Women on Folk Medicine: Judaeo-Arabic Texts from Sefrou

Abstract

THE ART OF FOLK MEDICINE based primarily upon the use of simples is still normally relied upon by the majority of common people in Morocco, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, for everyday ills as well as for more serious afflictions, including those of a psychosomatic nature. Most of the basic herbal ingredients used in popular remedies have been standard in traditional Arabic medicine since the Middle Ages and ultimately derive from Hellenistic pharmacology.' However, in addition to elements borrowed from traditional medical practice, Moroccan folk medicine combines supernatural elements from popular superstition such as counteracting the effects of the evil eye and propitiating spirits.2 texts on folk medicine presented here were recorded by the present writer during the summer of 1972 as part of a broad ethnolinguistic study of the Jewish community of Sefrou, Morocco.3 Sefrou (Ar. Sufrt) is an important town in the Middle Atlas foothills, 30 kilometers south of Fez, along one of the principal north-south caravan routes of former times. Sefrou lies in a zone of transition between the Arabicspeaking plain and the Tamazight Berber-speaking hill country. Until the mass exodus of Moroccan Jewry in the early I950s to France and Israel, there was a significant community of 6000 Jews who comprised from one third to two fifths of the town's total population. At the time of the Six-Day War of June 1967, there was still a Jewish community of approximately 600 souls living there. At the time this research was conducted the number of Jews had dwindled to just under 200 out of a total population of some 30,000.4 After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, 90% of this small vestigial remnant departed-either for Moroccan cities with larger Jewish communities, or out of the country altogether. two dozen Jews who remained in Sefrou in 1980, including one rabbi, are mostly the very old or the very poor who see themselves as having no other place to go. For all intents and purposes, the community is moribund. ' standard work on Arabic medicine is still Lucien Leclerc, Histoire de la melecine arabe (Paris, 1876; repr. New York, 1960), 2 vols. A brief, but up-to-date survey is Manfred Ullmann, Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh, 1978). Many works of medieval and later Arabic pharmacology have been edited and translated. For a traditional Moroccan pharmacopia, see Tuhfat al-Ahbdb: Glossaire de la matiere medicale marocaine, ed. and trans. H. P. J. Renaud and G. S. Colin (Paris, 1934). Of great cognate value is M. le Docteur Fourment and M. le Docteur Roques, Repertoire des plantes medicinales et aromatiques d'Algerie (Algiers, 1942), where many of the popular names of medicinal and aromatic herbs are the same as in Morocco. For the practice of traditional medicine in Morocco, see D. Moran, Considerations sur la me'decine indigene actuelle au Maroc (Paris, 1920); also M. le Docteur Bulit, Notes sur la therapeutique indigene dans le Sud-marocain, Hespe'ris 2 (1922), pp. 322-336. 2 classic work on Moroccan popular religion and folk practices is E. A. Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco (London, 1926; repr. New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1968), 2 vols. 3 study was carried out under a grant from the American Philosophical Society. I wish to take this opportunity to thank the Society for its support. 4 For a description of the Sefriwi Jewish community at that time, see N. A. Stillman, The Sefrou Remnant, Jewish Social Studies 35 (1975), pp. 255-263. For a detailed historical survey, see David Ovadia, Qehillat Sefrti (Jerusalem, 1974-1975), 3 vols.