The Victim and its Masks by Abdellah Hammoudi
Each year, in a solemn Sunni Muslim feast, the Ait Mazine of northern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of submission to the divine. After comes a bacchanalian masquerade which seems to violate every principle the sacrifice affirmed. Costumed men sing and dance and torment villagers, their wild activities centering around a mute figure sewn into the skins of sacrificed animals. This character is attended by several others who keep up a constant patter that mocks the social order, especially marriage, women, older men, and the Qu'ran. Because of the apparent contradiction between sacrifice and masquerade, observers have described the two as entirely separate events. Abdellah Hammoudi's study reunites them as a single ritual process within Islamic tradition. Working with metaphors of stage and play, Hammoudi details the festival from the rituals of makeup and costume through the final spectacle. Each part of the ceremony denies and at the same time conjures up the other. The contradictions inherent in social and religious life are vividly enacted; sacrifice and masquerade appear.
Abdellah Hammoudi was born in El Kelaa des Sraghna, Morocco. Educated at the University of Rabat and the Sorbonne, he joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1991 as a professor of anthropology; in 1995-2004 he was also director of Princeton's Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. there. His books include The Victim and Its Masks (1993) and Master and Disciple (1997). He and his wife, Miriam Lowi, and their two children divide their time between Princeton and his native Morocco.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780226315256 |
| ISBN 10 | 0226315258 |
| Title | The Victim and its Masks |
| Author | Abdellah Hammoudi |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | The University of Chicago Press |
| Year published | 1993-11-01 |
| Number of pages | 216 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |