Allison yezidism XX century

The Journal of Kurdish Studies, Volume VI pp. 1-23

UNBELIEVABLE SLOWNESS OF MIND: YEZIDI STUDIES, FROM NINETEENTH TO TWENTY-FIRST

CENTURY

Christine ALLISON

INTRODUCTION

Myths about the Yezidis abound. The very first sentence of Kreyenbroeks 1995 book, which ushered in a polite revolution in Yezidi studies, calls attention to the erroneous but far(reaching epithet devil(worshipper ( perhaps the most famous of the myths attributed to the Yezidis, but there are a number of others. Non(Yezidis in Northern Iraq state with deep conviction that Yezidis never wash. The belief that they indulge in mass orgies, attested by Badger in 1852, is still current in some circles. Such rumours have serious consequences for Yezidis in their everyday life (see Dulz, Hajo and Savelsberg, this volume). However, on the more rarefied level of academic discussion, perhaps the most pernicious myth of all is the oft(repeated statement that Yezidism is a little(known, mysterious and under(researched subject. If one were to compare the large bibliography on the (several hundred thousand) Yezidis with the paucity of titles dealing with the many and varied constructions and practices of Islam among the (tens of millions of) Kurds, one would indeed be justified in questioning the need for yet another Yezidi(related publication.

However, quantity is not the same as quality, and unfortunately much of what has been written about Yezidis is sensationalist, ill(informed, or worse. As the size of the bibliography of Yezidology indicates, the Yezidis have long held a fascination for outsiders, a notoriety with which the Yezidis themselves have had a complex and nuanced relationship, and which has contributed to their own discourses of identity. Moreover, the Yezidis construction of their religion is undergoing rapid change and modernisation to meet the current needs

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of the communities. Yet the very nature of the modernity as desired by Yezidi actors, and their often copious use of early outsider literature on their religion, poses a number of questions about dynamics of power and dominance. The foremost university(based researchers working among Yezidi communities, many of whom are represented in this collection, take account of the complexity of these relationships, and their work acknowledges the great variety found within traditional forms of Yezidism, whilst chronicling the changes taking place. Those of us who are not Yezidis ourselves are in a delicate position; whilst emphasising both plurality of tradition and the special nature of Yezidi religiosity in our attempts to avoid the essentialism of our Orientalist predecessors, we find ourselves at the same time asked ( sometimes by the media, sometimes by Yezidis themselves ( to give definitive and essentialist statements on the nature or the origin of the religion, or value judgments on the relative merits of this or that tradition or religious figure.

Yezidi studies exemplify many of the most difficult questions surrounding the relationship between outsider scholars, insider scholars and informants in Oriental studies in general. The discourses of Yezidology are in many ways a microcosm of the discourses of Orientalism. Not only are Yezidis in the various parts of the homeland living under governments seeking to civilise them ( for example, the orientalist State attitude of Turkey to her citizens of the East has already been discussed by various scholars.1 More to the point, Yezidis are almost invariably subaltern, even amongst Kurdish communities at home or in the diaspora. They are just as likely to be characterised as exotic, folkloric and mysterious by other Kurds as by Europeans. Having been hailed as the original Kurds by the Iraqi Kurdish political establishment, and Zoroastrians by the PKK, their symbolic status as a sort of living fossilised ancestor is deeply ambivalent.2 With the best

1 See for example Dndar 2006 for a discussion of the evolution of scientific approaches to social engineering under the Young Turks, Deringil 1998 for the evolution of the Ottoman mission civilisatrice, and Kogaciolu 2004 for a discussion of the workings of this in relation to the problem of honour killings.

2 The implications of this type of representation are well brought out in another context by Diana Fuss: Forced to occupy the static role of the timeless primitive the black man is disenfranchised of his very subjectivity (1996: 21). In the absence of scientific data, there are nevertheless many anecdotes which indicate that even in the Kurdish region of Iraq, Yezidis are often considered lesser human beings than their neighbours.

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intentions of community building, the Kurdish regional government seeks to include Yezidis in civic life, but many of their citizens would still rather not share a meal with one. Many Yezidis are very poor, even amongst the local communities of homeland and diaspora. It is only recently that Yezidi voices have been heard directly and without the mediation of outsiders, through printed media or political representation, and the extent to which these Yezidi voices speak for all Yezidis remains a matter of debate. However it is noticeable that in many cases Yezidi voices are using the same range of concepts and images as the outsiders.

Recent years have brought great change to all Yezidi communities, with large(scale migrations, (particularly from Turkey to Europe and from Armenia to Russia), and in Iraq rgime change and reform. In order to meet the new challenges Yezidis are refashioning, in some cases standardising, their religion from within. The current generation of researchers, working in a number of disciplines, has broadened the scope considerably, moving from the traditional focus on the Iraqi communities to detailed and comparative consideration of the Caucasian and diaspora communities, and is chronicling the complex changes taking place in the perception and formulation of the religion. Such new approaches are the motivating factor behind both the collection of articles in this issue of JKS, and also the workshop convened by Andreas Ackermann on Yezidism in Transition at the Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt, in 2007, which brought the issues of variety, authority and standardisation into stark relief, highlighting the differences in perspective of the various participants, both Yezidi and non(Yezidi. The proceedings of this workshop are currently in publication.

It is tempting to divide the history of Yezidi studies into two stages ( pre(and post 1990s; one hesitates to use the term pre(and post(Kreyenbroek where such a reluctant revolutionary is concerned, though his 1995 book marked a sea(change in Western studies of Yezidis and the initiatives he established at the University of Goettingen have not only yielded new understanding but have also provided a focus for the pooling of resources with distinguished scholars from other disciplines. There is no doubt that Kreyenbroeks point of departure, that Yezidi religiosity was different from that of the scriptural traditions of the area because it was orally transmitted, enabled him to interpret Yezidi

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explanations of religion more flexibly than earlier scholars who often sought to make the Yezidis responses fit into their own conceptions of what a religious system ought to be. He also drew on a much wider corpus of authentic Yezidi oral texts or qewls than that available to earlier scholars. Paradoxically this approach, based on current performance and practice, also brought a new dimension to the question of the Yezidis origins, and Kreyenbroeks suggestion of the existence of a non(Zoroastrian Iranian religion in the area, if controversial for some scholars, has injected new life into what had become a sterile debate. The research initiative begun with the 1995 book expanded to include broader projects with more Yezidi partners, collecting data from non(Iraqi and diaspora Yezidis. Specialists in other disciplines such as the historian Nelida Fuccaro and the anthropologist Andreas Ackermann have also published highly focused studies on specific Yezidi communities (Fuccaro 1999, Ackermann 2004).

Despite the relative sophistication of the recent generation of works on Yezidism, the enormous contribution of earlier scholars cannot be overlooked. Kreyenbroeks emphasis on the harmony with which Yezidism was integrated into everyday rural Kurdish life (rather than on the strangeness and oddity of the Yezidis) was prefigured by Drowers gentle depiction of a short stay with Yezidis punctuated by descriptions of moments shared with the women (whom the earlier male scholars could not seek out), visits to a sacred site and explanations of the Yezidi way of life (Drower 1941). Moreover, it was the publication in Kurdish of a corpus of qewls by the Yezidi scholars Khidir Silman and Khalil Jindy Rashow which paved the way for Kreyenbroeks book. Even Roger Lescot, who had the worst misgivings about the Yezidis intellectual capacities (see below), presented Europeans with a unique insight into the life and tribal structures of the Yezidis of Syria and Sinjar (Lescot 1938).

We should thus be wary of seeing ruptures or revolutions in the history of Yezidi studies. However it is very clear that a great change in Yezidi studies has taken place over the last generation, ever since Yezidis have been able to publish their own points of view and enter the field of scholarship themselves, and outside scholars have been able to put the exoticism of earlier generations aside and base their work on real contact and dialogue with Yezidis. There are still good reasons for studying Yezidism; much remains little known and still less understood


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in Yezidi history, and the changes currently taking place also demand attention. This special issue of the Journal of Kurdish Studies seems a good opportunity to give a brief overview of various phases of the development of Yezidi studies, in terms of both outsider and insider discourse, and, even more briefly, to consider some challenges of the immediate future.

OUTSIDER DISCOURSES ON YEZIDISM

To give a detailed description of every representation of Yezidism by outsiders is beyond the scope of this essay, especially since the ground has largely been covered in the first chapter of Kreyenbroeks book (1995). I will permit myself to expand a little on the subject of A.H. Layard and G.P. Badger as exempla; their contrapuntal approaches are not only the classic nineteenth(century English(language sources on the Yezidis, but their interventions also had an effect on events in the area. In many ways they typify the role played by Westerners in discourse, by their representation of Yezidis, and in life, by their part in events.

Although exoticism is usually perceived as one of the most striking features of European Orientalism, exotic representations of the Yezidis did not originate with eighteenth and nineteenth(century Europeans. The 16th century Sherefname of Sheref Khan, prince of Bitlis, characterises them as lawless and barbarous (Charmoy 1868: 69(70). Evliya elebi, who encountered them in 1655(6, similarly presents them as exotic, placing an emphasis on the strangeness of their customs and their valour in battle. (Dankoff 1990: 213; Evliya vol 5: 6(9). Evliya is expressing the viewpoint of a member of the imperial lite, travelling in the wilder reaches of the empire. By the nineteenth century, however, a new note is discernible in official Ottoman discourse, the civilising mission of a more modern imperialism.3 In common with some other religious minorities, the Yezidis, targeted for conversion, were portrayed in official documents as simple folk who cannot tell good from evil and led astray by leaders fooling and provoking them,4 leaders who have

3 I am grateful to Yavuz Aykan for bringing this to my attention. 4 According to documentation from the Grand Viziers office; Deringil emphasises

(1998: 192) that such descriptions are the rule rather than the exception.

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always led their people astray and manipulated them for their own selfish ends5 (Deringil 1998: 40, 70) .

European missionaries, from the Carmelite Pre Jean(Marie de Jsus in 1672 CE onwards, documented their encounters with Yezidis, often emphasising their friendly attitude towards Christians. Some Yezidis clearly perceived very early the potential secular benefits of conversion to Christianity, in particular the possibility of protection and support offered by the aegis of Western Christianity. Moreover, as Christians they would be people of the book and would enjoy official tolerance under Ottoman law. For the missionaries, the orally transmitted Yezidi religion, with its lack of dogma or catechism and its emphasis on orthopraxy and taboo, no doubt looked like a spiritual vacuum waiting to be filled. In the late 1660s the Yezidis of the Jebel Siman in Syria made overtures to both Catholic and non(Catholic European clergy, and the Capuchins made several converts. However, plans for a sustained Catholic mission to the Yezidis foundered for various reasons, including the apparent expectation by some Yezidis of payment for conversion,6 and were abandoned by all orders except the Jesuits, who continued working in the Jebel Siman until the 1680s.7

G.P. Badger

Later, in the mid(nineteenth century, the Anglican G. P. Badger considered a mission to the Yezidis unfeasible, largely because of the Yezidis personal qualities.

...they present the most unpromising field I know of for missionary exertion. They are ignorant to a proverb, and entertain the strongest prejudices against learning of every kind. They are neither communicative nor frank when inquired of respecting their own religious system, and manifest the greatest indifference whenever any attempt is made to expound to them the doctrines of Christianity. (1852: 134).

5 The document containing this description was signed by three of the local ulema and a military officer, the leader of the Advisory Commission working on the projected conversion of the Yezidis.

6 Powerful individuals such as tribal or religious leaders could bring whole groups with them, and religion was perceived as a matter of group, rather than individual loyalty. The changing of group allegiance would invite payment of some sort.

7 For an account of these missions see Guest 1993: 51(58.


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Unlike the Catholic clergy who preceded him, and the American Protestants working in the area at the time, Badger was not working within a formal mission project, but assessing the potential of Anglican missionary activity among the Church of the East (the so(called Nestorians). His particular agenda (that of turning the Chaldaean church, Uniate with Rome, back to its mother Church of the East), would no doubt have destabilised the area had it been successful. He was also embedded in local politics by virtue of being the brother(in(law of Christian Rassam, a prominent local personality and British Consul in Mosul.

It is worth examining Badgers perspective a little further. At that time, missionary work, particularly in the Third World, was a key activity for Western churches. To take a slightly later index of its importance, in 1890(91 it was reckoned that contributions in Britain to foreign missions totalled 1.3 million ( almost half as much again as all British government spending under the headings colonial, consular and foreign (Coakley 1992: 3). Missionaries and their churches had to present a favourable account to their funding public.8 The civilising mission is often difficult to distinguish from the religious mission; a degree of condescension, as seen in the above quotation, is often perceptible in nineteenth(century missionaries comments about their potential converts.

Various important studies have highlighted missionaries detrimental effect on Third World cultures.9 However, to ascribe excessive influence to missionaries is in itself a colonialist argument; many missionaries achieved very little and were not straightforward agents of colonialist powers, who sometimes considered them untrustworthy.10 In the case of Kurdistan, the symbolic importance of missionaries as Western agents in the eyes of the local tribal leaders (and indeed of the Ottoman

8 Athelstan Riley, chief publicist of the Archbishop of Canterburys Assyrian mission (which was formally set up in the mid(1880s), remarked: For the pious, simple folk who take great interest in missionary enterprise, but who are entirely ignorant of the circumstances of missionary work, the sun must always shine ... this is, as it were, the condition of their support; the result is the issue of reports positively grotesque in their optimism, in which Scripture texts jostle strangely with palpably exaggerated retrospects and forecasts. (Coakley 1992: 3).

9 For a general description of the development of post(Enlightenment missionary attitudes towards Third World nations, see Bosch 1991: 306ff.

10 For example, Bosch (1991: 287) cites the example of the Moravians, who incurred colonialist displeasure by dressing like the natives among whom they worked.

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government) vastly exceeded the actual results of their work on the ground (Bloxham 2005: 43).

Badgers case illustrates the complexity of the role of missionaries in the area. He was accused by no less a person than Layard of having played a role in causing the massacres of 10,000 Assyrians (Church of the East) by Bedir Khan Beg in 1843; these caused him to be recalled to England in 1844.11 In 1842 he had visited their chieftain, the Mar Shimun, and exceeded his brief in promising him British support for his bid to be exclusive civil ruler of the Hakkari ashiret areas.12 It was partly this projected involvement of the British government that induced the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Badgers backers, to reconsider their support of his work. However, the massacre can also be explained in terms of local politics. The Mar Shimun was already in opposition to Bedir Khan Beg, having refused to supply fighters to support Ismail Pashas attempt to recapture his fortress of Amadiya, and also in secret negotiation with the pasha of Mosul. To assume that he put all his trust in Badger is to credit him with a level of naivet astonishing in a mature tribal leader, reminiscent of a true Orientalist caricature of the simple native. He must have known that the Muslim Kurds would move against his people soon ( indeed, he was already attempting to organise combat against them (Coakley 1992: 38). Thus, despite Badgers unfortunate role, the massacres cannot be explained only in terms of missionary activity. What is certain, however is that the weakening of the Christian power(base also impacted on the Yezidis, many of whom were their allies and who suffered periodic attacks by Bedir Khan Beg (Guest 1993: 96(7).

In his book The Nestorians and their Rituals, Badger is certainly not without sympathy for the sufferings of the Yezidis. However as his great interest is mission, he cannot overlook the Yezidis morality (as he sees it) nor their status as Pagans or Heathen. He genuinely believed that the Yezidis venerate the Evil Principle.13 He characterised the Yezidis of the Mosul area as:

11 The American missionary Asahel Grant wrote a letter to a newspaper absolving him

of blame (Guest 1993: 96). 12 Badger wrote to Sir Stratford Canning endorsing this (Coakley 1992: 39). 13 According to the theology of the Yezeedees, Melek Taoos ... is the principle or

power from whom all evil proceeds, and their religious services seem to partake much more of a propitiatory rather than of an eucharistic character. (Badger 1852: 125).


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a very industrious race, clean in their habits, and quiet and orderly in their general behaviour. Many of them, however, are very intemperate in the use of arrack... they are comparatively free from many of those known immoralities which pollute the lives and conduct of Mohammedans; though it is said that great lewdness secretly prevails within the limits of their own community. (Badger 1852: 132(3).

A.H. Layard

A.H. Layards role in Yezidi history was much more prominent than that of Badger. His portrait of them in Nineveh and its Remains is sympathetic, stressing the vast difference between the Yezidis reputation for debauched behaviour and their actual conduct as he observed it. Layards book was not only a set of field notes for his remarkable excavations, but also a travel book full of pictures of Oriental life. Moreover he also intervened directly in Yezidi affairs. He is remembered fondly by many Yezidis in Northern Iraq for his part in the securing of an official status for the Yezidis under Ottoman law in 1849. The British Ambassador in Istanbul, Stratford Canning, had petitioned the Ottoman government for this at the instigation of Christian Rassam. It was an unusual intervention for Britain, as it concerned a non(Christian group;14 Layard remained in Istanbul for several months, working with Canning and the Yezidi envoy Kawal Yusuf on negotiations and petitions. When the edict was issued, Layard returned in triumph with the Kawal to the Mosul area, and was given a heros welcome by Yezidis along the route.

Layards relations with the community had started well, as he had been associated with Rassam, who had paid a debt on behalf of the Yezidis and allowed them to repay him, more or less at their convenience.15 Apart from a visit to Sinjar when he accompanied the Pasha of Mosul, whose soldiers were attacked by the Yezidis, his

14 By contrast, during the massacres of Yezidis in 1892-3 (see Guest 1993: 134-142

for an account), the British government felt it was diplomatically inappropriate to make a very strong plea to the Sublime Porte on behalf of a people who might be devil-worshippers. Canning had been dead for twelve years by this point; Layard died in 1894.

15 There is ample evidence of Rassams business sense and we may conjecture that

this arrangement would have been to his profit. Nevertheless he was offering a service to the Yezidis, and Layards account of his visit to the Autumn Festival (Layard 1849: 270-309) describes a genuine warmth of hospitality.

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encounters with the Yezidis were, by all accounts, friendly (1849: 309(25). Layard actually did believe that the Yezidis were devil(worshippers, but his fascination with them was strong enough to overcome any negative feelings that this might have inspired.16

In some ways the descriptions of Layard and Badger continue the stereotypes of Sheref Khan Bitlisi and Evliya elebi. All see the Yezidis as exotic and underline this by describing strange taboos or traditions. However, the discourse of Badger and Layard contains new and modern elements, quite apart from the civilising mission also seen in official nineteenth century Ottoman documents. They draw a contrast between the Yezidis religious reputation (which they and their predecessors find distasteful in varying degrees) and their conduct (which appears to be above reproach). The stereotype is thus already well established and dialogue with it is possible for outsiders and Yezidis alike. In addition, the Yezidis have become the object of scientific research, in the philological scholarly tradition. Layard wrote:

...their worship, their tenets,and their origin were alike a subject of mystery which I felt anxious to clear up as far as I was able. (1849: 271). Layards formulation of his interests point up the inherent difficulties

of taking Yezidism as an object of research using nineteenth century philological methods. Their worship is much less standardised and difficult to define than that of the orthodox religions. Respect and veneration of the Holy Beings is often expressed in everyday activities rather than large(scale ritual and it is difficult to say where worship ends and religious practice begins. Habits such as the veneration of sacred sites and objects were open to accusation of mere superstition without dogma to back them up. Tenets, or rather the absence of them, are a particular problem for those expecting the type of religious structures seen in the Religions of the Book. Even in the mid(twentieth century Roger Lescot expressed frustration at the Yezidis lack of consistency on the identity of the Seven Angels or Holy Beings, though this did not trouble Lady Drower who found them beautifully vague (1941: 24).17

16 In the first sentence of his chapter on the Yezidis, Layard (1849: 270) defines them

as the Yezidis, or Worshippers of the Devil. 17

Drower (1941: 24, 179, 180) records several instances where beliefs and practices as explained to her differ from those recorded by Lescot.


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The quest for Yezidi origins became a dominant preoccupation. Suggestions included non(Indo(European religions, Mandaean religion, and Tammuz(worship (Kreyenbroek 1995:4(5). Many of these hypotheses are hampered by lack of evidence and their interpretations of Yezidi traditions are suspect because they did not take full account of genre and context, or the form of the sacred texts and how they were used. Moreover, the methodology of traditional Orientalist scholarship, which would not only favour a quest for origins as a method of explaining contemporary phenomena, but would also be inclined towards a straightforward tree(shaped developmental model reaching from relatively unified root origins to outlying contemporary branches, does not sit particularly well with Yezidism.

Insofar as Yezidi origins can be determined, they are highly complex; Yezidism is not so much an organic, coherent tree as a rhizome drawing different types of nourishment from an enormous variety of sources.18 Both the prevailing orality of Yezidism and the flexibility of the belief in the reincarnation of Holy Beings make for a great openness to ideas and personalities from other religious traditions. Even if it were possible to know exactly where the Yezidis come from, much would remain unexplained without an understanding of the Kurdish tribal environment, the neighbouring cultures and the contemporary social and political forces at work.

The search for Ur(forms can be seen not only in the eagerness of outsiders to discover Yezidi origins but also in their search for authentic sacred texts. Naturally it was difficult for those accustomed to the study of Religions of the Book to imagine that a religion could function without a canonical scripture expressing essential truths. As mentioned above, such material as came from the oral tradition was not considered in the light of its genre (often poetic), but deemed lacking in logic. Typical is Badgers description of a Hymn of Sheikh Adi in Arabic as largely confused and unintelligible. (1852: 115). Little attention was paid to the ways in which the Yezidis understood, interpreted and used their traditions.

The saga of the search for the Sacred Books has been well told elsewhere (Guest 1993:146(163; Kreyenbroek 1995: 10(17). Some scholars acquired manuscripts from local Christians which contained

18 See Scalbert (2004: 372) for an apt application of this idea to Kurdish literature,

drawing on douard Glissants use (1990) of Deleuze and Guattaris ideas.

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historical and religious material;19 others (including Layard and Badger) searched more directly, procuring them from the Yezidis by more or less nefarious means. The culmination of this phase of Yezidi studies came with the publication of the Yezidi Sacred Books by Pre Anastase Marie de Saint(lie (1911), and in an academic edition, by Maximilian Bittner (1913). The authenticity of these as ancient canonical texts was convincingly challenged in 1916 by Alphonse Mingana.

The First World War brought about a brutal reordering of the Yezidis world, with mass Yezidi migrations from Kars, Van and elsewhere into Transcaucasia, and international frontiers bringing new tensions to the Jezira and Sinjar. Before this point, the techniques of scholarship had made an important advance ( the identification of Sheikh Adi as the founder of the Adawiyya order, Adi b. Musafir, by the French consul Siouffi in 1885, using historical sources.20 The historical identity of Sheikh Adi had long been uncertain. Evliya elebi records a Yezidi account that he had been a follower of Hussein who had deserted at Kerbela, and expresses a belief that he had been a companion of the Prophet.21 For many years, the assigning of a specific historical identity, with fixed dates, to this figure would have been of secondary importance to the Yezidis. Since in their world(view, holy beings could appear in different bodies at different periods, dates and specific identities were somewhat beside the point; the oral tradition contains a wealth of detail on more relevant matters, such as his deeds, his precepts and his relationship with his companions. Siouffis information was expanded on by Frank in 1911. However, definitive answers to the problem of origins and sacred texts remained elusive, though the identification of Sheikh Adi as a Sunni Muslim enabled the formulation of views such as that of Guidi (1932) and following him Lescot (1936), who sees a totally Islamic origin for the Yezidis, and also of Guest (1993). As Kreyenbroek points out, the ultimate effect of Guidis work was to place the study of Yezidism within the remit of Islamic studies, to which it could contribute little or nothing a

19 Broadly speaking there are two groups of these, mostly in Karshuni or Syriac and

associated with Jeremiah Shamir and Daud es-Saigh respectively (Allison 2004). 20

It is perhaps worth adding that Siouffis collection of orally transmitted Yezidi legends and myths was judged patchy and puerile (Kreyenbroek 1995: 6) by the editorial board of Journal Asiatique. This was no doubt due to their form, and perhaps also, as Kreyenbroek notes, an element of disdain for locally based research.

21 Evliya elebi (ed. Cevdet) vol. 5: 6-9, cited by Guest (1993: 51).


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scriptural faith without a scripturea form of Islam which was no longer either recognised or recognisable as such (1995: 16(17).

The British and French mandates in Iraq and Syria respectively produced a new actor in the outsider discourse on the communities of Kurdistan ( the Western government official. Some of these saw the Yezidis as an object of study, and could, as in the case of Roger Lescot and C.J. Edmonds, draw upon years of experience of life in the field and a wide acquaintance in the community.

Kreyenbroek says of Lescot that although his book made enormous contributions to our knowledge of Yezidi lore, ..[his] fundamental approach to his subject musthave furthered the decline of its study. The following infamous citation from his 1938 work shows all the frustrations and shortcomings of the standard Orientalist approach to Yezidi religiosity:

being of unbelievable slowness of mind, they do not properly understand the questions one asks them and answer without exactitude or precision. Moreover, they only have a very imperfect knowledge of their own religion. Numerous interviews with persons of all classes have enabled us to gauge how little the members of the sect are concerned with questions about the hereafter (1938: 7, tr. Kreyenbroek 1995: 17). The Yezidis do not understand concepts in the same way as their

Western interlocutor; therefore they must be stupid. However, Lescot is only giving very eloquent voice to a more general European Orientalist view of Yezidis. Besides, the idea that for any religion the teachings should be uniform and coherent, and that members of the religion should have knowledge of and interest in these teachings, is taken for granted by many Western scholars. As Kreyenbroek notes, a researcher who believes the Yezidis are not intelligent enough to understand their religion is using an inverse logic, and risks creating a sort of ideal Yezidism unknown to Yezidis but a worthy object of research (1995: 18).

Lescots words were published in 1938. Yezidism was to remain in this unfortunate position ( an un(Islamic Islamic faith, a descripturalised scriptural religion, a belief system incomprehensible to its own believers, until a more active partnership between researchers and Yezidis brought new life to the subject.

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PRE-TWENTIETH CENTURY INSIDER DISCOURSES

As the Yezidis were a non(literate, and even anti(literate,22 community for centuries, there is very little first(hand written evidence of the way they represented themselves to outsiders in the past. Religious texts and traditional wisdom were learned and transmitted orally by men of religion. Literacy was used to a limited extent, mostly for divination and magic or the making of handbooks for the use of men of religion ( listing their murids for example (Kreyenbroek and Rashow 2005: 42(3). However it was not, as far as we know, used for the teaching of groups, the writing of exegesis, or religious argumentation. The most visible Yezidi authority structures have long been those of Iraq, especially Sheikhan, home of such dignitaries as the Baba Sheikh, the Pesh Imam and the Mir, and the qewwal caste who recited sacred texts and took them out to the communities in festivals such as the New Year celebrations and the famous tawusgerran or circulation of the peacock where images of Melek Tawus were exposed in villages, sacred hymns sung, sermons preached, and alms received. However, such mechanisms could only exert limited control on daily practice and religious politics. A missionary source attests different social structures amongst Yezidis in Syria in the seventeenth century (Fuccaro 1999: 10(11). Sinjar has often functioned as an alternative centre to Sheikhan, challenging it for dominance of the community (Fuccaro, ibid. 135(144). Furthermore, as more information is collected and published on the traditions of the Caucasus Yezidis there is too wide a divergence in sacred texts and in practice from those of Iraq to be explained by the lack of contact and the atheist policy of the Soviet Union. It appears that the Caucasus Yezidis, many of whom came from nomadic tribes, followed the precepts of their own sheikhs and pirs well before they left Turkey. Moreover, accounts of such violations of taboo as marrying out seem to be more common ( or perhaps more discussed ( in the Caucasus (especially during the Soviet period) and Turkey than in Iraq.23

22 Reading and writing were forbidden by Yezidi law to all but a particular dynasty of

sheikhs. Both Layard and Badger describe the reliance of the Mir of Sheikhan on scribes for external business.

23 Meiselas (1997: 36) gives a Caucasian Yezidis account of his father asking for and

receiving his mother, who was Armenian. He does not present this as a particularly unusual event. Moreover, the oral tradition of Christians of the Mardin area in Turkey


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The few written sources emanating from the Yezidi community and aimed at outsiders are highly context(driven. The 1872 petition for instance, though described by Driver as the locus classicus on the subject of the Yezidi religion (1922: 210), was a document requesting exemption for the Yezidis from military service, and to that end, it cited many traditions and taboos which might be incompatible with service in the Ottoman army. Another document setting out various rules and taboos, (some supported by citations of religious figures) was produced in 1908 by Ismail Beg ol, a self(consciously modern and somewhat maverick member of Sheikhans princely family, at the request of the Yezidis in Armenia. This also had an express aim, that of extending Ismail Begs personal power(base among the Caucasian Yezidis. Ismail Beg produced a memoir in 1934, in which he expounded his views of Yezidi religion and culture.

Without mass literacy it was nigh impossible for non(lite Yezidis to address outsider publics. Although the Caucasus Yezidis were affected by mass Soviet literacy campaigns from the 1930s onwards, and used this to explore many aspects of their identity such as history and folklore, the publication of Yezidi religious material as such and the teaching of religion remained problematic (despite the publication of a small number of sacred hymns by the Celil brothers in 1978). Elsewhere, mass literacy took much longer to reach the Yezidis, who began to graduate in small numbers from Iraqi universities in the 1970s.

THE INTERTWINING OF INSIDER AND OUTSIDER DISCOURSE

In 1979 Khidir Silman and Khalil Jindy Rashow, two young university graduates from the Pir and Sheikh caste respectively, caused some controversy within the Yezidi community with their book zdiyat (Yezidism), which contained a number of sacred hymns transcribed from the oral tradition.24 This first generation of Yezidis to have received a modern education actively began to produce works on Yezidism aimed at a larger public, undertook partnerships with non(Yezidi scholars, and

preserves accounts of marriages between Christians and Yezidis. (I am indebted to Dr. Andrew Palmer for this information).

24 Soon afterwards they followed this with publications on Yezidi village customs and

the folklore of Sheikhan.

CHRISTINE ALLISON

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in recent years also pioneered religious education programmes in schools.

European essentialist and primordialist ideas of the origins and development of ethnic groups had found fertile ground in the Ottoman empire (whose cultures ascribed a high importance to genealogy) before the First World War.25 This has persisted and theories once posed by European writers on the origins of specific ethnic groups can be found in the contemporary discourse of Yezidis, Christians and Kurds. The new nationalisms of the area, whether Turkish, Kurdish, or Syrian/Assyrian, all require accounts of origin. Accounts of Yezidi origins were particularly malleable to varying political agendas. In the 1970s the Baathist government sponsored initiatives (in which certain Yezidi notables participated) to declare the Yezidis Ummayyads, as an aid to general Arabisation initiatives in the North of Iraq. This could not have been placed on a scientific basis without the work of Guidi and those who followed him.

The idea that Yezidis came from Zoroastrian origins, which gained ground a little later, had been suggested both by Badger and by the Bedir Khan brothers, who were among the founding fathers of Kurdish nationalism (Strohmeier 2003: 167). This Iranian and non(Islamic origin found favour with some lite Yezidis ( Prince Muawiya wrote a book on the subject ( and later in PKK discourse. Naturally an important aspect of these debates is ownership of the Yezidis by more powerful outside groups. If Ummayads, they belonged to the Arabs, if the original Kurdish religion (thus Mesud Barzani in the early 1990s) they belong to the Kurds.

For the Yezidis themselves, the essentialist theorising of social scientists and the traditional preoccupation with genealogy and the purity of Yezidi blood made happy bedfellows. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Kurdish autonomous zone in 1991, Yezidis have been enormously active in public discussion and debate, on origins and other matters. The Lalesh centres of Northern Iraq, closely linked to the KDP, and the community centres of Armenia, Georgia, Russia and Germany offer fora for debate and publish articles and books. Discussion also takes place on television and the Internet. Work on the question of origins, a necessary strategic essentialism in the

25 For a discussion of the impact of European, particularly German, science on

Ottoman social planning see Dndar (2006: 34-61).


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current political climate, has produced a variety of results. In the Caucasus, touched by Armenian politics and the Karabagh war, a separate ethnicity has been posited (Tamoyan 2001). Even in Iraqi Kurdistan the alignment with the KDP (or even the PKK) party line has not been straightforward with not only Zoroastrianism but also an Iranian form of Mithraism discussed, and some Sinjaris insisting on a separate ethnic identity; other origins, such as Sumerian, have been suggested. (Spt: forthcoming). A very important aspect of the problem of origins for the Yezidis is the role of Sheikh Adi ( given that the Yezidis do not see themselves as Muslims, and that it is known Sheikh Adi was a Muslim, is he to be seen as a founder or reformer and how should his role be judged? 26

The discussions of certain subjects, especially practical ones such as marriage laws, show shifts in traditional patterns of authority, especially textual authority. For some years now, the Yezidis have felt the need for a scriptural religion and have collected and published many sacred texts.27

These texts are themselves now used in arguments to justify or prohibit certain practices. Whereas in the past the authority rested with the bearer of the tradition, who would advise on practice, it now resides more and more in the text. (Kreyenbroek and Rashow 2005: 46). Under most circumstances it is the published variant of the text which is authoritative, rather than those still in the oral domain. Once written, the texts are subject to new methods of analysis, often by new actors, who aim for a more modern formulation (Spt 2005: 76(7).

Formulating the religion in a form which shows, as Layard might say, tenets is a priority for Yezidis in the diaspora, faced with the necessity of explaining their religion to their neighbours. In Germany Yezidi parents are often unable to explain the religion to their children whose thinking on what a religion should be is consonant with their European schooling (Kreyenbroek: forthcoming). Also the idea that Yezidism

26 Cf. the opinion of a prominent pir from Iraq that Sheikh Adi ruined our religion ,

expressed in the 1990s. This trend has continued to grow with a tendency to view Sheikh Adi as a reformer, and Yezidism as having two phases, pre-and post-Sheikh Adi (Spt 2005: 78).

27 The periodical Deng zidiyan published a declaration made by Mir TeWsin Beg on

his visit to Oldenburg, announcing an initiative to collect sacred texts (Deng zidiyan 6+7, 1997). See Kreyenbroek and Rashow (2005: 40) for a more ancient belief in a written Yezidi Sacred Book.

CHRISTINE ALLISON

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should be consistent and that there should be teachings known to every Yezidi ( an idea which would have made perfect sense to Layard and Badger ( has gained enormous currency. For many modern Yezidis there can be only one correct answer to a question such as Do Yezidis believe the Sacred Hymns came down from heaven? Yezidis have accordingly designed programmes of religious education, not only for those diaspora communities who feel their identity threatened, but also in the schools of the Kurdish autonomous region (Dulz, Hajo and Savelsberg, this volume).

It is likely that the Caucasian community takes a subtly different position on many of these issues. They seem to have had a more portable Yezidism, perhaps because of a nomadic tribal past, with their worship centred around a household shrine (the str) and very close links to ones own clan sheikhs (see Omarxali, this volume) and thus a less centralised authority structure. Moreover, they have been engaged in the negotiation between tradition and modernity from the first years of the Soviet Union. Although in the diaspora they have much in common with the Yezidis from Kurdistan ( especially concerning such issues as marrying out and the scattering of communities ( other challenges, such as the conflict over whether the Yezidis are Kurds are not, tend to dominate. However, more research is needed into the similarities and differences between the communities to make such statements with certainty.

Over the last generation many Yezidis have entered into active partnership with outsider scholars. Some have collaborated on specific projects based in Western universities, working as consultants or research assistants. Younger researchers, trained in prestigious universities, are applying their expertise to the study of their community or their religion. (These professionals are to be distinguished from the new local experts as described by Spt, who have read a great deal of material but sometimes lack the disciplinary framework to ground their theories convincingly). Almost all Yezidis, in my experience, have been very open to talking to outsiders; for some, this willingness to talk to academics and journalists from abroad is a survival strategy in the face of immediate threats.

This special issue of the Journal of Kurdish Studies contains articles by some of the foremost specialists currently working in the field,


19

including a number of younger scholars.28 This publication comes at a point when the community faces many challenges at home and in the diaspora. Even in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, where they receive political support, the Yezidis suffer from economic disadvantage and from everyday discrimination, as Dulz, Hajo and Savelsberg make clear. In the diaspora, other problems are more apparent. The mental health of many Yezidis is affected by violent traumatic memories from the homeland, which are very difficult for the community to manage in the new culture of the diaspora; Kizilhan discusses the strategies available, from the perspective of a psychologist. Ackermann, who has specialised in studying Yezidi communities in the diaspora, offers a discussion of a new forum, that of the Internet, which offers new opportunities of communication, empowering the young in particular. Kreyenbroek, on the other hand, focuses not on projections of the future but on traditional Yezidi views of the past, in his discussion of discourses of history. Akyildiz continues the theme of heritage, but describes a much more material form of it in her discussion of Yezidi architecture, making a comparison across Iraq, Eastern Turkey and the Caucasus. For Omarxali it is the Yezidism of the Caucasus, and in particular its authority structures and traditional loyalties, which are the focus of discussion. Bailey also writes about the Caucasus Yezidis, who are perhaps unique amongst Kurmanji speakers in having had Kurdish taught in many schools since the 1950s, from the point of view of linguistic survival. Finally Dehqans article, which presents a newly(found manuscript of a sixteenth(century text giving Muslim comments on Yezidis, not only illustrates the hardships Yezidis had to face due to their status under Islamic law, but also reminds us of how much historical material may remain to be discovered. The volume as a whole is dedicated to the memory of Maria T. OShea, an innovative scholar and friend to Yezidis, among numerous others.

Although the current state of Yezidi studies has many positive aspects by comparison with that of previous generations, in particular the rapprochement between Yezidis and outsider scholars, the two groups still have much to divide them. Yezidi communities everywhere face significant social, economic and political problems. Yezidi scholars may find themselves witnesses to the impoverishment of Yezidism, through

28 The views expressed in the articles are those of the writers rather than the editorial team of JKS.

CHRISTINE ALLISON

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the cleansing of many beliefs and practices, to accomplish the unification and coherence which the political situation requires. Outsider scholars, like their predecessors, do not distance themselves from the practical problems facing the Yezidi community though they try to face these with a less paternalistic attitude. Having tried to move away from exoticism, they find themselves faced with all the problems of representing the subaltern other, sometimes to a mass media interested primarily in devil(worship and honour killings. Scholars from both sides know that their writings are much more likely to be read in the community than before, and may find their way into community discourse, or into the discourses of political enemies, with unpredictable consequences.

There is no denying that the perspectives and aims of Yezidis and outsider scholars are very different, and that there is tension on both sides. Neither the Yezidis nor non(Yezidi scholars are in a position to see the future with any clarity. If Yezidism does not continue to adapt to its environment, especially in the diaspora, in thirty years time the community is likely to have decreased enormously in number. Many community elders are worried that it may die out altogether, and some are beginning to ponder large(scale reform of such previously sacrosanct areas as the endogamy laws. However, such radical strategies may well provoke a schism which would weaken the community further. Given the rapprochement and dialogue which have become the norm, one hopes that outsider scholars will be better equipped to support the Yezidi community as it faces these complex challenges.

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