Snake Specialists in Iraq

Abstract

Folk specialists in snake-lore may exercise their interests in several directions. They may seek out, detect, handle, and remove snakes; they may manipulate them for entertainment; they may possess, claim, or confer impunity in the handling of snakes and immunity to their venoms, and they may possess or claim special powers in the treatment of snake poisoning; finally they may train apprentices to these various ends. Such specialists (professional snake-charmers apart) are often persons endowed with supernatural power in other spheres of activity. They may be seyyids (descendants of the Prophet), fakirs, holy men, practitioners of folk-medicine, dervishes, sorcerers, or persons possessed of holiness or baraka for any reason. Common terms used of such people in Iraq are sheikh and seyyid. Such specialists fall naturally into several groups. There are the frankly insane, the victims of dissociation and the subconscious; there are the ignorant simpletons who have so far been lucky, and to this category belong the conscientious but deluded religionists; there are the informed and quick-witted rogues who know their species and take care to handle the harmless snakes only, and lastly there are the genuine charmers, who have specialist knowledge and skill, who know their natural history and who handle poisonous species, over which they have obtained safe control either by the taming of familiarity and gentle handling or by extracting periodically their fangs, or venom, or both. The last group may also immunize themselves to specific venoms by inoculation. In Iraq the writer did not encounter or hear of any of this last type.