Contrary to inaccurate reports, the Yazidis are a Kurdish religious group and not an ethnic group (following the fall of Saddām Hussein in 2003, the Kurds asked for the Yazidis to be entirely recognise as belonging to their people). The religious community professing Yazidism consists of between 200,000 and 300,000 people. The main group of 150,000 lives in two Iraqi areas, the aforementioned Jebel Sinjar mountain near the border with Syria and the districts of  Badinan (or Shaykhān) and Dohuk (in the northeast of the country), as well as in the Mosul area (ancient Nineveh, a territory that together with Kirkuk is geographically part of southern Kurdistan. This area is of enormous strategic importance and provides 75% of Iraq’s oil exports, now partly controlled by ISIS, which occupied the Mosul area in 2014, later freed by U.S troops). At least 50,000 live in the former USSR (Armenia and the Tbilisi area in Georgia), but there are also others in Syria especially around Aleppo (about 5,000 on Mount Simeon), and finally some also living in various parts of Iran. This religious group lives in all areas in which Kurds are the local majority, and therefore throughout Kurdistan, the vast plateau encompassing five countries (Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and former Soviet Armenia). This region also includes the upper reaches of the Euphrates and the Tigris, Lakes Van and Urmia and the Zagros and Taurus mountains with the legendary Mount Ararat and Mesopotamia as its northern and southern borders. Finally, it is estimated that about 50,000 Yazidis, mainly coming from Turkey where they were greatly discriminated against,  emigrated to western Europe during the last decades of the 20th century in search of asylum and jobs, settling above all in Germany where there are now about 40,000. There are a number of account on Facebook belonging to Yazidi groups or individuals, but, understandably, they are reluctant to accept ‘friends’.
 According to some scholars, the word “Yazidi”, or “Ezidi” is derived from the Persian city of Yazd, or from the Persian word “Yazdan”, which means “God” (in the original language Yezidi, members of this religious group speak Kurdish, a dialect similar to Persian from which they have adopted many words). In  “The Yezidis’ Religion” – a now one hundred year old essay of which there is a recent reprint  – Giuseppe Furlani (1885-1962), an Assyriologist  and historian of religions following in the footsteps of the legendary Raffaele Pettazzoni (the Italian founder of this discipline based on a historical-comparative model), tends towards this hypothesis, supported at the time by the Yazidis themselves. This does not exclude another authoritative hypothesis that links the word “Yazidisyyah” to the presence in the Zoroastrian religion (from which Yazidism has taken a great deal) of beings “worthy of adoration”, more specifically angels who make known God’s will to humankind. They are called “Yazada” in the Avestan language – the language of the “Avesta”, the religion’s Holy Book, and used as the liturgical language in Zoroastrianism – or “Ized” in proto-Persian. Finally, one must not forget the historical existence of Yazid, second caliph of the Omayyad dynasty that reigned in Damascus from 60 to 64 of the Hegira (680-683 AD). According to a Yazidi tradition (with no historical evidence),Yazid had at a certain point abandoned Islam to embrace the new faith, which, from then on, carried his name.

Little is known about the specific origins of this community of believers. One corroborated tradition believes they mostly came from what is now north-western Iraq, from south-eastern Anatolia (currently the provinces of Diyarbakir and Mardin) and from Syria (where the Kurdish ethnic group they belong to is present in northeast regions), and it is probable they originally spoke Arabic. There are many traditions concerning the origins of their religion, and, unlike Islam, are based on very few historical references.

The Yazidi religion, although basically monotheistic, has fundamentally syncretistic characteristics, which favour the appearance of various supernatural beings, partly explaining the presence of various traditions of origin. Unlike Christianity and more than in Islam, its esoteric characteristics are powerful, with a more authentic nucleus only partially known to expert religious historians and sociologists.  Yazidis believe in a primordial God, who created – or became – the universe, making Himself manifest by emanation (a strong link with both Gnosticism and Plotinus’ Neoplatonism) in Seven Holy Angels (important figures both in the three ‘Religions of the Book’ and Zoroastrianism). The most important angel is Melek Tawus and is the central figure in Yazidism, an angel that looks like a peacock (Melek means “Angel”, and Tawus means “Peacock”), “the active essence of God”. But what role did this angel play in Yazidi mythology?

This angel was in reality Lucifer, the rebel angel who led the proud angels’ revolt against God (this event linked to the beginnings of the universe is present in various versions in a number of religions including that of the ancient Greeks, in which the Titans revolt against Zeus). According to the Yazidis, however, Melek (just like the Islamic Lucifer Iblis in Islam) is not as evil as in the Jewish and Christian religions. Banished from paradise, the Peacock Angel, instead, “redeemed himself from his fall. After he repented, he wept for 7,000 years, his tears filling seven jars, which then quenched the fires of hell”. Having fallen to earth, Melek, in the form of a peacock (an animal considered sacred or at least worthy of special respect in almost all western Asia, and once also the famous symbol of the Iranian monarchy) was found and lovingly looked after by the shepherd Yezid (this is a common name in the Islamic world), almost a sort of Middle Eastern “Faustolus shepherd”. According to this founding myth, once recovered, Melek presented himself to the shepherd in an ambiguous manner, as the sower of unhappiness and discord among human beings (hence the Greek “diabolos”), but also as a being in need of assistance, asking humankind for compassion as far as evil is concerned, a reference to the help received from Yezid. All this explains the great hostility Muslims feel for the Yazidis, considered devil-worshippers, while the Yazidis instead describe themselves as “those who adore angels” and above all Melek. One must add that Melek is certainly not the Satan of the Jews and the Christians, or the Shaytan of Muslims, but rather a Lucifer in the accepted meaning (hence an angle “bearer of light”, as venerated between the 19th and 20th centuries, also by some Masonic observances that were for this reason – mistakenly – considered satanic by the Church). “It is he who created the material world,” explains a Yazidi quoted by the scholar of religions Danilo Arona, at a gathering of believers held in December to commemorate the birth of the shepherd Yezid and the winter solstice, already so dear to Mithraism and other very ancient forms of worship. (This is a partial reflection of the dualistic vision of the universe based on two divinities, or on two opposing principles, relentless enemies, Good and Evil, positive spirit and negative and basically evil matter, which from Zoroastrianism and  Mandaenism then was passed on to Manichaeism, to then permeate various forms of Christianity itself or similar religions ranging from the Cathars to Jehovah’s Witnesses, Editor’s Note). The world was created “Using dismembered parts of the cosmic egg, the Pearl, in which God once lived, the universal spirit” (these are instead reflections of ancient Greek myths such as those sung by Hesiod in the “Theogony”). Although permeated with Judeo-Cristian elements, the Yazidis’ religious philosophy denies the existence of evil and evilness, at least as an unconnected entity or a simple negative force (rejecting therefore the idea of sin, the devil and hell). Evil arises from human beings’ mistaken understanding of the nature of Melek (a concept that strangely reminds one of Seneca’s famous statements that great evil does not so much lie in things, but rather our mistaken assessment of them). In the most serious cases, it is explained that evil is present in the world because human beings can, in any case, inadvertently commit evil actions, resulting in evil’s victory. Human disobedience to divine law is expiated through metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls already dear to ancient eastern forms of worship and Pythagorean doctrine, which allow the progressive purification of the spirit (as already happened to Lucifer/Melek, who fell to earth and transmigrated into the body of a peacock). The righteous instead, as in Judaism, are destined to Paradise.   
 The form of Yazidism currently known is the result of the predictions made by Adī Hakkārī, or Adī b. Musāfir, a theologian and religious man who lived in the 12th century (thus a contemporary of the Jewish Aristotelian Maimonides and the Arab Al Ghazali). A presumed descendent of the Omayyad dynasty, Musafir studied in Baghdad under Abū l-Khayr Ammād al-Dabbās. He later settled near Mosul, where he started his preaching. The area was inhabited by nomadic Kurds who professed a non-Islamic and very ancient religion. Musāfir reformed it (introducing to a great extent vocabulary taken from Islam). Considered by his followers as an “emissary” or a saviour, following his death his soul was said to have joined that of the Peacock Angel through transmigration. Since then,  Musāfir’s grave in Lālish (north of Mosul) has been the destination of a devotional pilgrimage for all Yazidis – just like Mecca for Muslims. (In his essay, Furlani, however, considers the convergence between Yazidism and Musafir purely random, recalling that he was a Muslim saint and a Sufi).

This pilgrimage takes place once a year and lasts six days; during the celebration the faithful immerse themselves in the water of a river, and also sacrifice bulls, just as the Assyrians and the followers of Mithraism did. Many scholars also agree on the identification between Adi b. Musafir and the legendary Seyh (or Shaykh) Adi, a character also mentioned in the most ancient Yazidi texts as the founder, or the reformer, of this religion, who lived led to the most incredible legends, just as happened with Muslims and Mohammed. In practice – according to the anthropologist Riccardo Cecchini, an expert researcher on extra-European religions – in Yazidism, God, the Peacock and Adi appear to be perceived as a Trinity; between them and humankind there are a myriad of intermediate beings with supernatural characteristics such as angels, saints etc. It is once again Furlani who provides the amazing number of 124,000 (!) prophets acknowledged by the Yazidis, the first of which in order of time is Adam, and also includes Jesus Christ.

Finally, the Yazidi religion also includes various practices of Jewish or Islamic origin, such as holy ablutions, the prohibition of certain foods, circumcision (widespread but not compulsory), fasting and the interpretation of dreams. Yazidi society has a hierarchical organisation, rather like Islam after the initial, turbulent centuries of expansion, and has a secular leader called the “Emir” (Amīr), and a religious leader called “sheik” (Shaykh). The Emir, who lives in Ba’adra (65 km north of Mosul), is the Yazidis’ representative to the Iraqi public authorities. He has the power to appoint the Sheikh who instead lives in the Sinjar and, in addition to being the supreme religious leader, is also the infallible authority as far as the interpretation of Holy Scriptures is concerned. These scriptures are the “Kitāb al-ilwa” (“Book of Revelations”) and the “Mishefa Res” (“Black Book” in Kurdish), both written in the Kurdish Kurmanji dialect.

Yazidis are monogamous although, in some rare cases, their leaders are permitted to have more than one wife. Children are “baptised” at birth, there is the “fractio panis” typical of Christianity and it is the custom to respectfully visit some well-known Christian churches.

In the 14th century, important Kurdish tribes, whose area of influences even extended to Turkey, are quoted for the first time in historical sources as “Yazidi”. Since then, various sources mention their qualities and their high level of tolerance as far as other cultures and religions are concerned. However, considering themselves as Adam’s only real descendants (they supposedly descend from twins who were in turn born from a jar containing the seed of the first man), Yazidis tend to only live among themselves, rather like Jews belonging to more orthodox communities, and do not allow conversions or interreligious marriage, not even with Muslim Kurds. The most serious punishment for a believer is to be expelled from the community (this would result in losing one’s soul); although there have been cases involving physical violence, as in the case involving the 17-year-old Kurdish Yazidi girl Du’a Khalil Aswad, who was stoned and kicked to death in April 2007 for having been seen with a boy belonging to a different ethnic group.

Yazidi resistance to the Arab conquerors who invaded Mosul in the first turbulent phase of Islamic expansion in the 7th century went down in history. Mossul (since then Mosul, in Arabic) was one of the most important Yazidi cities, set on the Tigris river and at the feet of the Kurdistan mountains, a compulsory passage way for caravans travelling from Central Asia towards Syria, Anatolia and the Mediterranean. Although under Muslim power, the Yazidis remained unscathed by the domination of the Turkish-Seljuq Zengid and the Kurdish-Muslim Ayyubid dynasties (12th -14th centuries), and that of the Ottomans who fought for centuries for control over the city. Hulegu’s Mongols, who after a brief siege had taken Baghdad in 1258, had been obliged to keep Mosul under siege for a whole year. In the centuries that followed, the Yazidis were harshly persecuted by the Ottomans and then by the Turkish government. Just as was to happen two years later to the Armenians, in 1892 they risked extinction for the first time when, due to persecution policies against minorities decided by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Ottoman troops penetrated the Lalish Valley and killed thousands with their swords also destroying Shaykh Adī’s Mausoleum.

Persecutions resumed in the second half of the 20th century. The first occurred in 1957 during the last but one year of the reign of Faisal II. Following the bloody coup of 1958 when Iraq became a republic, Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr, the first president of the Iraqi Baath Party in power after another coup in 1968, continued their persecution in 1969 and 1975.

During Saddām Hussein’s regime, the Yazidis were classified as “Arabs” so as to falsify the ethnic balance in the region, in spite of the fact that the regime socially and culturally discriminated against them and alienated them. In 1987-1988, the dictator also ordered their deportation. Tens of thousands of Yazidis were obliged to move hundreds of kilometres to the west to their “Mussa Dagh”, the Jebel Sinjar mountainous area near the border with Syria (their historical place of origin). A German Member of the European Parliament, Feleknas Uca, was the only MP of Yazidi origin until the first free elections held in Iraq in 2005.
And so we come to 2014, when the Mosul/Nineveh plains were attacked by Sunni extremists belonging to ISIS. Following the anti-Yazidi persecutions implemented by “Islamic State”, the United Nations – speaking explicitly of genocide – estimates that of the Yazidis living in Iraq (most of them members of the Kurdish Communist Party) 5,000 were killed and between 5,000 and 7,000 captured and sold as slaves. A further 50,000 were obliged to abandon the region to avoid sharing this fate. In August 2014, the Kurdish news agency “Rudaw” published the heartfelt appeal to the West made a 24-year-old Yazidi girl who, imprisoned by ISIS together with other women, amazingly managed to make herself heard from a prison in the county of Baaji, in the province of Mosul (where jihadists make their prisoners available to emirs every day). On August 30th, ISIS’ medieval horror – similar to what for some time has been spreading in Nigeria with Boko Haram – continues to be seen thanks to the photographs that the Lebanese Arab activist Brigitte Gabriel manages to Tweet. Once again near Mosul, Yazidi women under the age of 35 kidnapped wearing the full veil, in chains and threatened by armed men are loaded onto trucks and taken to the market to be sold as slaves. A year later, in September 2015, an 18-year-old Yazidi girl who managed to flee from ISIS prisons with other women published a book in France entitled “Esclave de Daech”, narrating in detail their petrifying experience (women who refuse to submit to the jihadists’ demands are not killed, but tortured in every imaginable way, even obliged to drink water contaminated with dead mice). On November 14th , Kurdish Peshmerga discovered a central-American styled mass grave in Iraq containing the bodies of 80 Yazidi girls. The next day, in Shingal, south of Sinjar, another mass grave was discovered containing the bodies of 50 Yazidi men. Two days earlier, however, on November 13th, almost a year and a half after the so-called Islamic caliphate had been announced by Al-Baghdadi (June 2014), the president of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, was able to officially announce that the offensive carried out by Kurdish Peshmerga and Kurdish-Iraqi troops, with support from United States troops, had managed to defeat ISIS for the first time, freeing Mosul as well as Sinjar.

So what action will be taken by the Yazidis, a group whose proud determination has been mentioned in official speeches also by the eternal “allies-rivals” Obama and Putin, in the chaos of the Middle Eastern chessboard? What action will the international community take in order to stop this massacre? Will their ability to fight shown once again in these situations at last guarantee them greater dignity and safety, while fully respecting their identity and culture?

Translated by Francesca Simmons