by Abdellah Hammoudi
translated by Paula Wissing
University of Chicago Press, 1993
Paper: 978-0-226-31526-3 | Cloth: 978-0-226-31525-6
Library of Congress Classification DT328.M53H3613 1993
Dewey Decimal Classification 394.2682970964

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ABOUT THIS BOOK
Each year, in a solemn Sunni Muslim feast, the Ait Mizane of southern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of their submission to the divine. After this sober ceremony comes a bacchanalian masquerade which seems to violate every principle the sacrifice affirmed. Because of the apparent contradiction between sacrifice and masquerade, observers have described the two as entirely separate events. This book reunites them as a single ritual process within Islamic tradition.