Kosa

Kosa, the 'thin-beard', is the central masked figure of the Kosa-kosa folk play staged in the run-up to Novruz across Azerbaijan. Clad in a sheepskin coat turned inside out and strung with bells, wearing a false beard and comic mask, he leads a troupe from house to house with his foil Keçəl, singing 'Kosa gəldi' and gathering gifts of food. The heart of the performance is his mock death and revival, a dramatisation of the dying of winter and the return of warmth and fertility to the land. Folklorists read the figure as a seasonal spirit of the year's turning, a vegetation-and-winter personification preserved within the springtime ritual.

Domains

• seasonal renewal

Powers

• feigns death and revives with the spring

Relations

• companion: KeçəlKosa and Keçəl form the paired leads of the Novruz spring play.Bəhlul Abdulla & Tahir Orucov, Novruz bayramı ensiklopediyası, Baku, 2008 (secondary)

Sources

• Kosa is the masked seasonal figure of the Azerbaijani Kosa-kosa Novruz play, an inside-out-furred, belled comic who dies and revives to enact the end of winter and the rebirth of spring.: Bəhlul Abdulla & Tahir Orucov, Novruz bayramı ensiklopediyası, Şərq-Qərb, Baku, 2008 (secondary); Celal Beydili, Türk Mitolojisi Ansiklopedik Sözlük, Ankara, 2005, s.v. 'Kosa' (secondary)