Customary rituals accompany various stages of the agricultural cycle – they are performed before water is first drawn from the well at the beginning of the dry season, when a man returns to the village from his first journey to the rock-salt deposits in the desert, and at various other occasions to which I have already alluded. These situations are not subject to any ritual elaboration in Islam. They are not mentioned in the Koran and there are no records in ḥadīth that they were ever celebrated in a particular way by the original Muslim community whose actions should be emulated by contemporary believers. The life-crises situations are different. There are numerous references in ḥadīth to the rituals which should accompany the birth of a child and both the Koran and ḥadīth are explicit about the way in which marriage should be concluded and the death of a person dealt with. In consequence, the Berti see births, marriages and funerals as religious events at which appropriate Islamic rituals must be performed. Like other Muslims, they also consider circumcision to be an important religious duty although there is no mention of it in the Koran and ḥadīth mentions it as a pre-Islamic custom. Because the customary rituals co-exist easily with the dominant religious ideology, specific customary rituals also accompany these major life crises and very often seem to be subject to greater elaboration and appear to have greater importance than the religious rituals themselves.