Virtual book discussion of 'Zar' with its author Hager El Hadidi

Virtual book discussion of the newly released in paperback, 'Zar: Spirit Possession, Music, and Healing Rituals In Egypt' with author, Hager El Hadidi (AUC Press, 2023), moderated by Suzan Kenawy, AUC Press Marketing Manager (Egypt/Europe).
Zar is both a possessing spirit and a set of reconciliation rites between the spirits and their human hosts: living in a parallel yet invisible world, the capricious spirits manifest their anger by causing ailments for their hosts, which require ritual reconciliation, a private sacrificial rite practiced routinely by the afflicted devotees. Originally spread from Ethiopia to the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf through the nineteenth-century slave trade, in Egypt zar has incorporated elements from popular Islamic Sufi practices, including devotion to Christian and Muslim saints.
To read more about "Zar: Spirit Possession, Music, and Healing Rituals In Egypt" www.amazon.com...

[@JoanaSaahirah]

Fascinating talk. Where/how can I contact the author, Hager El Hadidi? (I´m reading the book and, soon, I´ll recommend it to my students)

[@idrisa7909]

In the Sudanese Tumbura groups, I've read they integrated Sufism amd saint/prophet veneration by crediting Bilal as having invented the musical treatment of zar, and by identifying the zar spirit (which they see as a singular being with different presentations) with Al-Jilani. In the zar-bori of Sudan, they think there are different spirits, but may identify a saint's zar counterpart as possessing people.
What role, given the fact that Egyptian zar communities connect themselves with saints, do you think saints metaphysically play?