Bori (Hausa)

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Bori cult. Photography in AJN Tremearne: The Ban of Bori, 1914

Bori is the traditional Hausa possession cult that was practiced in all house cities in northern Nigeria until the introduction of Sharia law in 2000 . He stands with the local Dodo - cult relationship.

All members of the Bori cult consider themselves Muslims. Their cult is tolerated by tolerant Muslims, as the former deities of the cult are now regarded as spiritual beings ( iska , Pl. Iskoki ). In the course of the enforcement of Sharia law, the cult was completely eliminated in radical states such as Zamfara , Sokoto , Kano and in some cases also Kebbi . In more tolerant states, adepts are still allowed to practice their cult among themselves in closed rooms.

The Bori adepts unite on special occasions, and under song and music, the active members transform into media of their spirits. The leading musical instrument in the performance of the dance ceremony is the single-stringed spit violin goge . There is also the hourglass drum kalangu and percussive calabashes or tin cans. The participants are dressed accordingly and they then behave like the gods they represent. The price songs to the spirits and the behavior of the media provide important clues for the reconstruction of the pre-Islamic world of the Hausa gods. This material can also be used to understand the former sacred kings of the Hausa.

In addition to the Bori cult, which has been well studied by ethnological research, there are lesser-known obsession cults in northern Nigeria such as Badiri among the Shua Arabs , Badire among the Kotoko and Gusa vala among the Malgwa . For the latter ritual, an orchestra plays the flute ( gulve ), pumpkin rattle and water drum . Comparable possessive spirits in Africa are the Vimbuza spirits in Zambia and Malawi and the Pepo spirits in Tanzania. In the Islamic context, there is the Tsar - cult in Egypt and Sudan, the Derdeba -Kult with the Gnawa in Morocco the Tunisian Stambali corresponds to the spirit qandisa in Morocco and among the Tuareg are spirits tend - soothes music.

literature

  • Fremont E. Besmer: Horses, Musicians and Gods: The Hausa Cult of Possession-Trance. South Hadley 1983.
  • Joseph Greenberg : The Influence of Islam on a Sudanese Religion , Seattle 1946.
  • Matthias Krings: Spirits of Fire: On the imagination of the foreign in the Bori cult of the Hausa. (Mainzer Contributions to Africa Research Vol. 4) Lit Verlag, Münster 1998, ISBN 978-3825833992
  • Guy Nicolas: Dynamique sociale au sein d'une société hausa. Paris 1975, pp. 205-211
  • Michael Onwuejeogwu: The Cult of the Bori Spirits among the Hausa. In: Mary Douglas , Phyllis M. Kaberry (Eds.): Man in Africa. Tavistock Publications, London 1969, pp. 279-306
  • AJN Tremearne : The Ban of Bori. Demons and Demon Dancing in West and North Africa. London 1914. Reprint: Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish (Montana) 2003, ISBN 978-0766180154 (at Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See e.g. B. Dierk Lange's remarks on the Dango festival in Kebbi and the parallels between the Bori gods and the figures of the Bayajidda legend in Daura ( Ancient Kingdoms , Dettelbach, 2004, 183-8, 230-2).
  2. ↑ Raimund Vogels: The obsession treatment gusa vala among the Malgwa in northeastern Nigeria. ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Wolfgang Auhagen, Bram Gätjen, Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller (Ed.): Systemic Musicology. Festschrift Jobst Peter Fricke for his 65th birthday. Musicological Institute University of Cologne, Cologne 2003, pp. 411–421, here p. 420