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Shetani


Shetani (the word is both singular and plural in English, the plural in Swahili is mashetani) are spirits of East African mythology and popular belief. Mostly malevolent, and found in many different forms and different types with different powers, shetani are a popular subject of carved artwork, especially by the Makonde people of Tanzania, Mozambique, and kenya. Physically, shetani of various types appear as distorted human and animal figures.

There is a contemporary East African shetani cult, and reports of sightings of individual shetani are cyclical, with Popo Bawa panics having occurred in 1995 in Zanzibar and 2007 in Dar es Salaam.

The influential Makonde artist George Lilanga (1934–2005) gained world renown with his shetani sculptures and paintings. Samaki Likankoa,master carver in Tanzania was the foremost originator of the shetani style in early 1950s. Mohamed Peera, an Indian art curator was a major patron and influence to many makonde carvers such as Samaki, and played a decisive role in the abstract shetani makonde movement from the early 1950s to 1970s.

A Swahili word used in various East African nations to refer to mostly malevolent native pre-Islamic spirits, shetani (pl. mashetani), is a borrowing from the Arabic, Shaitan, meaning devil, or, more specifically, adversary. The word is cognate with the English word Satan which comes ultimately from the same Semitic root.

There are many types of shetani, with various attributes, and they take on many forms; abstract, animal, anthropomorphic and combinations thereof. Whether one-legged or one-armed, cyclopic or with exaggerated orifices and appendages, the essential nature of the shetani is a distorted, asymmetrical human figure, a common world archetype, A typical carving, done in ebony or African blackwood, might have "one eye, a toothless, open mouth and a body which was bent over backwards with its head facing the wrong way."


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