Huur
Somali · deity · Somali traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Huur, also spelt Xuur, is the death-messenger of pre-Islamic Somali tradition. Pictured as a huge bird comparable to a falcon or stork, he embodied the swift and unavoidable arrival of death: he announced deaths and escorted the souls of both the righteous and the wicked to the afterlife, functioning as a psychopomp within the cosmic order of the sky-god Waaq. Commentators have compared his avian form to the falcon-god Horus of ancient Egypt, a reflection of the wider Northeast-African milieu in which Cushitic religion developed.
Domains
- death
- psychopomp soul guiding
Powers
- to announce the coming of death
- to carry away the souls of the dead
Relations
- subordinate to: WaaqHuur the death-bird operated as an agent of death within the supreme order of the sky-god Waaq.Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, Culture and Customs of Somalia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 65-67. (secondary)
Sources
- Huur (Xuur) is the death-messenger of pre-Islamic Somali religion, taking the form of a great bird that announces death and bears away the souls of the dead.: Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, Culture and Customs of Somalia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 65-67. (secondary); I. M. Lewis, Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho (London: International African Institute, 1955), pp. 138-141. (secondary)