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On this topic, Ezidi scholars Majid Hassan Ali, Dimitri Pirbari and Rustam Rzgoyan have published an incredible valuable article on the Ezidi identity. It’s definitely a recommendation for anyone who wants to learn more about Ezidis. If you cannot access it freely, email Dr. Ali, he is very kind and will send you the article. Below are a few excerpts worth sharing.

The Reformation and Development of Yazidi Identity from Theoretical and Historical Perspectives

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As a mixed-race person, it’s difficult for me to understand a group that doesn’t allow people to marry someone from a different race. The focus on ‘purity’ makes me feel really uneasy tbh.

Well, we honestly don’t care that it’s difficult for outsiders to understand. Yezidis are ethnoreligious, and there is also no way to convert to the Yezidi religion.

Yezidis are historically and currently victims of racism/persecution, our culture is threatened with extinction. And our endogamy is based on self-preservation. The shared memory of a trauma is strong and important, and the strengthening of a community is an instrument of defence against emotional damage and a basis for solidarity and preservation.

I remember seeing the exact same anon a year ago.

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Sinjar Mountains.

Iraq. 2014. © Moises Saman

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Painting by Yezidi artist Falah Alrasam

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Yezidi temple in Georgia 🇬🇪

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Hi, I’m Kurdish and I have always supported the Yazidi community and have condemned the treatment of the Yazidi people at the hands of Kurds. I believe that Yazidis are the purest and most authentic of Kurdish people, and that they/we have one of the most ancient cultures in the world. Do you consider Yazidis as their own entire ethnic group, or people who are Kurdish by blood who are defined by their religion? Thanks

„Yazidis are the purest and most authentic of Kurdish people“ that’s an ideological construct, which benefits Kurdish nationalism. Yezidis are an ethnoreligious people; their ethnic and religious identity is the same: Yezidi.

The Kurdification of Yezidis is a (modern) movement that cannot be derived from the Yezidis' ethnogenic myth or tradition. Yezidis have gone through an own ethnogenesis.

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Magazine Dicle: The systematic falsification and defamation of Yezidism* by the PKK in Shingal

*meaning the Yezidi history and the Yezidi religion (Sherfedin) as well as the culture.

[Arabic translation of the following, German translation of the following]

We would like to draw attention to a development that is taking place in the PKK controlled area in Shingal. Once again it is about the systematic falsification of Yezidism and the ideological indoctrination of Yezidi youth. It is about the magazine “Dicle”, which is edited by PKK activists. Since March 2017, it hasalready been published in 16 issues (as of January 12, 2020) in Arabic and Yezidi/Kurmanji (in Shingal). We have mainly limited ourselves to texts of all issues that were written in Yezidi, but we will work on a subsequent article on the Arabic texts.

This magazine should not be confused with the “Dicle” of the same name, which was published in 42 issues by the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq from 1998 to 2001.

Weiterlesen

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Yezidis of the Sheikh Mend group photographed by Artur Rodziewicz

Members of the Sheikh-Mend have a special relationship with snakes and are trained in their religious position as natural healers, especially in dealing with snake bites.

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About the historic Sheikh Sherfedin

After our post about the attempt to falsify the term „Şerfedîn“ in the Yezidi terminology by Kurdish circles, we were asked by some readers to write something about the historical person Sherfedin. We think it is important to respond to this, as there is a big confusion about Sherfedin in the present literature.

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Portrait of a Yezidi standing in front of a temple

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Portrait of a Yezidi woman in traditional attire

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Yezdinsher Beg and Ez Xelefim

We have already briefly discussed the persecution of the Yezidis by Bedirkhan Beg. In this post we would like to deal with another topic: the massacres of Yezdinsher Beg, the nephew of Bedirkhan Beg, and the glorification through the song “Ez Xelefim”, which is unfortunately now increasingly sung by Yezidis themselves at their weddings.

Weiterlesen

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Persecution of the Yezidis by Bedirkhan Beg

In 1843 a Kurdish alliance was formed consisting of the four powerful Kurdish rulers Bedirkhan Beg (Botan), Nurallah Beg (Hakkari), Ismail Beg (Bahdinan) and Mahmud Khan (Van). This alliance arose out of their same desire to attack the Tiyari Christians (Assyrians), who were often allied with Yezidis in the past. The attack on the Christians came as a surprise and was extremely brutal. Over ten thousand people were killed and the children and women enslaved. Christians who escaped the massacre, including their leader Mar Shimun, fled to Mosul. The Yezidis in Sheikhan took in the Christian refugees in Lalish, cared for and protected them. A contemporary witness, James P. Fletcher, described it at that time:

“They have invariably spared the Christians, and when the massacre of the Nestorians drove many hundreds of unhappy fugitives to Mosul, they received shelter and protection at the tomb of Sheikh Adi.”

After the massacre of the Christians, Bedirkhan Beg, now very powerful and independent of the Ottoman Empire, began to persecute the Yezidis in his territory with his Kurdish allies. In Tur Abdin he massacred thousands of Yezidis and seven Yezidi villages were forced to Islamize. He enslaved several thousand Yezidi women and children. The enslavement of the Yezidis by the Kurds, according to the observation of an English official, took on such a cruel and large scale that one would not find anywhere else. Austen H. Layard, who was visiting the Yezidis at the time, said

“While men and women were mercilessly slaughtered, children of both sexes were dragged away and displayed for sale in the major cities. These annual manhunts were a source of income for Beder Khan Beg […].

Bedirkhan Beg’s nephew, Yezdinsher Beg, also took part in the persecution of the Yezidis. The British vice-consul in Mosul reported that the Kurds under Bedirkhan Beg sacrificed Yezidi prisoners on the Islamic festival of Bairam. Yezidi women were abducted and forced to marry Muslims. Bedirkhan Beg himself had up to 50 forcedly Islamized Yezidis in his household, most of them women.

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In the Yezidi village of Kiwex, religious buildings were erected and inaugurated in 2015 with the help of Yezidi donations. One of them was built in honour of Sherfedin (Şerfedîn). The Yezidi architecture of the sanctuaries (Qub) has been followed to a large extent and renovations, such as writing the inscriptions in Yezidi with Latin letters instead of Arabic, are also acceptable.

What worries us, however, and what we would now like to draw attention to, is the content of the inscription. We are not accusing the donors and initiators of any ill intentions and we believe that they have been victims of years of attempts at falsification by political parties. In order to be able to understand this better, we will examine and explain the falsification in more detail, and then give an overview of how this falsification has been successfully enforced for years.

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Yezidis and Kurmanj

In this post we would like to deal with the topic of how the term “Kurmanc” (Kurmanj) is perceived by the Yezidis. This topic is important to us because it plays a greater role in the present and future debate on Yezidi identity.

Until a few decades ago, mainly outsiders have written about Yezidi religion and history. For many of the outsiders it was clear that the Yezidis were Kurds because of their language, Kurmanj, since in the ethnology of the time the Kurdish ethnicity was dominated by Muslim Kurmanji speakers. This changed when Yezidi academics started to deal with Yezidism scientifically.

Weiterlesen

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Hello dear, I'm sid from Algeria,living in Italy since many years ,I'm 38 years old. I'm really affacinated by the Ezidi culture and tradition. God bless all the Ezidi Warm hug Sid ali

Thank you :)

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Yezidi woman with her child, 1967 by Dominique Champault (1927 - 2001)