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5 - Desert Panic

Bloodsucking Accusations and the Terror of Social Change

from Part III - Articulating Race, Gender, and Social Difference through the Esoteric Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2023

Erin Pettigrew
Affiliation:
New York University, Abu Dhabi
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Summary

Chapter 5 describes a phenomenon only found in the Sahara known as sell, or bloodsucking and the extraction of essential life forces, arguing that accusations of sell and their related events thus offer an opportunity to view local conceptions of social identity and related fears about shifts in hierarchy, old hostilities between lineages, as well as understandings of the nature of health and illness. While Arabic sources document the existence of bloodsucking at least as early as the fifteenth-century, the colonial archive provides the most concentrated number of records that demonstrate how bloodsucking was a lived and feared reality for desert communities during the colonial period. From these Saharan sources, a fuller understanding emerges of how desert communities envisioned the political and spiritual forces of their social worlds during periods of famine, economic stagnation, and domestic tension. Both the accusation of sell and the l’ḥjāb used to counter it signal the contestation of a society’s status quo.

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Chapter
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Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara
Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change
, pp. 187 - 221
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Desert Panic
  • Erin Pettigrew, New York University, Abu Dhabi
  • Book: Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara
  • Online publication: 19 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009224581.009
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  • Desert Panic
  • Erin Pettigrew, New York University, Abu Dhabi
  • Book: Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara
  • Online publication: 19 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009224581.009
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Desert Panic
  • Erin Pettigrew, New York University, Abu Dhabi
  • Book: Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara
  • Online publication: 19 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009224581.009
Available formats
×