Yazidis are adherents of a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern religion with ancient origins.  They belong to the smallest of the three branches of Yazdânism.  The other branches, Alevism and Yarsanism, differ by recognizing the Shia practice of taqiyya (dissimulation).  The three branches are geographically split and mutual contacts are rare.  The majority of historians believe that the Yazidi creed contains elements of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Judaism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam.  The two Yazidi religious books are in Arabic: the Jilwa (Book of Revelation) and the Mes’haf i Resh (Black Book).[1]

The name Yazidism is connected to the 6th caliph, Yazid (680-83), a reviled figure for both Shia and Sunni Muslims.  There is, however, little evidence to show what role Yazid may have played in the founding or development of Yazidism. 

Yazidis believe that they were created separately from the rest of mankind and are descendents of Adam only, rather than both Adam and Eve.  Based on this distinction, they have kept themselves strictly isolated from the other communities living around them.[2]

Yazidis admire the Prophet Mohammed and the Sufi mystic Adi Musafir, a descendent of the Umayyad Caliphs.  Adi is acknowledged as the author of Yazidi texts and seen by some as the originator of the faith.  Islamic writings mention the religion as early as the 14th century, but some scholars also link the group to Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, and even ancient Iraqi Buzzard worshippers.  Ethnically most Yazidis are Kurdish, but they identify themselves as Yazidi – a term that is not constitutionally recognized in Iraq as an ethnic identity, but is still often referred to by others as an ethno-religious identity.  Their religious practice is centered on the tomb of their founding figure, Sheikh Adi Musafir, at Lalesh.[3]  Although scattered, they have a well organized society.  The Emir (Mirza Beg) resides at Ba’dari (65 km north of Mosul) and is the secular head representing the Yazidis with central authorities.  He installs the chief Sheikh (Sheikh Nazir, Baba Sheikh) who resides in Beled-Sinjar and is the supreme religious head and the infallible authority on their holy scriptures.

Demography

There are thought to be around 700,000 Yazidis worldwide.[4]  There are approximately 500,000 Yazidis residing in Iraq; 50,000 in Turkey; 30,000 in Syria; and over 130,000 total in all other countries.    

Geographic Distribution

Most Yazidis live near Mosul, Iraq with smaller populations in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. 

Historic Hardship

Yazidis have long been accused of ‘devil worship’ due to misunderstandings of their religious doctrine.  In the Yazidi faith, Lucifer is a good deity, long since reconciled with the Creator.[5]

Viewed as heretics, Yazidis were considered a target by Sunni Muslims due to fundamental differences.  Turkish rulers and Sunni Kurdish tribes repeatedly persecuted them and tried to forcibly convert them.  An estimated 300,000 Yazidis were killed in the Armenian Genocide of 1915 at the hands of Ottoman Turks.[6]  In 1975, Iraqi authorities forcibly deported 20,000 Yazidis from Jebel Sinjar.  Many Yazidis were also forced to leave southeastern Turkey in the 1970s and ‘80s as a result of anti-Kurdish and anti-Yazidi persecution.

Since the Gulf War, the Iraqi government has claimed that Yazidis are Arabs and that their areas should be under its jurisdiction.  However, many Yazidis, as well as non-Yazidi Kurds, claim Kurdish identity for the group and as such argue for jurisdiction under the Kurdistan Regional Government.  Iraqi government posts are located just one mile from the Yazidi sanctuary at Lalesh.[7] 

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi forces were believed to have killed an estimated 100,000 Kurdish civilians, some of whom were Yazidis, in 1988 through the use of chemical weapons.  During the Iran-Iraq war, thousands of Shia Muslims and Kurds were arbitrarily arrested on the basis of suspected Iranian descent.  After the war, discriminatory policies still lingered; in 1996, 33 Yazidis were arbitrarily arrested, according to Amnesty International.[8] 

Yazidis have historically viewed their Syrian Orthodox and Nestorian Christian neighbors as friends and fellow sufferers at the hands of the dominant Sunni majority. [9] 

Ongoing Hardship

The Yazidis drew international attention in April 2007 when news outlets carried cell phone video footage of the fatal stoning of Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17-year-old Yazidi girl whose boyfriend was not of the faith.  This ‘honor killing’ was carried out by Aswad’s relatives to punish her for the alleged shame that she had brought to the family by dating a Sunni man. 

In August 2007, in one of the deadliest attacks since the 2003 invasion, four truck bombs killed  upwards of 500 civilians and injured hundreds more in two villages near Sinjar populated mostly by Yazidis. 

Around 200 Yazidis were killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the group continues to suffer in post-Saddam Iraq because of their ethnic and religious differences.[10]  On April 23, 2007, newspapers reported the murder of 23 Yazidis after armed hijackers separated them from other passengers on a bus traveling from Mosul to Bashika.  The killings were thought to be in response to the Aswad stoning.[11]

---