Zuhra

Zuhra is the maiden of the moon in Lak folklore, the heroine of the Daghestani version of a legend told across the Caucasus and the Turkic world. An orphan girl, driven out at night by a cruel stepmother to fetch water, weeps under the full moon and begs to be taken from her misery; the Moon takes pity and draws her up with her shoulder-yoke and pails still on her, and there she remains, her figure and her buckets seen in the shadows of the lunar disc. Her name, of Arabic origin and elsewhere borne by the planet Venus, marks the tale's passage through Islamic naming, but its substance is the older etiology of the moon's markings, told among the Laks alongside the rival account of the sun's blow.

Domains

• moon markings

Powers

• carries the water-pails on the moon

Relations

• companion: BarzTaken up to the Moon, she dwells on his face with her pails.Гамзатов Г.Г., Далгат У.Б. Традиционный фольклор народов Дагестана. М.: Наука, 1991. (secondary)

Sources

• The Lak tale of Zuhra, the mistreated orphan drawn up to the moon with her pails, is the local form of the pan-Caucasian moon-maiden legend explaining the lunar markings.: Гамзатов Г.Г., Далгат У.Б. Традиционный фольклор народов Дагестана. М.: Наука, 1991. (secondary); Сборник материалов для описания местностей и племён Кавказа (СМОМПК). Тифлис, 1881–1915. (primary)