The Ezidis, 1996-2002 photogr. by Yves Gellie
They are indigenous, and an ethnoreligious minority from the Middle East. One is born an Ezidi. They pray in the direction of the sun. Ezidis believe in reincarnation, heaven and hell are no places, but states in life. They believe in one god and seven angels; central role plays Tawisi Melek as the chief angel whose symbol is the peacock.
The seven angels, also known as the Holy Seven in Ezidi mythology, date back to the mythology of the Babylonians, who, on the basis of their astronomy, assigned seven visible planets to their seven gods. The focus was on the Mercury, which is assigned to the weekday Wednesday. Wednesday is still the holy day of rest of the Ezidis and is marked by Tawisi Melek. It is probable, therefore, that the Holy Seven were formerly gods before they were degraded to angels in the triumph of monotheism.
Origin: ca. 2,500 BC, descendants of Iranian Mithras cult, old Iranian religion of origin, parallels to the Babylonian/Sumerian cult. They are one of the Indo-Iranian peoples who lived in ancient Mesopotamia
Persecution: 8th century; Islamization, during the Ottoman Empire around three million Ezidis were massacred and around six million Ezidis were forced to convert to Islam (mainly by Kurds, Arabs and Turks), mass exodus since 1850, 2014 Ezidi genocide [today, there are ca. 800,000 Ezidis worldwide]
Society: Three castes; laypeople (mirid) & dignitaries (sheikh and pir) - The caste system is not hierarchically structured. Although all three castes have different tasks and functions, they have equal rights.
Temple: No houses of prayer, numerous pilgrimage sites and temples; many of them in honor of saints, most important temple is the Lalish temple
Religious Council: Involves several people (e.g Bawe Cawish), including women in leading roles
They have no prophets, no missionary, no holy book which does not mean that there are no Ezidi texts; there are a lot. By way of illustration: if one would bind these texts it would result in two bibles (as the amount of it).
Concept of Tawisi Melek: Have the courage to use your mind (Sapere Aude) = do what you think is right, bear the consequences of your own actions, give account for your own actions, form your own opinion, sometimes you should swim against the tide, do not blindly obey commands, question things, be a role model for fellow human beings
No claim to superiority; „An Ezidi can be a good human being, but one does not need to be Ezidi to be a good human being“
Being Ezidi is not privileging
No religious exclusivism; „Every religion is part of the truth“
Tolerance commandment; „God, protect all the other peoples of the world first before protecting us“
Clarification of known misunderstandings:
Sheikh Adi, who is a reformer, worked on the development of the structure. However, this does not include the endogamy falsely attributed to him. He added the Sheikh caste for a better social structure, organization and protection of society.
Sheikh Adi founded the order of the Adawiya named after him. The Dervish/Sufi movement was originally independent of religions and is much older than Islam. Thus he was not a Muslim, he was a dervish whose dervishism is outside of Islamic mysticism (Sufism). In the following centuries the dervish movement was completely absorbed in Sufism and became a synonym for it. The Adawiya order, on the other hand, dissolved among the Ezidi population.
The endogamy is not a religious commandment, but a social convention introduced in the darkest hours of the Ezidis during the reign of Sherfedin and his father.
Tawisi Melek is falsely accused of being the Devil by Muslims and Christians. Tawisi Melek is no fallen angel and it has never been banished into “hell” thus it also never put out the fire in “hell” with its tears; both are wrong versions which are, however, spread by non-Ezidis.
Ezidism has no connection to Zoroastrianism. The connection is a falsification by Kurdish nationalism, which developed a narrative in which Ezidis are seen as the „original Kurds“ and their religion as the „original religion of the Kurds“. This is simply an ideological construct which benefits a legitimization of nationalism. Many Kurmanji-speaking Kurds have Ezidi roots but not Kurds in general.
In Kurdish magazines it was announced that Ezidis are descendants or a splinter group of the Zarathustrians, which Kurdish nationalists viewed as the ancestors of the Kurds. Historical and sacred Ezidi texts were falsified by Kurdish nationalists and published in various books and magazines. The falsifications deeply divided the Ezidis from a religious and ethnic point of view.
[Example: Qeside Sherfedin, which is one of the most important texts of the Ezidis and is regarded by many Ezidis as their religious anthem, was falsified by replacing the term Ezidkhan (homeland of the Ezidis) with the term Kurdistan - a term that is not even mentioned once in any sacred or historic text of the Ezidis.]
Ezidis are an Ezdiki/Kurmanji-speaking group and not Kurdish-speaking. Ezdiki or Kurmanji cannot be equated with Kurdish without further ado: On the one hand Kurdish cannot be clearly defined on the basis of objective criteria (since the delimitation of languages and dialects is often of a subjective nature), on the other hand different groups who speak the same language can certainly use different glossonyms. Ezdiki and Kurmanji refer to the same linguistic variety. –> Full article on this issue
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