folkloric sites of the Christian world.

The Coptic folk tradition is the older Christian folk tradition of the region, with its own saints, its own miracles, its own calendar, its own music, and its own zar possession ceremony. The zar is the Coptic Christian equivalent of the mawlid of the Muslim saints, and it is a living practice in the villages of Upper Egypt and the Coptic communities of Cairo.

The Modern Folklore Revival

The North African folkloric revival of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is one of the most important in the Arab world. The Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize 1988) — whose Cairo Trilogy, Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street, is the great folkloric novel of the modern Arab world — drew on the older folk traditions of the city. The Algerian novelist Kateb Yacine, the Tunisian poet Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, the Moroccan poet Taher Ben Jelloun, and the Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni are the great modern heirs of the Maghrebi folk tradition.

In cinema, the Egyptian director Youssef Chahine made the trilogy of al-Ard (The Earth, 1969), al-Ikhtiyar (The Choice, 1970), and al-Usfür (The Sparrow, 1972), the central folkloric cinema of the modern Arab world. The Tunisian cinema of the Fédération Tunisienne de Cinéastes and the Moroccan cinema of Souheil Ben-Barka and Nabil Ayouch are the great folkloric cinemas of the Maghreb.

In music, the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, the Moroccan singer Najat Aatabou, the Tunisian singer Saber Rebaï, and the Algerian singer Cheb Khaled are the great modern heirs of the older folk traditions of the Maghreb and the Nile. The rai music of the western Maghreb, the shaabi of the Egyptian city, the gharnati of the Andalusian-Maghrebi tradition, the gnawa of the sub-Saharan Maghreb — all carry in their bones the older North African folk tradition.

See Also

• African Folklore
• The Djinn of the Desert
• Egyptian Folk Traditions
• West African Folklore
• Southern African Folklore
• The Mermaid of European Tradition
• Samhain and the Seasonal Festivals
• Dragons Around the World
• Griots of West Africa