Ido, called Iru in the Chadian Beri dialect and honoured by the epithet Ido Beggira, 'the High God', is the supreme deity of pre-Islamic Zaghawa religion. He is conceived as a single transcendent creator and master of the universe, so remote and invisible that he cannot be addressed directly; worshippers reach him through a chain of intermediary spirits lodged in sacred mountains (manda), rocks (gurbo manda) and trees (betti manda), to which milk libations, unctions of butter and offerings of millet are made. Ido was said to dwell in natural features, above all the cave of Ido Ha, 'the mountain of Ido'. He rules both this world and boi be, the world of the dead, to which human spirits depart and where malevolent spirits gather. Sacrifice among the Beri, latterly continued under the Islamic name karama, was directed ultimately to him, chiefly to obtain rain, the fertility of people and livestock, and healing; clan chiefs were installed by slaughtering a pregnant camel on their sacred mountain. With the community's conversion to Maliki Sunni Islam, thought to have taken hold by the seventeenth century, Ido was identified with Allah while retaining his older character.