Buka Barane is a rain-related doll procession documented among Kurdish communities and Kurmanji-speaking Yezidis in Armenia. Local accounts describe children, household gifts and water, with different purposes and endings.

A bright rainbow and a fainter second arc beneath grey clouds above green fields and eroded hills at Banimaran near Koya
Rainbow at Banimaran near Koya, photographed by Banimarani on 31 March 2016. This illustrates the rainbow associated with the expression bûka baranê; it does not depict a ritual procession. © Banimarani · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0.

The doll and the neighbourhood

In Mahroo Rashidirostami’s study of Kurdish performance traditions, young girls gather around a wooden doll dressed in a woman’s clothing and sing for rain during drought. Some versions take the figure from house to house, where residents pour water over it. The action draws performers and households into a shared event: the doll is carried, a song is voiced and someone answers at a doorway. Rashidirostami places these customs within a theatre history that includes communal performance beyond purpose-built stages. [1]

What the songs ask for

The short songs reproduced in that study ask for water for crops and appeal to God on behalf of poor people. Such words connect rainfall to food and livelihood. They also help explain why the procession matters socially: a concern experienced by separate households becomes something publicly sung together. The printed examples are particular recorded forms; they should not be presented as a fixed script used by every community. [1]

A documented Armenian Yezidi version

Emma Petrosyan and Roman Hovsepyan’s 2023 article compares Petrosyan’s 1963 observations with Hovsepyan’s later fieldwork in Armenian Yezidi villages. Their reconstructed procession begins with older women organising girls and making a clothed figure from a broom or sticks. Households pour water and give flour, butter, eggs, sweets or money. Endings vary: a shared meal, distribution of food, immersion or burial of the doll, or leaving it on a mountain. This account records alternatives within a tradition, rather than a single ceremony with obligatory colours and a universal conclusion. [2]

Calling rain—and asking it to stop

Hovsepyan’s 2017 study explicitly describes both rain-inducing and rain-stopping functions. It compares the Yezidi ceremony with Armenian Nouri, identifying similarities in objects, participants and aims alongside differences connected with religion, economy and ways of life. A rain bride therefore cannot always be explained simply as a response to drought. The same broad ritual vocabulary could address excessive rain as well. These neighbouring traditions also make an exclusively isolated history implausible: comparison belongs alongside attention to local language and identity. [3]

How far can origins be traced?

Petrosyan and Hovsepyan interpret the bride through Mother-Earth imagery and comparison with a thunder-bearing divine figure. That is a scholarly reconstruction of mythological meaning. It does not supply a dated founding event, demonstrate direct descent from a named ancient goddess, or establish uninterrupted practice across all Kurdish regions. The recorded songs and remembered actions remain valuable without a precisely known prehistoric origin. [2]

The rainbow in modern cultural memory

Bûka baranê also names the rainbow in Kurdish usage. Dilek Gökçin’s 2013 documentary uses the expression for a story beginning with a 1989 school photograph in Befircan/Karlı, near Yüksekova in Hakkari. A rainbow appears in the picture. Twenty-three years later, İrfan returns for Aysun’s wedding, bringing former classmates’ lives into view. The festival synopsis provides a concrete modern use of the expression; the film should not be mistaken for ethnographic footage of the doll ritual. The accompanying landscape photograph likewise illustrates a rainbow, with its location, date and creator identified. [4] [5]

Sources and further reading

  1. Mahroo Rashidirostami, “Performance Traditions of Kurdistan: Towards a More Comprehensive Theatre History,” Iranian Studies (2018), rain-ritual discussion, PDF pp. 9–10; DOI 10.1080/00210862.2017.1401861.
  2. Emma Petrosyan and Roman Hovsepyan, “Yezidi Rain-Making and Rain-Stopping Rituals in Armenia,” Etnografia 2(20) (2023), pp. 139–162, especially 144, 147–148; original fieldwork and interpretation.
  3. Roman Hovsepyan, “The ceremony of buka barane … and other rainfall inducing ceremonies of the Yezidis of Armenia,” Etchmiadzin 74(1) (2017), pp. 114–146; English summary p. 146.
  4. Documentarist 2013 festival catalogue, p. 101: Dilek Gökçin, Bûka Baranê, production credits and synopsis.
  5. Banimarani, rainbow at Banimaran near Koya, 31 March 2016; Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.