The masquerades which flourished during the pre-colonial era [Before 1912] in Morocco are some of the truly interesting carnivalistic phenomena, among which is the jester, as it combines the merry spectacle with the sharp socio-political concerns. The masquerades have been taking place on two specific occasions : the Ashoura and the Eid Elkbir. It is indeed a phenomenon that bears much kinship to the embryonic phases that preceded the birth of the Greek tragedy as defined in the well known Aristotelian terms.
In this article we will throw some light on the Bilmawen phenomen. This carnival emerges as a popular rite which takes place after the the slaughter of the Sacrificed Sheep in the morning of the Eid. Bilmawen has until very recently been one of the regularly celebrated annual festivals in cities like Fez, Marrakech, Tangier, and Agadir. Apparently the consecutive changes which our society has been subjected to gradually pushed this tradition aside so that nobody, except in the region of Agadir where it is still deeply rooted, really remembers what it was all about.
