THE HAMADSHA A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry Vincent CrapanzanoTHE HAMADSHA A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry By Vincent Crapanzano The Hamadsha, members of a Moroccan religious brotherhood that traces its spirit- ual ancestry back to two Muslim saints of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, have achieved a certain notoriety for their head-slashing and other acts of self-mutilation while in entranced states. Appealing largely to the illiterate Arab masses, the Hamadsha brotherhood has been regarded by scholars as a degenerate offshoot of the Islamic mystical tradition. Its beliefs and practices have been viewed as an unstructured amalgam of beliefs and practices of the ancient Mediterranean and of sub-Saharan Africa with others of Islam. Mr. Crapanzano sees Hamadsha beliefs and practices as forming a structured sym- bolic set interpretive of their experiential world. Unlike many other North African religious brotherhoods, the Hamadsha are concerned less with mystical union with Allah than with curing the demon-struck and the demon-possessed. Saints, demons, and a mana-like quality called baraka, “char- tered" by hagiographic legends and inte- grated with the socio-economic organization of the brotherhood, explain reactions that the Western observer would often classify as hysterical, depressive, ot even schizo- phrenic. Saints, demons, and baraka pro- vide, however, more than an explanation of these reactions; they are the very “lan- guage” through which the reactions them- selves are immediately formulated and the cure effected. The cure itself—the dancing of the patient through a deep trance in which he becomes possessed and may even mutilate himself —serves to incorporate him into a cult, the Hamadsha brotherhood, which provides him not only with opportu- nities to discharge those tensions presum- ably responsible for his illness but also with a reinforced symbolic interpretation of his existence. VINCENT CRAPANZANO is a member of the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University.THE HAMADSHA