Bujlood

Bujlood (Moroccan Arabic: بوجلود, lit. father of pelts) or Bilmawen (Moroccan Arabic: بيلماون, Berber languages: ⴱⵉⵍⵎⴰⵡⵏ) is a folk Amazigh celebration observed annually after Eid al-Adha in parts of Morocco in which a person or more wears the pelt of the livestock sacrificed on Eid al-Adha.[1][2][3]

This article is about the Amazigh folk tradition. For the gate in Fes, see Bab Bou Jeloud.
People celebrating Boujloud in Agadir, Morocco

Etymology

The term Bujlood comes from the Arabic أبو abu (meaning father, or possessor)[4] and jlood جلود (plural of jild جلد, meaning skin, leather, or pelt),[5] so bujlood means father or possessor of pelts.

The term in Tamazight is bilmaouen.[6]

Observance

The celebration begins with a bujlood carnival, usually on the day after Eid al-Adha, when young people wear masks and the skins of the sheep or goats that were sacrificed on the Eid. They dance around in their masks and costumes carrying limbs of the sacrificed animals, which they use to play with people they run into and trying to touch them. The point is to spread laughter and cheer.

Interpretations

The French ethnologists Edmond Doutté and Émile Laoust connect the tradition to pre-Islamic Amazigh rites celebrating the changing of seasons and death and resurrection.[7] The Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck connected the tradition to the Roman Saturnalia festival.[8]

The Moroccan anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi, in his essay The Victim and Its Masks: An Essay on Sacrifice and Masquerade in the Maghreb, refutes these interpretations and contextualizes bujlood as a Moroccan cultural practice inseparable from the Eid al-Adha sacrifice.[9][10]

Hassan Rachik has also written about the sacrifice traditions of the Ait Mizan and the Ait Souka in the High Atlas.[10]

Islamic opinion

In the opinion of some local Islamic scholars, this celebration is "not permissible as it likens humans, who have been blessed by God, to beasts, and the skin of these animals defiles the human body. It also makes it impossible to pray on time, because changing in and out of the clothes takes time, and the individual in question has to wash himself in ablution after each removal of the skins, as they give off a nasty odor, especially in the summer time."[11]

References
  1. "انطلاق كرنفال "بيلماون" بإنزكان المغربية". الجزيرة مباشر (in Arabic). Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  2. "Boujloud: Morocco's unique Halloween". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  3. "Boujloud, un rite en mal de valorisation". www.leseco.ma | L'actulaité en continu. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  4. Team, Almaany. "تعريف و شرح و معنى أبو بالعربي في معاجم اللغة العربية معجم المعاني الجامع، المعجم الوسيط ،اللغة العربية المعاصرة ،الرائد ،لسان العرب ،القاموس المحيط - معجم عربي عربي صفحة 1". www.almaany.com. Retrieved 2019-11-21.
  5. Team, Almaany. "تعريف و شرح و معنى جلود بالعربي في معاجم اللغة العربية معجم المعاني الجامع، المعجم الوسيط ،اللغة العربية المعاصرة ،الرائد ،لسان العرب ،القاموس المحيط - معجم عربي عربي صفحة 1". www.almaany.com. Retrieved 2019-11-21.
  6. ""كرنفال بيلماون" .. احتفالية أمازيغية بطعم التعايش والتسامح – فيديو وصور" (in Arabic). 20 September 2017. Retrieved 2019-11-21.
  7. Hachim, Mouna (2017-01-01). "Survivances carnavalesques au Maroc". Horizons/Théâtre. Revue d'études théâtrales (in French) (8–9): 162–170. doi:10.4000/ht.852. ISSN 2261-4591.
  8. SILVERSTEIN, PAUL (2010-12-22). "Masquerade politics: race, Islam and the scale of Amazigh activism in southeastern Morocco*". Nations and Nationalism. 17 (1): 65–84. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2010.00454.x. ISSN 1354-5078.
  9. Abdellah, Hammoudi (1993). The victim and its masks : an essay on sacrifice and masquerade in the Maghreb. Univ. of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-31525-8. OCLC 924903156.
  10. Mansouri, Driss (2014), "Manifestations festives et expressions du sacré au Maghreb", Pratiquer les sciences sociales au Maghreb, Centre Jacques-Berque, pp. 555–570, doi:10.4000/books.cjb.674, ISBN 979-10-92046-22-9, retrieved 2021-07-23
  11. ""بوجلود" .. "أسطورة" تراثية تتحول إلى "كابوس"". Hespress (in Arabic). 30 October 2012. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
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