Shetani
Encyclopedia
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
, and Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
. Physically, shetani of various types appear as distorted human and animal figures.
There is a contemporary East African shetani cult, and reports of sightings of individual shetani are cyclical, with Popo Bawa
Popo Bawa
Popobawa, also Popo Bawa, is the name of an evil spirit, or shetani, which is believed by residents to have first appeared on the Tanzanian island of Pemba...
panics having occurred in 1995 in Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
and 2007 in Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam , formerly Mzizima, is the largest city in Tanzania. It is also the country's richest city and a regionally important economic centre. Dar es Salaam is actually an administrative province within Tanzania, and consists of three local government areas or administrative districts: ...
.
The influential Makonde artist George Lilanga
George Lilanga
George Lilanga was a Tanzanian artist. He was of the Makonde tribe and lived in Dar es Salaam. His work was exhibited in international expositions of African contemporaries including Africa Remix in Düsseldorf, Paris, London and Tokyo...
(1934–2005) gained world renown with his shetani sculptures and paintings.
Etymology
A Swahili word used in various East AfricaEast Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
n nations to refer to mostly malevolent native pre-Islamic spirits, shetani (pl. mashetani), is a borrowing from the Arabic, Shaitan, meaning devil, or, more specifically, adversary. The word is cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
with the English word Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
which comes ultimately from the same Semitic
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
root.
Nature and types
There are many types of shetani, with various attributes, and they take on many forms; abstract, animal, anthropomorphic and combinations thereof. Whether one-legged or one-armed, cyclopicCyclops
A cyclops , in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead...
or with exaggerated orifices and appendages, the essential nature of the shetani is a distorted, asymmetrical human figure, a common world archetype, A typical carving, done in ebony
Ebony
Ebony is a dense black wood, most commonly yielded by several species in the genus Diospyros, but ebony may also refer to other heavy, black woods from unrelated species. Ebony is dense enough to sink in water. Its fine texture, and very smooth finish when polished, make it valuable as an...
or African blackwood
African Blackwood
Dalbergia melanoxylon is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to seasonally dry regions of Africa from Senegal east to Eritrea and south to the Transvaal in South Africa....
, might have "one eye, a toothless, open mouth and a body which was bent over backwards with its head facing the wrong way."
There are various classes of shetani. Examples include the dangerous ukunduka, which feed through sexual intercourse, and the chameleon shetani, a carnivore with exaggerated habits of the lizard, or the harmless medicinal shuluwele which gathers herbs for sorcerers.
Some spirits, like the "exceptionally evil" Popo Bawa
Popo Bawa
Popobawa, also Popo Bawa, is the name of an evil spirit, or shetani, which is believed by residents to have first appeared on the Tanzanian island of Pemba...
('bat-wing'), associated with "dirt and violent sodomy
Sodomy
Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
" and the smell of burnt sulphur, are individuals with horrifying living reputations. According to the BBC in 2001, "Many Zanzibaris are now refusing to sleep in their houses as they believe it only preys on people in the comfort of their own beds. . . . [P]eople believe that it sodomises its victims, most of whom are men."
Shetani cult
Belief in shetani is a contemporary continuation of pre-Islamic belief. In addition to the Makonde who carry on a tradition of sculpture, other peoples, such as the SegejuSegeju
The Segeju are an ethnic and linguistic group based on the northeast coast of Tanzania, between Tanga and the Kenyan border. The people are historically related to the Dhaiso. In 2003 the Segeju population was estimated to number fewer than 15,000, with fewer than 7,000 speaking the Segeju...
of Tanzania, who recognize eight or ten tribes of spirits, with each individual having its own name and personality, carry on belief in shetani possession and exorcism.
According to the Zanzibar Bradt Travel Guide, "There is no real way, say the locals, of protecting yourself from the possibility of being haunted or attacked by a shetani. The best thing is simply to keep out of their way and try to make sure they keep out of yours – for example by hanging a piece of paper, inscribed with special Arabic verses, from the ceiling of the house. Almost every home or shop in Zanzibar has one of these brown, mottled scraps, attached to a roof beam by a piece of cotton."
Art and popular culture
The depiction of shetani continues in the flourishing Makonde sculpture trade, varying from "airport art" knockoffs to fine art found in such venues as the Hamburg Mawingu Collection.George Lilanga
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam , formerly Mzizima, is the largest city in Tanzania. It is also the country's richest city and a regionally important economic centre. Dar es Salaam is actually an administrative province within Tanzania, and consists of three local government areas or administrative districts: ...
. His work was exhibited in international expositions of African contemporaries including Africa Remix in Düsseldorf, Paris, London and Tokyo.
In the 1970s, Lilanga participated in a collective exhibition of African artists in Washington D.C. Of the 280 works presented, about 100 were by Lilanga. It was on this occasion that he was compared with Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...
. Lilanga was considered to have had an influence on the young American graffiti artists; Keith Haring
Keith Haring
Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...
said in an interview that he had been influenced by Lilanga's art. Lilanga began a long series of exhibitions. His works had increasing success in Africa, Europe, the US, India and Japan. In the 1980s, he dedicated himself almost exclusively to painting. His shetani were represented two-dimensionally on Masonite
Masonite
Masonite is a type of hardboard invented by William H. Mason.-History:Masonite was invented in 1924 in Laurel, Mississippi, by William H. Mason. Mass production started in 1929. In the 1930s and 1940s Masonite was used for many applications including doors, roofing, walls, desktops, and canoes...
and, later, on Faesite.
The Hamburg Mawingu Collection posthumously published a systematically and thematically complete collection of Lilanga's work, and his work forms the backbone of their collection.
Into the Out Of
In Alan Dean FosterAlan Dean Foster
Alan Dean Foster is an American author of fantasy and science fiction. He currently resides in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, and is also known for his novelizations of film scripts...
's 1986 horror/fantasy novel, Into the Out Of, elders of the Maasai people become aware that from the south of them in the Ruaha wilderness
Ruaha National Park
Ruaha National Park is the largest national park in Tanzania. It covers an area of about 22,000 km². It is located in the middle of Tanzania about 130 km from Iringa...
of Tanzania a global crisis is approaching. Malevolent shetani, which originate from a dimensional portal the Maasai known as the “Out Of” (because all things, such as humans, animals and plants, originally came "out of" it), are finding their way into this world. In addition to general sabotage, the shetani are fomenting trouble between the superpowers, intent on inciting war. If not prevented, the barriers between the two dimensions will be permanently breached and uncountable hordes of shetani will overrun the world, enslaving the few humans they do not exterminate.