Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/324

292 The Nosairi have a double set, the prophet and his attendant; their asas (bases) are Abel, Seth, Joseph, Joshua, Asaph, Peter (?) and Ali, the natiqs (utterers) Adam, Noah, Jacob, Moses, Solomon, Christ, Mahomet. We notice the influence of the solar cult of Emesa wherein Helios and El were confused: from this place issued the peculiar dynasty of the later Severians who brought Solarism into Rome (218-235 ). The true prophet always disappears (as the reigning monarch among the Ismailians) and leaves a grand vizier to administer as deputy till he comes back again. One Nosairi sect is called the Ghaibi; for the present time is that of God's absence (ghaibah) or invisibility; it is the Absent who is true God, and this is equated with the air, or, as some say, with the sky. Another sect is still more interesting; the Kalazi hold that the moon, not the sun, is Ali's abode, and that by drinking wine one reaches a closer relation with the moon—a curious parallel to the Soma-draught and the identification of the moon with Soma. The moon too may be the great lunar goddess Astarte, and the real background (as in Gnosticism) of the whole theology; the transient vehicles being (like Attis or Tammuz) her ministers or theophanies.

15. The last sect to be named is the Kizil Bash, a tribe or race spreading from Siva and Angora to Erzerum: they are crypto-pagans and only conform to Islam when it is unsafe to deny it. God is one in three; the second person of the Trinity is Ali, the third Christ. Like orthodox Shi'ites they bewail the death of Hasan and Hosein (a relic of the Tammuz-cult): in the Muharram festival, the celebrant chants hymns in honour of Moses and David, Ali and Christ: lights are extinguished and in the dark they lament their sins; when they are rekindled the priest gives absolution and administers the sacrament, bread