Ракьул эбел, the Mother of the Earth, is one of a quartet of personified feminine powers preserved in Avar oral tradition alongside the Mothers of water, wind and disease. Scholars read the four as differentiations of a single primordial mother-creator whose unity fractured into distinct elemental patronesses. As Mother of the Earth she embodies the fertile highland soil and the yield of field and pasture, the maternal ground answering to the sky-father's rain and thunder. Her image, like those of her sisters, largely faded under Islam yet left clear traces in blessing-formulae and agrarian belief.