Sharing is Caring: Syncretism and Assimilation

 By: Adler Schultz

A Temple to Awilix in Modern Day, the Interior Contains a Figure of St. James

In the mountainous forests of Northwestern Guatemala, near the Mexican border, there lies a temple that was once dedicated to the Mayan moon goddess, Awilix, in the Municipality of Momostenango. Today, it enjoys a different significance, a bridge between the pagan Mayan past and the Christian present of the region. The moon goddess is long gone, replaced by a pair of women who are revered by rival groups as the lover of the local patron saint, Saint James. 

Cultural pride is something that seems almost integral to the condition of the human species. Wars have been waged and civilizations have emerged and disappeared because like-minded people have banded together to challenge those of differing views, skin color, and religious beliefs. To abandon the past of your people can be associated with surrendering that identity, letting it slip away. American culture is meant to be a melting pot, but more often than not, the cultures never truly melt, they stick around and bob in the stew. Syncretism is the natural byproduct of this cultural pride. When confronted with something either imposed or willingly accepted, very few things clash as harshly as meetings between religious beliefs. As a core doctrine of Christianity, there is only one God, and you cannot hold multiple gods. So, faced with this dilemma, two main ways are made available to maintain your culture: reframe your gods as fictional, mythical characters or turn your gods into a part of the overtaking religion through Syncretism. Given the level of tangibility that Mayan deities like Awilix carried in their respective civilizations through their connection with the natural world, it would be extremely difficult to relegate them to mythical status. This results in the insertion of pre-Christian deities into local Christian tradition as important figures.

Assimilation is a little different than syncretism but is motivated by a lot of the same factors. The Medieval Muslim assimilation of Alexander the Great into their literature is a great example. Medieval Muslim writers drew a figure into the reams of their cultural history, allowing them to preserve their cultural identity while also celebrating an important political figure. The Qissat al-Iskandar (dated to the 8th or 9th Century) and Sīrat al-Iskandar (dated to the13th Century) pose two opposing examples of the reworking of Alexander into their cultures, with the Qissat utilizing assimilation and the Sīrat leaning towards syncretism. Starting with the Qissat, many traditional Alexandrian tales, more contemporary to his lifetime, remain intact. Through the Qissat, the author places emphasis on Alexander’s rulership of Persia and central Asia, therefore tying him to the Muslim people of the area. They also insert Islamic plot points to explain certain events in Alexander’s life, using angels and the providence of God to guide the plot forward. In doing so, the Muslims were able to make Alexander a part of their inheritance and culture by attributing his successes to Allah and setting a claim to their geographical kinship. In perhaps a stark contrast, in the Sīrat, Alexander is completely transformed. He is explicitly born as a Persian prince, gets possessed by Iblīs – the devil in Islam – and is later sent on a mission by Allah to convert the entire world to monotheism. Akin to the example set by Awilix, this takes an existing figure and completely restructures its identity and story to fit properly with a different religious system. Alexander was many things, but a Persian-born crusader for monotheism was not one of them. As a matter of fact, he was a Macedonian king who allowed himself to be worshipped as a Hammon, an Egyptian god and supported an entirely polytheistic worldview to fit his imperialism. Save for his name, this “Alexander” is admittedly not exactly the man he was in world history, but it does not appear that accuracy was ever a real concern. Through these ‘inaccurate’ retellings and restructurings, entertainment, morals, and a whole swath of good were able to be drawn through using a well-known figure as a base.

At the end of the day, we cannot precisely know why each culture specifically syncretizes and assimilates who or what, especially when strictly monotheistic cultures and religions are involved.  However, I have a hypothesis - as seen with the Islamic Alexandrian Romances often the goal of assimilation and syncretism is not to claim the person or individual themselves but to capture the spirit of that individual in a frame that is best understood by the people, through the lens of their culture, allowing them to better appreciate, adopt, and understand the history and religions of the world without casting off their identities.

Sources:

Constructing Maya Communities: Ethnography for Archaeology (1996) Fox and Cook

Zuwiyya, David (2012). "'Umāra's Qiṣṣa al-Iskandar as a Model of the Arabic Alexander Romance"

Doufikar-Aerts, Faustina (2003). "Sīrat al-Iskandar: An Arabic Popular Romance of Alexander"