Anzar

The old woman dressed for the occasion in the dirtiest clothes she owned. That was deliberate. In the village of Tasemsit, among the Infedouaq of the High Atlas, she explained that her filth would make the sky turn black, and a black sky brings rain. The night before, she had left two kitchen ladles and a wooden pestle in the chapel of a local saint. In the morning she tied the ladles into a cross and dressed them as a bride, with every piece of jewellery the village could spare. The pestle she wrapped in black rags. The bride was Taghonja. The pestle was her husband, and his name was Anzar.

Anzar is the ordinary Berber word for rain. It runs through nearly every Berber language from Morocco to the oases of Egypt, the Tuareg dialects being the exception, and the linguist Salem Chaker calls it the fundamental Berber name for the thing that falls from the sky. The word is masculine, and in the villages it has never been only a word. The ethnographer Émile Laoust, whose *Mots et choses berbères* appeared in Paris in 1920, found that where Arabic had pushed the everyday term aside, anzar survived to name either the good rain of autumn and spring, the rain that saves a harvest, or a vague divinity who presides over it. In Kabylie the word had stopped being a common noun altogether. It was kept only for the rain rites, which is exactly where an old name goes to stay alive.

The rites all run on one idea. Rain is male and seed-like, the dry earth is a woman waiting for him, and the surest way to bring him down is to offer him a bride. So in time of drought the women of a village made one. The frame was usually a ladle, the big cooking spoon called aghonja, sometimes two of them lashed crosswise so that the bowls became outstretched arms held ready to catch water. In the Rif and among other northern Berbers the frame was the wooden shovel used to winnow grain on the threshing floor. The Aith Seghrouchen used an upturned funnel on a stick, with a scarf and a necklace. At Tabelbala in the Saoura a proper dress was cut and sewn for her, and one of these dolls, called Tarenza, ended up photographed in the collections of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. The names varied with the frame: Taghonja and its cousins after the ladle, or plainly Tislit n Anzar, the Bride of Anzar, or Tislit u Aman, the Bride of the Water. Laoust noted that in some places tislit n unzar is also the word for the rainbow.

Then she was walked. A girl carried her around the encampment, stopping at every tent while the women threw water over both of them and chanted, “Anzar! Let the pools fill! Let the ewes drink!” In one Rif village she was dressed in a bridal gown, taken to a fountain and doused, circled three times round each of the two mosques, then stripped of her finery and planted upright in a dung heap to wait until the rain wet her. At Tasemsit the old woman rode a donkey with the bride in her arms while a second woman followed, holding the donkey’s tail with one hand and Anzar with the other. The women called out, “Taghonja, who has married you?” and answered themselves, “The water of Anzar has married you.” They circled the saint’s chapel three times, went down to the river, and pushed the old woman, donkey and all, into the water. Then they sat on the bank and waited for the donkey to urinate. When it did they cheered, because that was the rain on its way. Before they went home they made the old woman cry, since the heavens would weep only if she did.

Laoust read the whole procession as a wedding. The bride, he argued, was never a rain goddess. She was the earth in spring, sterile until the sky married her, and the old widows who led the rites were chosen because their own barrenness matched the barrenness of the fields. Anzar was the husband she was being escorted to. Wherever he appeared in person, as at Tasemsit, he was dressed in black like a cloud.

There is also a story about how it began, and it is less polite. The scholar Henri Genevois collected it among the At Ziki of the upper Sebaou valley in Kabylie and published it in 1976, together with a description of the rite as it was said to have been performed in the eighteenth century, in the days when the At Qasi and the At Jennad were fighting the Turks. Anzar, king of the rain, wanted to marry a girl of marvellous beauty who bathed naked in a river. She refused him, afraid of what people would say. So he turned the ring on his finger, and the river dried up on the spot. The girl ran along the empty bed calling his name at the top of her voice. He came back, took her, and the water ran again and the land turned green. The story ends by explaining itself: that is why, in a drought, Anzar must be honoured without delay, and why the girl chosen for the day must offer herself naked.

In the rite that follows, a village matron dressed the chosen girl and put a ladle in her hand. She sang the length of the procession, asking Anzar by name to come, while every household gave food and threw water, aiming at her. At the village shrine the women cooked a meal from what had been collected. Then the matron undressed the girl, who wrapped herself in one of the rope nets used to carry sheaves and fodder and walked round the sanctuary pleading with the master of the rain, naming every man, beast and plant that was waiting for water just as she was. The other women sang to Anzar in the name of the exhausted earth. Around the naked bride the young girls played a ball game with hooked sticks until the ball dropped into a prepared hole, where it was buried like a seed. The rain, the account insists, always came within a few days.

Anzar’s power in all of this is simple and total. He holds the water, he withholds it when he is refused, and one turn of a ring is enough to empty a river. His weakness is the same thing seen from the other side. He wants. Every procession, every wet doll and naked plea is built on the certainty that the rain can be tempted, and that a king who can be tempted can be brought home.

How old he is remains an open question. Gabriel Camps, writing in the *Encyclopédie berbère* in 1989, thought the bride offering probably very ancient, and set it beside the naked summer-solstice bathing that Saint Augustine condemned in the fifth century. Chaker, in the same volume, was more careful: the frozen chants and the archaic Kabyle form of the word have led people to suspect an old rain god, and the idea cannot be ruled out, but the ancient Berber pantheon is too poorly known to say so with confidence. What is certain is the chant itself, still recorded in Kabylie in the twentieth century: “Anzar, Anzar, O God, water it to the root.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Anzar in Berber mythology?

Anzar is the personified rain of the Berber (Amazigh) peoples of North Africa. The word anzar is the common Berber term for rain, and in drought rites it names a male rain power, called king of the rain in a Kabyle legend, who is offered a bride so that he will bring water.

What is Tislit n Anzar, the Bride of Anzar?

Tislit n Anzar is a doll bride made in times of drought, usually from a cooking ladle, two crossed spoons or a winnowing shovel dressed in women’s clothes and jewellery. Women carried her through the village, soaked her with water and called on Anzar to come and marry her. The same doll is often called Taghonja, after the Berber word for the ladle.

What is the legend of Anzar and the girl in the river?

In a Kabyle legend collected by Henri Genevois among the At Ziki, Anzar wanted to marry a beautiful girl who bathed naked in a river, and she refused him. Anzar turned the ring on his finger and the river dried up at once. When she called out to him, he returned and married her, and the river flowed again.

What does Anzar look like?

No account gives Anzar a body or a face. When he appears in a rain procession, as among the Infedouaq of the High Atlas, he is a wooden pestle wrapped in black rags, black because a rain-heavy sky is black.

Was Anzar an ancient Berber god?

It is uncertain. Gabriel Camps considered the Anzar bride rites probably very ancient, but the linguist Salem Chaker noted that the ancient Berber pantheon is too poorly known to say for sure that Anzar was an old god rather than rain personified in ritual.

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