Michel Leiris and the zār of Gondar
In 1932 the French surrealist and ethnographer Michel Leiris spent months in Gondar recording zār spirit possession, centred on the healer Malkam Ayyahu and her circle of women.
1932 CE · 12.61, 37.46 · status: account
The account
Leiris was secretary of the Dakar–Djibouti expedition. His diary, 'L'Afrique fantôme' (1934), and his 1958 study of the 'theatrical' side of possession in Gondar describe zār spirits with names, personalities and demands, who speak through their hosts at night-long ceremonies with drumming, coffee and animal sacrifice. The same cult spread to Sudan, Egypt and the Gulf.
The sceptical view
Anthropologists read zār as a social and therapeutic institution; Leiris himself wondered how much of the trance was performance and how much belief, and concluded the two were not opposites.