Peri
Uyghur · numen · Uyghur traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The peri is the fairy-spirit of the Uyghur world, an Iranian being long naturalised in Turkic folk and shamanic belief. Beautiful and volatile, peris move unseen among people; they may fall in love with a mortal and carry them off to their own weddings and feasts, and contact with them brings both inspiration and madness. In Uyghur healing the peri is the familiar of the peri-caller, the perixan, who in drum-driven trance summons benign white peris to name and expel the spirits behind sickness, miscarriage and possession, setting them against the childbirth-demon albasti and the malevolent jinn. Sources distinguish helping white peris from dangerous black ones.
Domains
- fairy spirit
- shamanic familiar
Powers
- serves the perixan as summoned familiar
- seduces and carries off human beings
Epithets
- aq peri — the white (benign) periBellér-Hann, Community Matters in Xinjiang (2008) (secondary)
Relations
- enemy: AlbastiSet by the perixan against the albasti and other malign spirits that afflict mothers and the sick.Bellér-Hann, Community Matters in Xinjiang (2008) (secondary)
Sources
- The peri is a fairy-spirit of Uyghur folk and shamanic belief, both a healer's familiar summoned by the perixan and a dangerous seducer and abductor of mortals.: Bellér-Hann, Community Matters in Xinjiang 1880-1949 (Brill, 2008) (secondary); Rahilä Dawut, 'Shrine Pilgrimage among the Uyghurs', The Silk Road 6, no. 1 (2008) (secondary)