In three years, the sanctuary would be overrun with refugees, escapees of the siege on Mount Sinjar and other acts of genocidal violence in the province. ISIS made a particular target of the non-Muslim villages, killing thousands of Yazidi men, selling thousands of women as slaves.
In a plain room toward the outside, I joined the group crowding around a lumpy wall like basketball players around the key before a free throw. Fellow visitors, Yazidi Kurds making the pilgrimage from their home in Sweden, knew what to do, and I watched as a man in a gray sweater closed his eyes and tossed a blanket with one hand (remember: underhand) with his wife and small daughters looking on, riveted. A girl in a striped Hello Kitty shirt was standing partway up the wall to retrieve it. If the blanket stuck atop a rounded shelf about ten feet high, the thrower’s wish would come true. Three tries. Mulligans allowed.
Success! At least for the Swedish family; Sue and Charlotte were less lucky, and I remember opening my eyes to watch the blanket slide cruelly off the wall’s protuberance after each of my vain entreaties to the Yazidi angels.
So we traded answers to prayers for answers to questions, reuniting with Baba Chawish at the edge of the sanctuary. Only later did I learn what his name meant: it was an office, not his given name, and it established him as the guardian of the sanctuary. The Baba Chawish is appointed by the Mir, literally “prince,” the highest Yazidi authority in matters both civil and religious. According to Kreyenbroek and Rashow, “Theoretically, at least, the Mir is the supreme living source of spiritual and temporal authority, the earthly vicegerent of Melek Tawus and Sheikh Adi.” The home of the Mir is in nearby Baadre.
He brought us into a comfortable room with an upright air conditioner and uninterrupted couches along all four walls. A man appeared from a kitchen carrying a tea tray.
“When did the religion start?” I asked—a softball as if I had a fastball.
“We don’t have any certainty,” he said. I could have listened to him read the Terms and Conditions of a thousand banking apps. In his Arabic, it seemed he had shaved away every harsh sound and replaced it with butter. “We don’t know when the world was created, or Adam’s age. We don’t know.”
In Yazidi hymns the word mystery is an exclusively positive term that refers to the souls of the angels or other holy beings, or sources of divine power, or the absolute understanding man seeks. Because Yazidi texts are written in Iraqi Kurds’ native language, the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, the use of their word sur, “mystery, secret” (a cognate in Turkish and Arabic and Persian), seems to imply an acceptance of the incomprehensible. In my discussions of faith with new acquaintances, I knew I could always rely on this uncertainty: Well, no one can say they fully understand God, right? Across the Middle East, everyone always agreed. There is great solidarity in mutual confuddlement.
The district of Sheikhan, “Land of Sheikhs,” where Lalish is nestled, is the Yazidi homeland and heartland. “Before it was all Yazidis,” Baba Chawish said coolly, with a Northern Kurdish accent. “Syrian, Turkish, Iraq, Irani, Kurds—before it was all Yazidis. But the attack of Islam—what’s it called, ‘al-Fatuhat al-Islamiyya?’—replaced the religion and it became Islam, but the language stayed.
“We stayed. In caves, in mountains, in areas they didn’t reach, we stayed. All the rest, killed, and the religion became Islam.” Metal spoons clinked in armud glasses of apricot tea. Charlotte translated simple summaries for Sue.
“The four nations of Kurdistan, all of them were Yazidi. And Islam came and said . . .” Baba Chawish didn’t finish the story. “Violence of the sword,” he explained. There was no sadness left in this destruction; he spoke as if this were something he thought about always, or not at all.
There is no absolute data for Yazidi populations. A report commissioned by the UNHCR cites worldwide estimates ranging from less than two hundred thousand to more than a million. Communities in Iraq, mostly in Sheikhan and the Sinjar District near Mosul, are the majority, with numbers in the tens of thousands in Turkey, Syria, Armenia, and Georgia. Baba Chawish also mentioned Russia and Ukraine. He didn’t claim that Yazidis were ever the only population in Kurdistan, but he distinguished them from non-Kurdish Christians—descended from ancient Iranian roots rather than ancient Mesopotamian ones. In fact, the sanctuary of Lalish (since destroyed and rebuilt) was once a Christian monastery. Kreyenbroek writes that the Baba Chawish “represents” the monk who oversaw that cloister.
He recalled that calm moment in history. “They were there, Christians, Jews, even them. Everyone just did his work; there was work. Each one was on his way—all that’s important for religion is God; each religion is a path, but every path worships God. It’s all the same path.”
While the Yazidi origin story is unique, the Bible and the Quran are both considered holy books and the lion’s share of Abrahamic stories are compatible with Yazidism. Yazidis deeply respect Jesus and Moses and Muhammad (“124,000 Prophets have come and gone,” it reads in the Hymn of Babeke Omera). These traditions are protected by the same seven angels, our host explained, rattling off their names automatically. Azra’il, Jibra’il, Mikha’il, Darda’il, Shimna’il, Israfil, Azazil.
Although I could find no cognate counterpart for Shimna’il in other traditions, the other names are familiar in Hebrew and Arabic. But the source of much confusion—of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western obsession with alleged “devil worshippers”—can be traced to the Yazidis’ relation to the first and last angels on Baba Chawish’s list. While all seven are linked with a particular Yazidi leader believed to be their incarnation, Azra’il and Azazil—names affiliated in other religions with the Angel of Death and with Satan—may be one and the same, both used as monikers for Melek Tawus, the Peacock King. Melek Tawus is certainly the character Muslims recognize as Iblis, later known as The Shaitan, the worst of all creatures that defied God. But their stories have one crucial difference. God reacts differently in the Muslim and Yazidi tellings. Baba Chawish started from the beginning:
Tawus Melek is a king at the side of God. He is a deputy of God, Lord of the Worlds. Before Adam, God said, “Do not worship anyone but me.” The Angels were worshiping god. After 400 years, God made Adam and said, “Worship Adam.” God said to the angels, “You must worship Adam.” Six of them knelt to Adam, but Tawus Melek said “I will not kneel.”
So God, Lord of the worlds said to Tawus Melek, “Why do you not kneel?” He said, “Before 400 years, you said to us ‘Do not worship anyone but God, Lord of the worlds.’ This is what is in my mind.” He said, “You created Adam from clay. I do not kneel to that which is from clay—I kneel only to Your Name. Prostration is but for you, for the Lord of the worlds. I do not prostrate to things made of Clay.” And Adam was made from clay.
And God said, “You are a guide, to be leader of angels.”
Charlotte made the connection—in mainstream Islam, Iblis answers God, “I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire and him from clay.” In this seventh Sura of the Quran called Al-A‘raf, “The Heights,” God responds, “Get out, for thou art of the meanest [of creatures].”
For Muslims, this fall from grace is crucial. Iblis was not an angel—he was a jinni, a spirit that God once held in special esteem. (Melek Tawus was also created apart from the angels.) Islamic tradition says jinni and men are given free will, while angels are not, and Iblis, the original shaitan, was eternally punished for willing against God. The Arabic shaitan is borrowed from the original Hebrew, ha-Satan, “the Opposer.”
The only difference is that for Yazidis, this opposition is not such a bad thing. The Peacock King may have satan-ed, but he was no Satan.
Baba Chawish held his glass steadily on the plate. “You say this, but this word is a mistake if you say it to him—he is an angel. This word is not good. The story in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, the word they say to God is an error if you are consistent with the Truth. Why is it an error?” The guardian of the sanctuary didn’t pause for us to answer.
“He is an angel. If one is bigger than you, it is an error to say something like that to him, no? How can you call someone bigger than you a bad word like that? It’s criminal.”
Sir Layard never heard this word in Lalish during his nineteenth-century exploration: “The name of the Evil spirit is, however, never mentioned; and any illusion to it by others so vexes and irritates them, that it is said they have put to death persons who have wantonly outraged their feelings by its use.” (He continues to use “Satan” to describe the object of Yazidi affection.)
Melek Tawus is a king, approved by God and superior to our judgment. Yet his thought process is not beyond our comprehension, and his resistance is considered deeply important to Yazidis. Melek Tawus’s choice indicates the power each individual has in making his own decisions; here are strong traces of Manichaeism, the binary struggle of light against dark. “I know a path not good and good,” Baba Chawish said. “Everyone is in his own hands, the issue is with the individual.”
In Yazidism, this is especially true. The religious experience cannot (and arguably should not) be communalized as it is in the practice of many other faiths. Rumors of the existence of sacred texts began to swirl around the community in the wake of the first Western explorations. As curiosity mounted, texts miraculously began to appear. A Christian dealer of old books began dealing Arabic translations of the intriguingly titled Jilwe (“Illumination,” or “Revelation”) and the Meshaf Resh (“Black Book”). In the early twentieth century, a Catholic priest claimed to have discovered the originals in ancient Kurdish, and they were promptly published by a German scholar and disseminated in various renderings around the world. But they were forgeries. The “original” language was a Kurdish dialect unknown to Yazidis, and while many of the stories rang true, their status as scripture was rescinded.
The heart of the written tradition today is in the Qewls, the sacred hymns that were documented over centuries as Yazidism was codified. These are recited or performed to music by a Qewwal, always an unordained Yazidi from one of two particular tribes. Until recently, only the Qewwals had access to the hymns—literacy was discouraged among the general population, supposedly by virtue of a cultural taboo against the common folk gaining access to higher truths. For the community, Yazidism was a wholly oral institution.
Most hymns allude to narratives known as chirok that have no written basis and are passed down from generation to generation through storytelling. Rashow and Kreyenbroek explain: “Both genres come together in the mishabet or ‘sermon,’ in which a Qewwal normally recites part of a hymn, tells the relevant story in prose, and generally draws some moral conclusions.”
Still, the belief in the two ersatz holy books has not fully dissolved. Yazidis themselves may now believe in lost or stolen texts by those names. In 2006, traveler and journalist Michael Totten spoke with the Baba Sheikh, the high authority of all mystical teachers, appointed by the prince and known as the Old Man of the Sanctuary. Totten recounts his assertions: “Our book is called The Black Book. It is written in gold. The book is in Britain. They took our book. That is why the British have science and education. The book came from the sky.”
As Kreyenbroek told me:
As to the fact that the Baba Sheikh believes in a lost Black Book, it is typical of largely oral cultures (at least in the Iranian-speaking sphere) that they believe that the ancients, who were so much better that they are, naturally had written books. Many traditional Yezidis believe this, but that does not necessarily make it true.
The Quran is read by many Muslims as the exact word of God as revealed directly to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel (in Arabic). Muhammad, who grew up illiterate, would memorize the chapters and relate them later to a scribe. The Torah has similar origins: God dictated the Torah directly to Moses to transcribe. While all religious Christians would believe the words in the New Testament are divinely inspired, branches of Christianity differ in their exact assessment: in 1978, American Evangelicals issued the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (“Scripture is without error or fault . . .”), while the Presbyterian Church around the corner from where I grew up taught that the Bible can still be infallible without all the details being factually correct.
For Yazidis not pining for that certainty, the lack of an absolute text read in public and private is twofold: it encourages the Sufi ideal of individual closeness with God and it unites the community in mutual understanding that is refreshed every generation by living people. But as literacy expands, and young Yazidis avoid the archaic profession of a Qewwal, the written word becomes increasingly important.
IN LALISH, HISTORY IS still more tangible. Yazidis in the diaspora are called to visit Lalish at least once in their lifetime, just like Muslims are to Mecca. Yazidis around the world once even prayed in the direction of the sanctuary. (They now pray toward the sun.) At one time, the Yazidi scholars say, “the early community may have regarded Lalish as ‘essentially’ identical with the holy places in and around Mecca in the same way as two distinct historical figures may be seen as incarnations of the same ‘mystery’ or ‘essence.’ ”
The “mystery” of Mount Arafat, where Muhammad gave his Farewell Sermon, simultaneously sanctified Mount Erafat in Lalish. On the day hajis visit this mountain in Mecca, high Yazidi religious officials climb their Erafat. The Zemzem Spring, then, not only sprung from Mecca—it was the same as the Mecca well. (And after my rejections at every Saudi visa attempt, I accepted this as a small consolation.)
“I am a lover of the Tariqa, a guide to Haqiqa,” it says in the Hymn of the Mill of Love. This is written as if taken directly from the mystical Sufi Islamic playbook: an individual Sufi order is known as a tariqa, “path,” whose members strive toward haqiqa, “truth.” (Lalish is also nicknamed “The Truth.”) But according to Sufis, Sharia, “(Islamic) law” (also translatable as “path”) is the first step to Truth; for Yazidis, Sharia is mere “law,” divorced from the Truth at the time of creation and symptomatic of Islam’s misguided worldliness. Sharia is based on regulations derived from the Quran and Muhammad’s example and teachings, and is considered infallible by those who subscribe to it—Yazidis discard that level of absolutism entirely.
Sufism bloomed in the seventh and eighth centuries, at the time of the expansive Umayyad Caliphate (whose second caliph, Yazid ibn Mu’awiya, is the Yazidis’ generally accepted namesake). In the time of Sheikh Adi, Lalish was likely another tariqa seeking truth and responding to local traditions. Instead of sprouting directly from an Islamic community, however, this Sufism would have been superimposed on eons of Kurdish, Zoroastrian custom. Since then, the path seems to have wandered very little.
“We don’t affect any one,” he said. “Everyone has their religion—God made you Jewish, stay Jewish. God made you Christian, stay Christian. God made you Yazidi, stay Yazidi. This is for you personally the word of God.” It makes sense that he wouldn’t proselytize—Yazidis do not accept converts. “It is closed,” Baba Chawish said matter-of-factly. “It is forbidden for anyone to become Yazidi.”
Our host spoke plainly. “From the first day until the last day, a Yazidi remains Yazidi. From a different place, they cannot enter. For example, the origin of many Muslims before were Jews or before were Christians, no? Or Yazidis, for example. But from Adam originally—those are Yazidis.” The first of his dramatic pauses, and then: “Yazidis remain Yazidis.”
This is different from a species of tolerant Chosen People elitism. It is not simply because God has picked an individual path for everyone that Yazidis do not accept outsiders; instead, they see themselves as cut from a different cloth, or rather, sown from a different seed.
Yazidi legend traces their lineage neither to Isaac nor Ishmael, nor to any fabled child of Abraham. As the story goes, Adam and Eve deposited their seed (or spit, or blood from their foreheads) into separate jars to see if they could make a child without the other (the remainder of humanity issues from mutual offspring). After nine months, Eve’s jar was full of vile
insects, but Adam’s held the ancestor of all Yazidis, Shahid ibn Jerr—Shahid son of the Jar. The preservation of this bloodline is vital to the community.
They hope Yazidis remain Yazidis when reincarnated, but this may not always be the case. “Of course there are differences,” he said when I asked how spirits returned to the earth. “Everything is in the hands of God.” If their path is a different one in the next life, it will still be what God chose, unlike straying by conversion.
Meaning continues to be made from difference. The boundaries are enforced from within—in 2007, a seventeen-year-old girl named Du’a Khalil Aswad was murdered by her own community for her connection with a Muslim boy—and from without: in 2014, ISIS began its genocide in earnest. Unlike Christians and Jews, Yazidis were not even considered people of the book, the Quranic tag for pre-Islamic Abrahamic faiths.
“They have made destruction. Our religion—most people, they do not want killing. Ever. One brother kills another human—he has a son, a mother, he has a father, he has a family. This is an error, by God.”
In a moment that fleeted like a second thought, he added: “The world has developed some from the time of the conquest.”
The Baba Chawish looked to be in his fifties, or forties, or early sixties. He could have been centuries old. Çawush is in modern Turkish a military word for “colonel.” One linguist’s camp suggests that the “Baba” titles do not come from Persian bave, “father,” but rather from the Aramaic/Kurdish/Arabic/Persian for “gate.” And it is perhaps because they are this kind of gateway between divine and profane worlds that they held to higher standards of purity: the Baba Sheikh abstains from alcohol, though wine is a religiously significant part of Yazidi culture (“Oh friends, drink up, it is part of your duty!” says Sultan Ezi in a chirok); our host was chaste and unmarried, as required by his post.
“On earth there is marriage, but in the afterlife there is no marriage,” he had told us. “Why? Jesus was not married, true or no? Moses was not married. The angels are not married, true or no?
The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah Page 16