Albasti (also Al, Almasty) is a named female demon of the Tajiks and the wider Turco-Iranian world of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the malignant power of the childbed. Envisioned as a hideous, long-haired, pendulous-breasted hag, sometimes yellow-faced or able to take the shape of an animal, she attacks women during and just after labour, seeking to tear out the liver or lungs of mother and infant and to drag the sufferer toward water. Defences against her fill the ethnographic record: iron laid at the bedside, the vigil of armed men, amulets, and the recitation of charms. Shamans and midwives were believed able to master her by snatching a strand of her hair or a needle hidden in her, after which she would serve her captor. Basilov and other Soviet ethnographers treat her as one of the most tenacious pre-Islamic demons in the region's living folk belief.