UNE HISTOIRE SANS FIN : SUR L’ALKARISI ET LES MÉTAMORPHOSES DES DÉMONS EN TERRES TURQUES
A never-ending story: about Alkarisi and the metamorphosis of demons in Turkish lands.

Summary/Abstract: The demon best known in Turkey under the names of alkarısı and albastı has long been considered a personification of puerperal fever and is generally associated with childbirth and its dangers. It is said to attack pregnant women, women in labour and newborn babies, but also has a reputation of occasionally harassing other humans, especially men, by sitting at night on their chests and inducing them asphyxia, nightmares and a large variety of disorders; in this last form it is equally believed to attack young girls. Some other legends pretend that the demon amuses itself by riding the horses of the locals in the hours of darkness and plaiting their manes and tails. When attacking women in labour or women after childbirth, it steals their liver and takes it across a running water (stream, river), sometimes a lake, or soaks it in it; if it succeeds in it sactions, the woman dies, her rescue becoming impossible. Although the majority of Turkish scholars consider that this evil spirit, which is also known in Armenia and other Caucasian countries, in Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, is of Turkish origin, we maintain and try to demonstrate that it is nothing but a late version of an ancient Mesopotamian demon (or family of demons), which survived by virtue of the Jewish successive reinterpretations of Babylonian demonology. In other words, the Turkish alkarısı is a local adaptation of the primeval Lilith, which became notorious especially in the Middle Ages.

• Details
• Contents