Aïcha Qandisha is the most feared and most invoked jinniyya of the Moroccan supernatural world. She manifests as an irresistibly beautiful woman, often betrayed by the hooves of a camel or goat, and lingers at rivers, springs, wells, drains and other liminal wet places where she seizes solitary men. A man who succumbs may be struck with impotence, paralysis, muteness or madness, and can be healed only by acknowledging her and entering the ecstatic cult of the Hamadsha, who dance her trance and slash their scalps in her honour. Sources differ on her origin: some scholars read the name Qandisha through the Semitic root for 'holy' and see in her a survival of an ancient goddess of sacred sexuality, while a persistent colonial legend makes her a countess of the sixteenth-century wars. She is worshipped and dreaded under a cluster of names, and is closely bound to the shrine of Sidi Ahmed Dghughi in the Zerhoun.