Who are the Yazidis and what do they believe and practice?
The Yazidis are an ethno-religious people group, indigenous to the Kurdish regions of Northern Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Their exact population isn't exactly known, but there are between 200,000 and 1 million Yazidis worldwide. The largest populations are in the Shaikhan region, Northeast of Mosul, and the Sinjar region, West of Mosul. There are also a large population in Syria, Armenia, and especially now in Germany as more and more Yazidis live in diaspora from their homeland.
They hit mainstream news in 2014 when the terrorist organization, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) seized the regions in Northwest Iraq and proceeded to commit genocide against the Yazidis, killing and enslaving thousands of them.
Yazidism is primarily an oral religion. This means that they passed down their sacred history and teachings by word of mouth over the course of centuries. They don't have a central text like the Bible or the Quran that records official versions of their myths.
There is no creed or statement of orthodox belief in Yazidism like how Christianity has the Nicene Creed, so you'll notice throughout this article (video), you'll read things like "Some Yazidis believe this...", "Others believe that..." This is because there is a lot of variation within Yazidism.
There is a greater emphasis on religious practice and identity rather than belief.
This article is organized around the 3B framework of Religious Identity. That religions are comprised of Beliefs, Behaviours, and a sense of Belonging to a greater community.
Beliefs
Yazidism is a monotheistic religion, they believe in one God, who is sometimes called 'Xwede' (read as Hua De), the Kurdish word for God.
But God and Yazidism is a fairly transcendent God. He doesn't interface with humans directly but rather, through seven angels also called 'the seven mysteries' or 'seven emanations'. It's being called "emanations" because according to some versions of creation myth, God created the seven angels from his own light as if lighting seven candles from one.
Chief among these angels is Melek Tawus, The Peacock Angel, who is often literally depicted as a peacock. Melek Tawus is considered to be a manifestation of God, but he acts as a separate agent from God. God put Melek Tawus in charge of the world as its custodian. And Melek Tawus acts as an intermediary between humans and God.
In some of the foundational myths of Yazidism, Melek Tawus is the key actor in the origins of humanity itself. Yazidis believe that they are descended from the first man, Adam, and Melek Tawus was with Adam in paradise at the beginning of humanity.
The Adam from the version from the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, he eats the forbidden fruit and is expelled from the Graden of Eden. Genesis portrays this as a catastrophe brought on by an evil snake, but the story is very different in Yazidi mythology. Wherein God puts Adam in paradise but Melek Tawus convinces Adam to leave it. Some versions say that God forbade Adam from eating grain but the Peacock Angel was concerned that Adam would never grow and flourish without this food. So he successfully convinces Adam to eat it.
Rather than a catastrophe that dooms humanity, this is deemed as God's divine will. Melek Tawus plays a central role in Yazidism and Yazidi prayers are sometimes addressed both to God and Melek Tawus.
However, over the course of history, outsiders confused him with the evil character Satan. For centuries, outsiders such as neighbouring Muslim communities and European travelers accused Yazidis of being Devil worshipers.
However, this is completely a false representation. Yazidi mythology has no all-encompassing evil being comparable to Satan in Christianity or Iblis in Islam.
Nevertheless, Muslim empires throughout history use this stereotype to justify violence against Yazidis. It's such a sore spot in their history that the scholar, Dr. Christine Robbins (Professor of Kurdish Studies), one of the leading scholars of Yazidism reports that the name Satan is so offensive that some Yazidis forbid even pronouncing it.
These terrible stereotypes continued well into the 1990s.
Yazidis also believe in reincarnation. The human soul passes to another body after death and you can secure a more or less favorable rebirth based on how you live. According to some scholars, it appears that many Yazidis also believe in heaven and hell. Apparently this is more common among Yazidis living outside of their homeland like in Armenia.
Some believe that Melek Tawus created heaven and hell, others say no longer exists because Melek Tawus extinguished its fires.
Different beliefs about the afterlife apparently co-existed throughout Yazidi history.
Many Yazidis also believe that holy beings can assume the likeness of humans. For example, Jesus and the ****** Mary are considered to be holy beings as well as one of the most important individuals in their history, the Sufi mystic, Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir.
Yazidi community stems from the community that Sheikh Adi founded in the town of Lalish (also Lalesh) in Northern Iraq around the 12th century CE.
Sufis are Muslims who practice a more mystical path of devotion to God. Sufism isn't exactly a separate sect of Islam but could refer to a variety of organizations that emphasize devotional piety and direct experience of God.
Sheikh Adi studied in Baghdad under a Sufi master but moved to Lalish where he gathered a big following that eventually became known as the 'Adawiyya' Sufi Brotherhood. As far as we can tell, both Sheikh Adi and the Adawiyya Sufis were Muslims for all intents and purposes, they didn't consider themselves a separate religion of any sort, but it seems that the local members of Sheikh Adi's community continued living out their traditional beliefs and practices while rejecting mainstream Islamic teaching.
After Sheikh Adi died, the neighbouring Muslim communities increasingly classified Adi's community as a heretical group and persecuted them. Which culminated in 1415CE when a Muslim army attacked the community and destroyed Sheikh Adi's sanctuary in Lalish.
It's not entirely accurate to call Yazidism an offshoot of Islam growing out of this community. Most of the modern scholars that were consulted for this article (video) acknowledge that much of Yazidism predates Sheikh Adi's lifetime. The local indigenous beliefs of Northern Iran never disappeared and Sheikh Adi's community must have incorporated them.
Dr. Philip Kreyenbroek (professor of Iranian Studies), describes Yazidism as 'comprised of ancient pre-Islamic elements informed by the worldview of medieval Sufism...' specifically, Sheikh Adi and his community.
Many Yazidis today Consider Sheikh Adi more of a reformer and not so much as the founder of their religion, but he remains as an important figure nevertheless. Yazidi hymns call him a divine being or even a manifestation of Melek Tawus. The problem is Yazidi history before Sheikh Adi is pretty hazy. The scholar Eszter Spat, argued that we see hints of Gnosticism in Yazidi mythology, specifically the idea of emanations.
The Seven Angels that God creates are described as emanations of God's light which is how some gnostic texts from late antiquity (The Gospel of Truth 2nd C. Valentinian Gnostic Text) describe holy beingsproceeding from a transcendent godhead. Another parallel with Gnostic theology is the idea that the human soul has a divine origin or a spark of divinity. For example, some Yazidi versions of the creation of Adam say that 'God molded Adam's body' which was then 'Animated by an angel entering into him'.
So you can probably see by now that Yazidism incorporates a lot of elements from other big relgion from the region, stories like the garden of Eden from the Hebrew Bible, important figures from the New Testament, as well as the ideas and terminology from Sufism.
Dr. Philip Kriembrok also argues that Yazidism reflects influence from Iranian religions, such as Zoroastrianism. Although Yazidism is not a dualistic religion like Zoroastrianism, both have a Heptad of seven divine beings in the cosmology, in Yazidism, it's Melek Tawus with six other angels, in Zroroastrianism, it's six holy beings called the Amesha Spentas that emanated from the creator God Ahura Mazda. Thus many scholars have classified Yazidism as a syncretic religion, one scholar even called it a religion of extreme syncretism.
Syncrotism generally means that blending or merging of different religious ideas, practices or beliefs. But why call Yazidism a religion of extreme syncretism but not call Christianity a religion of extreme syncretism when in borrowed the entire Hebrew Bible and water rituals like baptism from Jewish Mikveh. This framing tacitly obscures that all religions involve some level of creative active engagement with their surrounding cultures. In the words of Dr. David Frankfurter (a Scholar of Early Christianity), "sycntretism is a creative, synthetic process by which any idea, symbol or idiom is appropriated and embraced in a culture". It's fine to categorize Yazidism as a syncretic religion as long as we understood that syncretism as an active process, rather than a passive one. Yazidism is not sitting there like a sponge, absorbing influence from surrounding religious systems It is a result of indigenous rural peoples of the Kurdish regions actively integrating some aspects of neighbouring religions and rejecting others.
Behaviors or Religious Practice
Yazidism is sometimes described as a way of life that emphasizes 'right practice instead of right belief'. Some of these include a variety of taboos or prohibitions, things you're not supposed to do in order to maintain purity. For example, Yazidis are not supposed to marry outside of the religion, and accepting converts into the religion is also forbidden. Some taboos may reflect local religious practices from their neighboring Muslim communities, so like Muslims, some Yazidis abstain from eating pork. Though others claim Yazidism does not specifically mandate this, it was only done to protect themeselves from persecution throughout Yazidi history.
Prayers are said facing the sun, sometimes at sunrise and sunset, but daily prayers are not mandatory. Oral performance of sacred hymns is also a big part of Yazidi religious practice. Yazidism is an oral religion, the Yazidis transmitted much of their sacred history and teachings through sacred hymns. Traditioally, a class of Yazidis called the 'Qewwals' memorized and performed these hymns accompanied traditionally with the flute and tambourine. Some rituals can't even be performed without Qewwals being present. One scholar says that the Qewwals are almost like the living memory of the Yazidi community, preserving the cultures for generations by passing the hymns from father to son.
As an oral religion, there are a bunch of different variations of these hymns which is why there are different versions of even the big foundational myths like the creation of Adam. Nevertheless, despite this long history of morality and performance, Yazidism is becoming an increasingly scriptual religion. Dr. Christine Robbins reports that since the 1970s, Yazidis have started to write down and publish collections of their hymns. This is not only resulted in standardized versions of their stories, but also had led efforts within the religion to form a canon of sacred texts. This ofcourse is a reminder that all religions change over time and also demonstrates how difficult it is to standardize religious beliefs and writing without writing.
Their holiest site, the valley of Lalesh is also important for religious practice, not only is it the location of Sheikh Adi's tomb, but Yazidis also believe it is the birthplace of Adam and where the holy beings descended to Earth. The whole region is filled with shrines to holy beings and ancestral tombs where Yazidis can visit and pray.
Lalesh is also the epicenter of one of their most important festivals, the Feast of the Assembly. It's held over the course of seven days in October, during which they perform hymns and dances and preocessions. Yazidis are highly encouraged to visit Lalesh for this festival, in fact, some scholars say it used to be mandatory to make a pilgrimage there, almost like the Hajj for Muslims.
However the political situation of the area has made it increasingly difficult for Yazidis outside of Iraq to visit Lalesh for the Feast of the Assembly. In the absence of Yazidi populations, in Georgia and Armenia Yazidis have built their own shrones as centers for prayer and devotion. These shriens are modeled after what is seen in Lalesh with the conical architectural elements.
Another important ritual is the Parade of the Peacock. This is a religious procession during which Qewwals carry a sacred image representing Melek Tawus, called a 'Sanjak' or Peacock Standard from village to village. The Peacok Standards are bronze objects that kind of looks like a candle stick with a peacock on top. Traditionally, there were seven standards, each assigned to a different Yazidi region, generally the peacock standards are only displayed during important times like the Feast of the Assembly, during which Yazidis visit and venerate the object. Though Yazidis are quick to emphasize that they are not worshipping it as an idol, but paying it respect as a symbol of Melek Tawus.
Belonging
What does it mean to belong to the Yazidi community and identify as Yazidi?
Yazidis are often called an ethno-religious people group because the religion and ethnicity go hand in hand. It is forbidden to convert into the religion, and it's forbidden to marry outsiders, so one is born into it.
Kurdish identity also comes up again and again in scholarship on Yazidis, after all Yazidis speak a Northern kurdish dialect called 'Kurmanji' and their holiest city and largest populations are located in the heart of the kurdish regions of Northern Iraq.
The scholar Christine Rommins report that when she interviewed Yazidis during the 1990s, almost every Yazidis she met said that they were the original Kurds and some kurdish nationalists claim that Yazidism is the original kurdish religion. However, many Yazidis reject the identity of Kurdish and insist that Yazidi constitutes its own ethnicity. For example, the Yazidis in Armenia successfully lobbied the government to recognize Yazidis as their own minority, which is now reflected on official documents such as passports.
One Yazidi had a great point when he said that if an American speaks English, that doesn't make him English. Just because he speaks Kurdish, doesn't make him Kurdish.
There's no doubt that Kurdish language and Kurdish regions are very important to Yazidis, but Kurdish identity is contested among Yazidis, some claiming it for themselves, and others rejecting it.
Even the name Yazidi (also Yezidi) is contested, it may derive from the Persian word for Divine Being (also Caliph Yazid ibn Mu'awiya) but whatever it means, lots of Yazidis actually don't like the name and prefer to call themselves with the Kurdish term 'Ezidi'.
Yazidi identity is also tied to castes. Yazidi society is divided into three hereditary castes, the Sheiks, Pirs and Murids. Terminologies which are borrowed from Sufi brotherhoods. The first two are religious castes perform all manner of religious functions for their communities with the Shieks being the highest castes. The Murids encompasses everybody else, the lay people. There are no rules around general social mixing castes, you're allowed to eat together, hang out together, but marriage between castes is strictly forbidden. You must marry someone from your own group.
Another part of Yazidi identity is unfortunately a long history of being a persecuted minority. There's almost a communal trauma around this historical fact. The Ottoman Empire targeted them in the 1800s with forced with forced conversions. The Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein persecuted them in the 1970s, displacing them from their homes and destroying their shrines. Al-Qaeda murdered hundreds since 2007 and then in 2014, they faced heinous massacres, *** slavery and dislocation at the hands of the terrorist group, the Islamic State (ISIS). Thousands of Yazidis were murdered and many now live in refugee camps and many are afraid to return to their homelands around Lalesh. Some scholars estimate that the majority of Yazidis now live in diaspora.
All of this should remind us that religions are not all about belief. While religions like Christianity place a great deal of emphasis on correct belief, Yazidism emphasizes on Behavior and Beonging, Yazidis practices and identity matter the most.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source Materials:
Eszter Spät, “The Song of the Commoner: The Gnostic Call in Yezidi Oral Tradition.” In In Search of Truth: Augustine, Manichaeism and Other Gnosticism. Ed. J. A. van den Berg and J. van Schaik, 663-683. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Victoria Arakelova, "Book Review of God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect,” in Iran and the Caucasus 11 (2007).
Richard Foltz, “The ‘Original’ Kurdish Religion? Kurdish Nationalism and the False Conflation of the Yezidi and Zoroastrian Traditions,” Journal of Persianate Studies, 10 (2017), 87-106.
Peter Nicolaus, “The Serpent Symbolism in the Yezidi Religious Tradition and the Snake in Yerevan,” Iran and the Caucasus 15 (2011), 49-72.
Sebastian Maisel, “Yezidis in Syria: Identity Building among a Double Minority."
Philip Kreyenbroek, "Yezidism Its Background Observances and Textual Tradition."
________________________________________________________________
This is a partial transcription of a video titled, Yazidi Religion Explained by the channel ReligionForBreakfast, uploaded on the YøùTùbé platform dated September 11,2020.
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The Yazidis are an ethno-religious people group, indigenous to the Kurdish regions of Northern Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Their exact population isn't exactly known, but there are between 200,000 and 1 million Yazidis worldwide. The largest populations are in the Shaikhan region, Northeast of Mosul, and the Sinjar region, West of Mosul. There are also a large population in Syria, Armenia, and especially now in Germany as more and more Yazidis live in diaspora from their homeland.
They hit mainstream news in 2014 when the terrorist organization, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) seized the regions in Northwest Iraq and proceeded to commit genocide against the Yazidis, killing and enslaving thousands of them.
Yazidism is primarily an oral religion. This means that they passed down their sacred history and teachings by word of mouth over the course of centuries. They don't have a central text like the Bible or the Quran that records official versions of their myths.
There is no creed or statement of orthodox belief in Yazidism like how Christianity has the Nicene Creed, so you'll notice throughout this article (video), you'll read things like "Some Yazidis believe this...", "Others believe that..." This is because there is a lot of variation within Yazidism.
There is a greater emphasis on religious practice and identity rather than belief.
This article is organized around the 3B framework of Religious Identity. That religions are comprised of Beliefs, Behaviours, and a sense of Belonging to a greater community.
Beliefs
Yazidism is a monotheistic religion, they believe in one God, who is sometimes called 'Xwede' (read as Hua De), the Kurdish word for God.
But God and Yazidism is a fairly transcendent God. He doesn't interface with humans directly but rather, through seven angels also called 'the seven mysteries' or 'seven emanations'. It's being called "emanations" because according to some versions of creation myth, God created the seven angels from his own light as if lighting seven candles from one.
Chief among these angels is Melek Tawus, The Peacock Angel, who is often literally depicted as a peacock. Melek Tawus is considered to be a manifestation of God, but he acts as a separate agent from God. God put Melek Tawus in charge of the world as its custodian. And Melek Tawus acts as an intermediary between humans and God.
In some of the foundational myths of Yazidism, Melek Tawus is the key actor in the origins of humanity itself. Yazidis believe that they are descended from the first man, Adam, and Melek Tawus was with Adam in paradise at the beginning of humanity.
The Adam from the version from the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, he eats the forbidden fruit and is expelled from the Graden of Eden. Genesis portrays this as a catastrophe brought on by an evil snake, but the story is very different in Yazidi mythology. Wherein God puts Adam in paradise but Melek Tawus convinces Adam to leave it. Some versions say that God forbade Adam from eating grain but the Peacock Angel was concerned that Adam would never grow and flourish without this food. So he successfully convinces Adam to eat it.
Rather than a catastrophe that dooms humanity, this is deemed as God's divine will. Melek Tawus plays a central role in Yazidism and Yazidi prayers are sometimes addressed both to God and Melek Tawus.
However, over the course of history, outsiders confused him with the evil character Satan. For centuries, outsiders such as neighbouring Muslim communities and European travelers accused Yazidis of being Devil worshipers.
However, this is completely a false representation. Yazidi mythology has no all-encompassing evil being comparable to Satan in Christianity or Iblis in Islam.
Nevertheless, Muslim empires throughout history use this stereotype to justify violence against Yazidis. It's such a sore spot in their history that the scholar, Dr. Christine Robbins (Professor of Kurdish Studies), one of the leading scholars of Yazidism reports that the name Satan is so offensive that some Yazidis forbid even pronouncing it.
These terrible stereotypes continued well into the 1990s.
Yazidis also believe in reincarnation. The human soul passes to another body after death and you can secure a more or less favorable rebirth based on how you live. According to some scholars, it appears that many Yazidis also believe in heaven and hell. Apparently this is more common among Yazidis living outside of their homeland like in Armenia.
Some believe that Melek Tawus created heaven and hell, others say no longer exists because Melek Tawus extinguished its fires.
Different beliefs about the afterlife apparently co-existed throughout Yazidi history.
Many Yazidis also believe that holy beings can assume the likeness of humans. For example, Jesus and the ****** Mary are considered to be holy beings as well as one of the most important individuals in their history, the Sufi mystic, Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir.
Yazidi community stems from the community that Sheikh Adi founded in the town of Lalish (also Lalesh) in Northern Iraq around the 12th century CE.
Sufis are Muslims who practice a more mystical path of devotion to God. Sufism isn't exactly a separate sect of Islam but could refer to a variety of organizations that emphasize devotional piety and direct experience of God.
Sheikh Adi studied in Baghdad under a Sufi master but moved to Lalish where he gathered a big following that eventually became known as the 'Adawiyya' Sufi Brotherhood. As far as we can tell, both Sheikh Adi and the Adawiyya Sufis were Muslims for all intents and purposes, they didn't consider themselves a separate religion of any sort, but it seems that the local members of Sheikh Adi's community continued living out their traditional beliefs and practices while rejecting mainstream Islamic teaching.
After Sheikh Adi died, the neighbouring Muslim communities increasingly classified Adi's community as a heretical group and persecuted them. Which culminated in 1415CE when a Muslim army attacked the community and destroyed Sheikh Adi's sanctuary in Lalish.
It's not entirely accurate to call Yazidism an offshoot of Islam growing out of this community. Most of the modern scholars that were consulted for this article (video) acknowledge that much of Yazidism predates Sheikh Adi's lifetime. The local indigenous beliefs of Northern Iran never disappeared and Sheikh Adi's community must have incorporated them.
Dr. Philip Kreyenbroek (professor of Iranian Studies), describes Yazidism as 'comprised of ancient pre-Islamic elements informed by the worldview of medieval Sufism...' specifically, Sheikh Adi and his community.
Many Yazidis today Consider Sheikh Adi more of a reformer and not so much as the founder of their religion, but he remains as an important figure nevertheless. Yazidi hymns call him a divine being or even a manifestation of Melek Tawus. The problem is Yazidi history before Sheikh Adi is pretty hazy. The scholar Eszter Spat, argued that we see hints of Gnosticism in Yazidi mythology, specifically the idea of emanations.
The Seven Angels that God creates are described as emanations of God's light which is how some gnostic texts from late antiquity (The Gospel of Truth 2nd C. Valentinian Gnostic Text) describe holy beingsproceeding from a transcendent godhead. Another parallel with Gnostic theology is the idea that the human soul has a divine origin or a spark of divinity. For example, some Yazidi versions of the creation of Adam say that 'God molded Adam's body' which was then 'Animated by an angel entering into him'.
So you can probably see by now that Yazidism incorporates a lot of elements from other big relgion from the region, stories like the garden of Eden from the Hebrew Bible, important figures from the New Testament, as well as the ideas and terminology from Sufism.
Dr. Philip Kriembrok also argues that Yazidism reflects influence from Iranian religions, such as Zoroastrianism. Although Yazidism is not a dualistic religion like Zoroastrianism, both have a Heptad of seven divine beings in the cosmology, in Yazidism, it's Melek Tawus with six other angels, in Zroroastrianism, it's six holy beings called the Amesha Spentas that emanated from the creator God Ahura Mazda. Thus many scholars have classified Yazidism as a syncretic religion, one scholar even called it a religion of extreme syncretism.
Syncrotism generally means that blending or merging of different religious ideas, practices or beliefs. But why call Yazidism a religion of extreme syncretism but not call Christianity a religion of extreme syncretism when in borrowed the entire Hebrew Bible and water rituals like baptism from Jewish Mikveh. This framing tacitly obscures that all religions involve some level of creative active engagement with their surrounding cultures. In the words of Dr. David Frankfurter (a Scholar of Early Christianity), "sycntretism is a creative, synthetic process by which any idea, symbol or idiom is appropriated and embraced in a culture". It's fine to categorize Yazidism as a syncretic religion as long as we understood that syncretism as an active process, rather than a passive one. Yazidism is not sitting there like a sponge, absorbing influence from surrounding religious systems It is a result of indigenous rural peoples of the Kurdish regions actively integrating some aspects of neighbouring religions and rejecting others.
Behaviors or Religious Practice
Yazidism is sometimes described as a way of life that emphasizes 'right practice instead of right belief'. Some of these include a variety of taboos or prohibitions, things you're not supposed to do in order to maintain purity. For example, Yazidis are not supposed to marry outside of the religion, and accepting converts into the religion is also forbidden. Some taboos may reflect local religious practices from their neighboring Muslim communities, so like Muslims, some Yazidis abstain from eating pork. Though others claim Yazidism does not specifically mandate this, it was only done to protect themeselves from persecution throughout Yazidi history.
Prayers are said facing the sun, sometimes at sunrise and sunset, but daily prayers are not mandatory. Oral performance of sacred hymns is also a big part of Yazidi religious practice. Yazidism is an oral religion, the Yazidis transmitted much of their sacred history and teachings through sacred hymns. Traditioally, a class of Yazidis called the 'Qewwals' memorized and performed these hymns accompanied traditionally with the flute and tambourine. Some rituals can't even be performed without Qewwals being present. One scholar says that the Qewwals are almost like the living memory of the Yazidi community, preserving the cultures for generations by passing the hymns from father to son.
As an oral religion, there are a bunch of different variations of these hymns which is why there are different versions of even the big foundational myths like the creation of Adam. Nevertheless, despite this long history of morality and performance, Yazidism is becoming an increasingly scriptual religion. Dr. Christine Robbins reports that since the 1970s, Yazidis have started to write down and publish collections of their hymns. This is not only resulted in standardized versions of their stories, but also had led efforts within the religion to form a canon of sacred texts. This ofcourse is a reminder that all religions change over time and also demonstrates how difficult it is to standardize religious beliefs and writing without writing.
Their holiest site, the valley of Lalesh is also important for religious practice, not only is it the location of Sheikh Adi's tomb, but Yazidis also believe it is the birthplace of Adam and where the holy beings descended to Earth. The whole region is filled with shrines to holy beings and ancestral tombs where Yazidis can visit and pray.
Lalesh is also the epicenter of one of their most important festivals, the Feast of the Assembly. It's held over the course of seven days in October, during which they perform hymns and dances and preocessions. Yazidis are highly encouraged to visit Lalesh for this festival, in fact, some scholars say it used to be mandatory to make a pilgrimage there, almost like the Hajj for Muslims.
However the political situation of the area has made it increasingly difficult for Yazidis outside of Iraq to visit Lalesh for the Feast of the Assembly. In the absence of Yazidi populations, in Georgia and Armenia Yazidis have built their own shrones as centers for prayer and devotion. These shriens are modeled after what is seen in Lalesh with the conical architectural elements.
Another important ritual is the Parade of the Peacock. This is a religious procession during which Qewwals carry a sacred image representing Melek Tawus, called a 'Sanjak' or Peacock Standard from village to village. The Peacok Standards are bronze objects that kind of looks like a candle stick with a peacock on top. Traditionally, there were seven standards, each assigned to a different Yazidi region, generally the peacock standards are only displayed during important times like the Feast of the Assembly, during which Yazidis visit and venerate the object. Though Yazidis are quick to emphasize that they are not worshipping it as an idol, but paying it respect as a symbol of Melek Tawus.
Belonging
What does it mean to belong to the Yazidi community and identify as Yazidi?
Yazidis are often called an ethno-religious people group because the religion and ethnicity go hand in hand. It is forbidden to convert into the religion, and it's forbidden to marry outsiders, so one is born into it.
Kurdish identity also comes up again and again in scholarship on Yazidis, after all Yazidis speak a Northern kurdish dialect called 'Kurmanji' and their holiest city and largest populations are located in the heart of the kurdish regions of Northern Iraq.
The scholar Christine Rommins report that when she interviewed Yazidis during the 1990s, almost every Yazidis she met said that they were the original Kurds and some kurdish nationalists claim that Yazidism is the original kurdish religion. However, many Yazidis reject the identity of Kurdish and insist that Yazidi constitutes its own ethnicity. For example, the Yazidis in Armenia successfully lobbied the government to recognize Yazidis as their own minority, which is now reflected on official documents such as passports.
One Yazidi had a great point when he said that if an American speaks English, that doesn't make him English. Just because he speaks Kurdish, doesn't make him Kurdish.
There's no doubt that Kurdish language and Kurdish regions are very important to Yazidis, but Kurdish identity is contested among Yazidis, some claiming it for themselves, and others rejecting it.
Even the name Yazidi (also Yezidi) is contested, it may derive from the Persian word for Divine Being (also Caliph Yazid ibn Mu'awiya) but whatever it means, lots of Yazidis actually don't like the name and prefer to call themselves with the Kurdish term 'Ezidi'.
Yazidi identity is also tied to castes. Yazidi society is divided into three hereditary castes, the Sheiks, Pirs and Murids. Terminologies which are borrowed from Sufi brotherhoods. The first two are religious castes perform all manner of religious functions for their communities with the Shieks being the highest castes. The Murids encompasses everybody else, the lay people. There are no rules around general social mixing castes, you're allowed to eat together, hang out together, but marriage between castes is strictly forbidden. You must marry someone from your own group.
Another part of Yazidi identity is unfortunately a long history of being a persecuted minority. There's almost a communal trauma around this historical fact. The Ottoman Empire targeted them in the 1800s with forced with forced conversions. The Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein persecuted them in the 1970s, displacing them from their homes and destroying their shrines. Al-Qaeda murdered hundreds since 2007 and then in 2014, they faced heinous massacres, *** slavery and dislocation at the hands of the terrorist group, the Islamic State (ISIS). Thousands of Yazidis were murdered and many now live in refugee camps and many are afraid to return to their homelands around Lalesh. Some scholars estimate that the majority of Yazidis now live in diaspora.
All of this should remind us that religions are not all about belief. While religions like Christianity place a great deal of emphasis on correct belief, Yazidism emphasizes on Behavior and Beonging, Yazidis practices and identity matter the most.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source Materials:
Eszter Spät, “The Song of the Commoner: The Gnostic Call in Yezidi Oral Tradition.” In In Search of Truth: Augustine, Manichaeism and Other Gnosticism. Ed. J. A. van den Berg and J. van Schaik, 663-683. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Victoria Arakelova, "Book Review of God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect,” in Iran and the Caucasus 11 (2007).
Richard Foltz, “The ‘Original’ Kurdish Religion? Kurdish Nationalism and the False Conflation of the Yezidi and Zoroastrian Traditions,” Journal of Persianate Studies, 10 (2017), 87-106.
Peter Nicolaus, “The Serpent Symbolism in the Yezidi Religious Tradition and the Snake in Yerevan,” Iran and the Caucasus 15 (2011), 49-72.
Sebastian Maisel, “Yezidis in Syria: Identity Building among a Double Minority."
Philip Kreyenbroek, "Yezidism Its Background Observances and Textual Tradition."
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This is a partial transcription of a video titled, Yazidi Religion Explained by the channel ReligionForBreakfast, uploaded on the YøùTùbé platform dated September 11,2020.
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