Bečed is the supreme deity of the Avars proper, a sky lord and thunderer to whom people turned at the outset of any venture, seeking protection, aid and prosperity. His name doubles as the ordinary Avar word for God and is usually connected with bečed, 'rich, bountiful'. Beyond storm and thunder he presided over agrarian fertility: in harvest songs and dances a woman lifted a wooden grain-measure and appealed to Bečed for plenty, while herders begged him to stop hail and heavy rain over the fields. In the Avar heartland Bečed displaced an older supreme figure, Ts'ob, whose name lingered only in the idiom for divine mercy. With Islamization his image merged into the Muslim conception of Allah while retaining archaic weather-lord traits.