Hosay

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Hosay or Tadjah is a West Indian commemoration, in which multi-colored model mausoleums are paraded, then ritually offered up to the sea, or any body of water. Some contemporary writers equate the multi-colored mausoleums with "mosques." In British Guiana, now Guyana, the festival was called Taziya or creolized into Tadjah in reference to these floats, the most visible and decorative element of this festival. In nineteenth-century Trinidad newspapers as well as government reports called Hosay the "Coolie Carnival." The Hosay celebration is a Caribbean manifestation of the Shia Muslim Remembrance of Muharram in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. The name Hosay comes from "Husayn" who was assassinated by Yazid in Karbala. This marytrdom is commemorated in the festival. In Trinidad and Tobago it is primarily celebrated in Saint James, in northwestern Trinidad and in Cedros in southwestern Trinidad. Recently it has been revived elsewhere