The Yazidis: The Most Misunderstood Ancient Faith

At a Glance

Yazidism is the ancient faith of the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi people, who call themselves Êzîdî. At its centre stand one Creator and his chief angel, Tawûsê Melek.
The heart of the faith is the valley of Lalish: a sacred valley in the Sheikhan district north of Mosul. The visitor enters it barefoot.
The Yazidis were smeared as "devil worshippers." It is a slander; there is no such being as the devil in their own theology.
Sacred knowledge was carried for centuries not in writing but in memory. Hymns called qewl are the backbone of that tradition.
The community is organized in a closed order: şêx, pîr, and mirîd. At its head stands the mîr; in the spiritual seat, the Babê Şêx.
Their New Year is Çarşema Sor: a Wednesday that falls in mid-April. Lamps are lit, eggs are painted, graves are visited.
Folk memory counts 72 fermans against the community. The number is not an archive record; it is the ordering of pain in memory.
On 3 August 2014, ISIS attacked Sinjar. A United Nations commission, in its 2016 report, named it, in its own words, genocide.
Most Yazidis speak Kurmancî. Some count themselves Kurds; some define themselves as a distinct people. Both stands are held here with respect.
The Yazidi communities of the Caucasus carried this culture's voice to the world for years, on the Kurdish broadcasts of Radio Yerevan.

Evening comes down on Lalish. The valley is narrow; conical spires rise between the olive and mulberry trees. The visitors took off their shoes long ago: you enter this valley barefoot. No one steps on a threshold; they bend and kiss it. A woman fits a wick into a hollow in the stone wall and lights it. Along the valley, dozens of flames tremble.

This valley is the heart of one of the world's most misrecognized faiths. Much was said about it, little of it heard. This article tries to listen. Who are the Yazidis, what do they believe, and why did they suffer so much?

Who Are the Yazidis?

The Yazidis are an ancient faith community whose mother tongue is mostly Kurmancî. Kurmancî is the most widespread branch of Kurdish. Their homeland is historically the Sheikhan district north of Mosul and the country around the Sinjar mountain. You will find Sinjar on the map at the Iraq-Syria border; its Kurdish name is Şengal.

The community's branches scatter from here across a wide geography: the north of Syria, the southeast of Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, and in the last half century Europe, Germany above all. Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady writes that the Yazidis make up less than five percent of the Kurdish population. How many are they? There is no reliable count. Estimates for Iraq run between 200,000 and one million; the researcher Irene Dulz lays out that range source by source.

Where does the name come from? Dr. Izady ties it to the word yezad in the old Iranic languages (the family that holds Kurdish and Persian, not the modern state of Iran): it means angel. By this reading Êzîdî means "the one bound to the angels." The name itself is the faith in miniature. So how did a faith of angels come to be spoken of by its exact opposite, an accusation of the devil?

Who Is Tawûsê Melek, and Where Did the Slander Come From?

The core of Yazidi theology, in short, is this. There is one Creator. He has left the running of the world to seven angels. The chief of the angels is Tawûsê Melek, the Peacock Angel. The peacock is his emblem; the bronze bird figures at Lalish are sacred for that reason. In the Yazidi faith Tawûsê Melek is not a fallen angel. He is the chief angel to whom the Creator entrusted the world.

So where was the accusation born? In the mirror of the neighbouring faiths. Muslim and Christian neighbours fixed onto Tawûsê Melek the story of the proud, cast-out angel from their own books. Yet in Yazidi theology there is no absolute source of evil; evil lies in the human choice. Most sources record a further detail: the Yazidis do not take that word onto their lips. The name of the being they are accused of worshipping is forbidden in their tongue.

One more error was built on the name. The name Êzîdî was tied to the Umayyad caliph Yazid; the community was sometimes written as "Yezidi." Dr. Izady writes that this link is groundless, that the name comes from the root yezad, meaning angel. He records one thing more: the governments of Iraq and Syria pushed this caliph connection on purpose; the aim was to cut the Yazidis off from the Kurds and pull them toward an Arab identity. Here the document shows the politics of the slander as well.

The label cost dearly. The "devil worshipper" stamp worked, for centuries, like a licence that cleared attacks in the conscience. To correct this slander is not courtesy but a duty of history.

Lalish, Sheikh Adi, and the Scripture Held in Memory

The valley of Lalish is the geographic heart of the faith. The greatest shrine there belongs to Sheikh Adi. Who was Sheikh Adi? Most sources meet in this life story: Adi bin Misafir was born in the second half of the eleventh century in the Bekaa valley, in today's Lebanon. He took Sufi training around Baghdad. Then he settled at Lalish, in the foothills of the Hakkari mountains, and a large circle of disciples formed around him. He died around 1162; the historical sources give it with small differences.

In the Yazidi faith Sheikh Adi is more than the founder of an order; he holds a sacred station. Every year in October the community gathers at Lalish. This seven-day great meeting is called the Cemaiyye, held, in Dr. Izady's record, from 6 to 13 October, and for the believer the visit is essential.

But where is this faith's book? Here is the key to understanding Yazidism. Sacred knowledge was carried for centuries not on paper but in memory. The backbone of this body is the qewl: the sacred hymns. The qewl are sung by reciters called qewwal, who carry the def and the şibab, the frame drum and the reed flute, and these instruments are held sacred. Beside the hymns, sermons and sacred stories are passed on by mouth as well. Two written texts, called the Cilwe and the Mishefa Reş, are also in circulation; scholarship debates when and by whose hand they came. What is not debated is this: the real sacred body is the word, passed generation to generation by memory, the fruit of the same soil that grew the dengbêj, the Kurdish bards.

Şêx, Pîr, Mirîd: How Is the Community Organized?

Yazidi society is made of three main groups closed to marriage from outside: şêx, pîr, and mirîd. The şêx and pîr families carry the religious service; the mirîd are the wide body of the community. Everyone is bound to a şêx line and a pîr line; the bond comes with birth and lasts a lifetime. Marriage stays within the group. These rules carried the faith for centuries without its scattering; the same rules today raise hard questions for the young in the diaspora.

At the top of the order stand two seats. The mîr is the community's leader in both the worldly and the religious sense, in the researchers' phrase "the highest leader of all Yazidi society." The office of mîr comes from the family called the Mala Mîra. In the spiritual seat sits the Babê Şêx; in the great decisions his word is decisive. There is also the institution of the kirîv: a bond that ties families to one another like a brotherhood. The kirîv tie has at times been a bridge between Yazidis and their Muslim neighbours too.

This order may put a familiar question in your mind: caste, or community? Researchers call it "a closed, caste-like order." For the Yazidis it is the armour that guards the faith. The reason for the armour will be seen shortly: faiths that live under siege build their doors thick.

Çarşema Sor: A New Year Inside April

The Yazidi year begins with spring, but not with Newroz. Their New Year is Çarşema Sor, Red Wednesday. By the old calendar it falls on the first Wednesday of April; in today's calendar this is the Wednesday in mid-April. The field researcher Eszter Spät records the day this way.

What is done on the day? On the eve, lamps are lit at Lalish; the valley fills with light. Early in the morning the women go to the graveyards. Festival food is set on the graves, laments are sung, and then, there beside the dead, the food is eaten. Eggs are painted. The Yazidis of the Caucasus bake a special New Year loaf: the kloça Serê Salê. The way joy and mourning stand thus inside one another is the signature of the Yazidi calendar.

There is a silent year in this festival's recent history too. In the spring of 2015, after the Sinjar catastrophe, the community decided not to keep the New Year. In Spät's field notes stands the sentence of an old woman of the mîr family: there will be no New Year this spring. No festival until the captives return. A people's calendar bowed thus in respect to its pain.

The Fermans and the Number 72 in Folk Memory

Ferman, in the dictionary, means a ruler's decree. In the Yazidi tongue the word carries another weight: a campaign of extermination aimed at the community. Martin van Bruinessen sets it down: the Yazidis tell their history as a string of fermans, and folk memory counts 72, in some tellings 73.

But is 72 a real count? Let us be honest here. The number is not an archive tally; no one holds a list of 72 documented campaigns one by one. The number is the ordering of folk memory: a way of making pain countable, of not forgetting. What the documents do say for certain is this: through the Ottoman centuries, repeated military campaigns were mounted against the Yazidis, and those campaigns are on record. Van Bruinessen adds an uncomfortable truth: in the 1830s and 40s the forces of the Botan mîr Bedirhan and of Mîr Muhammad of Rewanduz also brought massacres on the Yazidis. Not all the fermans, then, came from far away; some came from the hands of neighbouring Kurdish mîrs. History writing that hides this earns no trust.

One result of these fermans was migration. In the nineteenth century many Yazidi families took refuge in the Caucasus. The communities in Armenia and Georgia are the children of that migration. In Soviet Armenia this community became one of the carriers of Kurdish cultural life; on the Kurdish broadcasts of Radio Yerevan, the Soviet-Armenian station that broadcast in Kurdish, the voices of Yazidi artists echoed for years. We told that story in a separate article.

2014 Sinjar: The Testimony of the Documents

3 August 2014, between night and morning. ISIS units moved out from their bases in Mosul and in Syria and marched on Sinjar. The villages fell one by one. Those who could flee climbed the mountain. Under the August sun, onto a waterless mountain.

What follows we will relay from a document. The United Nations' independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria published a report in June 2016: "They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis." The report rests on interviews with 45 witnesses: survivors, clergy, smugglers, lawyers, doctors. It takes its name from the sentence of a Yazidi religious figure: when ISIS attacked Sinjar, they came to destroy.

What the report records is brief, and its brevity is enough. Men were killed or forced to convert. Women and girls, down to children of nine, were sold in markets and held as slaves. Boys were torn from their families and given to training camps. The water and food of those who had taken refuge on the mountain were cut off on purpose. For the Sinjar Yazidi community of some 400,000, the report's finding is this: after the attack no free Yazidi remained in the area; everyone had been displaced, or was captive, or was dead.

The verdict, in the report's own sentence: ISIS committed, against the Yazidis, the crime of genocide together with many crimes against humanity and war crimes. The report builds one sentence more, and that sentence was written in 2016: the genocide of the Yazidis is ongoing. At that date more than 3,200 women and children were still captive.

Van Bruinessen records two more bitter notes. The forces charged with guarding Sinjar withdrew before the attack. And by the testimony of survivors, some Muslim neighbours, Kurds among them, joined the attackers. These lines are not easy to write; not to write them would not be history. The people gave this attack a name in their own tongue: the last ferman. The number thus grew once more in memory.

Are the Yazidis Kurds? An Honest Frame

Approach with caution those who answer this question in a single sentence. Here is the picture the documents show.

The language side is clear: the mother tongue of most Yazidis is Kurmancî. The qewl, the prayers, the laments are in this tongue. The villages of Başîqe and Behzanê near Mosul are the exception; there the daily language is Arabic. The researcher Irene Dulz's summary is balanced: the common view is that the Yazidis are ethnically Kurdish, and most Yazidis see themselves this way; but within the community there are voices that dispute it.

The emphasis on a distinct identity is strongest in the Caucasus and in part of the diaspora. There many Yazidis define themselves as a distinct people, and so they are entered in the population records. After 2014 this divergence deepened; van Bruinessen records the reason too: trust in the neighbour was wounded.

This site's principle is this: self-definition is decisive. The Kurdishness of the Yazidi who counts himself a Kurd, and the separateness of the Yazidi who counts himself a distinct people, do not stand in need of our approval. Both stands stand on this page with the same respect. The common ground history shows does not change: the same language basin, an intertwined culture, and a very long, very heavy shared memory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do the Yazidis worship the devil? No. This is a slander born of the neighbouring faiths fitting their own devil figure onto Tawûsê Melek. In Yazidi theology there is no fallen angel and no absolute source of evil; Tawûsê Melek is the Creator's chief angel.

Should one say Yazidi or Êzîdî? The community's own form is Êzîdî, and Dr. Izady prefers this name too. The "Yezidi" spelling is problematic because it feeds the false link to the Umayyad caliph Yazid; the root of the name is yezad, meaning angel.

Do the Yazidis have a holy book? The real sacred body is oral: the hymns called qewl, along with sermons and sacred stories, are passed on by memory. Two written texts, the Cilwe and the Mishefa Reş, are in circulation; scholarship debates their date and reliability.

What is Çarşema Sor? It is the Yazidi New Year; it means Red Wednesday. It is kept on the Wednesday that falls in mid-April. On the eve, lamps are lit at Lalish; in the morning graves are visited and eggs are painted.

What did the United Nations say about the 2014 Sinjar attack? The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria's 2016 report recorded, in its own words, that ISIS committed the crime of genocide against the Yazidis, and wrote that at that date the genocide was ongoing.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary sources (from the Bedel Boseli Collection):

UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, "They Came to Destroy": ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis (A/HRC/32/CRP.2, June 2016); the genocide finding and the testimonies.
Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady, The Kurds: A Concise Handbook (4th edition); the "Ezidi Faith or Yezidism" chapter: the origin of the name, Lalish, the Cemaiyye, and the politics of the Yazid confusion.
Kreyenbroek and Omarkhali (eds.), Yezidism and Yezidi Studies in the Early 21st Century (Kurdish Studies Archive, 2016); van Bruinessen's essay on the memory of the fermans, Eszter Spät's field notes on Çarşema Sor, Irene Dulz's study of identity and population.

Social Media Summaries

The following summaries are ready to share; copy and use them.

Their name means "bound to the angels." For centuries they were accused of the exact opposite. The true story of the Yazidi faith: Tawûsê Melek, Lalish, and the anatomy of a slander: bedelboseli.com/en/yazidis-most-misunderstood-faith
The Yazidis' holy book is not on a shelf but in memory. Hymns called qewl were carried by the word from generation to generation. What writing could not keep, memory kept: bedelboseli.com/en/yazidis-most-misunderstood-faith
Folk memory counts 72 fermans. The number comes not from an archive but from pain: it is the ordering of not forgetting. The history of the fermans, and the last ferman at Sinjar: bedelboseli.com/en/yazidis-most-misunderstood-faith
The UN report takes its name from a clergyman's sentence: "They came to destroy." The verdict set down in 2016: genocide. The documented testimony of Sinjar: bedelboseli.com/en/yazidis-most-misunderstood-faith
Are the Yazidis Kurds, or a distinct people? Most count themselves Kurds; some define themselves apart. Self-definition is decisive, and both stands deserve respect. The honest frame is here: bedelboseli.com/en/yazidis-most-misunderstood-faith