Aisha Qandisha — the goat-footed jinn of the Hamadsha

OVERVIEW

Aisha Qandisha (Aicha Kandicha) is a female figure of Moroccan folklore, like a jinn but with her own personality: a beautiful young woman with the hooves of a goat or camel, a dark cloak over provocative clothes, who lives by water — the sea at Tangier, the Martil at Tétouan, a canal at Fez, the Sebou among the Beni Ahsen — can move water or turn it to ice, and seduces men, sometimes in the form of their own wives. She fears steel knives and needles; her companion is Hammu Qayyu. Her name still frightens Moroccan children.

HISTORY

The Hamadsha, a Sufi-rooted possession brotherhood founded by the saints Sidi 'Ali ben Hamdush and his servant Sidi Ahmed Dghugi — buried near Meknes, Sidi 'Ali in a large tomb near Beni Rachid — link possession to her as 'Lalla Aisha', who demands ritual bloodletting from the men she possesses; she appears in Egypt's zār as Aisha al-Maghribiya. In night-long rites (līla) the possessed may slash their heads with knives. The Buffi Sufi order count several Aishas, and hold that Lalla Aisha has no tomb: her soul roams.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Her origin is disputed. Westermarck (1926) tied her to Qetesh, Astarte and 'sacred prostitutes' (Hebrew qedēshā) — a reading the English article calls obsolete. A Moroccan version makes her a woman of El Jadida — a 'countess' (Portuguese condessa) — who in the 16th century seduced Portuguese soldiers so that hidden fighters could kill them, went mad when they killed her fiancé in revenge, and has roamed the forest since. Recorded as folklore and living belief.

VISITING

The pin marks Meknes, centre of the Hamadsha saints' tombs; Aisha herself has no shrine.