#moroccan folklore

[rosiesfables]

Characters from AICHA by Soraya Nadia Bouazzaoui coming out 2026 :)

[murasaki-rose]

Aisha Qandicha

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More old lineart I finally sat down and colored. Another folklore-based chibi! I first heard of this being from Destination Truth. Went through 3 different color variations before landing on this one.

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Medium: Prismacolor and Copic Sketch Markers, Faber Castelle Ink, UniPosca Paint pens, and Sakura Gelly Roll pens. Clean up done with PaintShop Pro Ultimate.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

I’m very fond of parable-type folktales that are clever in delivering their lesson. Lots of folktales contain a moral or at least distinct values, but since parables don’t have to be subtle about it, they can come across a bit blunt. Not all of them though, I like this one from Morocco a lot. The main character, Djha, is an Islamic scholar. The Moroccan version of the Turkish “Nasredding Hodja”, who is something of a folk hero in a whole collection of stories spread all around the Islamic world:

One day Djha went to speak to the Caliph to ask him to make him a judge. The Caliph agreed and from that day on Djha was a judge.

Once, when he was walking down the street, he witnessed an argument between a mechoui merchant and a poor man. Now he was a judge it was his duty to intervene. So Djha asked why the two were fighting.

It turned out that the poor man was hungry, but had nothing but bread to eat. So he had gone to the mechoui merchant and had held his piece of bread in the smoke of the roasting mutton. Once the bread had soaked up all the smoke and fat from the meat, he ate it, and to him it was just like he was eating real meat. After this he wanted to go about his business, but the merchant had stopped him and demanded he pay him. But the poor man protested: “What for? I have not eaten meat, only smoke, so I owe you no payment.” But the merchant disagreed and kept insisting the other had to pay.

Right at that moment Djha had intervened. He now asked the merchant: “How much money do you want from him?”

“I want five dirham,” the merchant replied.

“Give me one dirham,” Djha told the poor man. He took the coin and dropped it on the ground five times in a row, to make it clink against the stone. Then he returned the coin to the poor man and told him he could go.

The merchant was dumbfounded. He couldn’t understand it and he screamed at Djha: “How can you let him go while he still owes me five dirham!”

But Djha said: “The poor man has eaten the smoke of your meat and you have been paid with the clink of a coin. You no longer owe one another anything.”

[mytholadies]

In our 14th episode, we discuss Aicha Qandisha, the powerful jinniya from Moroccan folklore. We discuss her possibly historical origins and the ways she has been reclaimed!

spotify / apple podcasts / google podcasts / transcript on website

[echoesofthefall]

The Buffis think that jinns are fiendish and dangerous creatures. They are afraid to address them with the names jenn (sing.) or jnun (pl.). For them, calling jinns by such names is a means to invoke them. They attempt to avoid using proper names, especially after al-ʿaṣer prayer when these are thought to leave their subterranean abodes. They think that they may retaliate with brutal revenge. According to Westermarck, Moroccans use euphemistic words like mluk (the owners/masters), sadatna (our lords), jwad (the bountiful/generous), mselmin (Moslems), mwalin al-ʿarḍ (the masters of the ground), ryaḥ (the winds) to refer to them for fear not to be harmed. In the Buffi maraboutic context, both healers and clients use such expressions to refer to them. They may also use expressions like sukkan al-ʿammar (occupying dwellers), mwalin nuba (masters of the turn), llima kay dakrush (those without names) to shirk the impending danger of calling them by their proper name, jnun.

Mohammed Maarouf, Jinn Eviction as a Discourse of Power

[postneet]

[postneet]