Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/501

 Folklore of the Algerian Hills and Desert. 191

Upon the morrow many of the crowd attend a large fair at Tagust, a Shawiya village situated at the north-eastern foot of the Jebel Bus, at which are sold goats, sheep and, especially, the dwarf cattle which are kept in very small numbers by the Shawiya.

The fete takes place at the moment when the fruits of the trees in the Abdi and Bu Zina valleys are about to ripen. The ceremonies detailed above, according to de- scriptions given to me by several natives, Arab and Shawiya, who have assisted at them, are commenced as we have seen at the tomb of the Moslem saint, Sidi Yahia, an individual of whom it is reported that in his lifetime he turned a lion into stone (the stone somewhat resembling a recumbent lion is to be found beside the track leading from the tomb to the railway) ; and they are nowadays considered to have been originated at the death of this holy man, as a tribute to his honour and as a means of securing his supernatural help for the increase of rainfall in dry seasons.

Yet it seems more than possible that they may date from times of much greater antiquity, and afford an instance of the Islamization of the remnants of an older cult. It must be remembered that the Berbers of the Algerian hills were remarkably " superstitious " as well as determined warriors in the time of the seventh-century Arab invader, Oqba ben Nail, who found it expedient to play upon their super- stitions when he attempted their conquest and conversion to Islam, ^ and, further, that in the early days of Arabian conquest the very soldiery who were extending the dominions of the Califate in Egypt and Africa by force of arms were themselves acquainted with little more than the mere formula of confession of their new faith. ^

It is, therefore, reasonable to expect that a religion so introduced should absorb the existing cults of the Berbers


 * Dozy, Moslems in Spain (tran. by F. G. Stokes, 1913), p. 129.


 * Dozy, op. cit. pp. 23 and 24.