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.