Saraka

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[also satka, sarake] A term that comes from the Arabic word for 'sacrifice' found in a number of languages in Sierra Leone. Its use is wider than the term 'sacrifice' in English, referring not only to rituals in which something is killed or offered up, but to a wide range of ritual transactions in which spiritual power is invoked in the presence of some material object to avert some evil or to bring about some good. By extension the term is also applied to the material object itself as the witness or guarantor of the transaction.

  • N.W.Thomas, Anthropological Report on Sierra Leone (London 1916), 52-60.