Yazidi Community[Syria]

Diva Sansanwal

Introduction•

Kurdish speaking people living in northern Iraq. There are approximately 800,000 of them who are mostly poor, even though they have a rich spiritual tradition which is the world’s oldest, according to them.

• They were the first people to be created in the Garden of Eden, now known as Lalish in Iraq. A vestige of the Yezidis’ Garden of Eden era is reputed to be Gobekli Tepe, a recently discovered archaeological excavation in southern Turkey that has been dated to 12,000 BCE. After a great flood around 4000 BCE, the Yezidis dispersed to many countries in Africa and Asia, including India, Afghanistan, Armenia, and Morocco. Returning from their adoptive countries around 2000 BCE, the Yezidis played an important role in the development of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Jewish civilizations of the Middle East.• The Yezidi Calendar is 4,750 years older than the Christian or Gregorian

Calendar, 990 years older than the Jewish Calendar, and it is 5329 years older than the Muslim Calendar.

The Yezidis have had an interesting caste system, since their modern founding in India.• The Mîr (Prince) - representative of his people to the world and

of Tawsi Melek (The Peacock Angel or the true creator and ruler of the universe according to the Yezidi Community).• The Baba Sheikh (Father) - the religious leader of the Yezidis.

Caste System

1. The Sheikh Caste - highest cast. Consists of both the ruler (Mîr) and the father or the pope (Baba Sheikh). The Pir caste and the Sheikhs are known to be curers.

2. The Pir Caste - an important mentor and official at all important Yezidi functions and meetings.

3. The Murid Caste - they are the common people, the majority.4. The Priest Classes - this caste contains the Faquirs (the poor one but is still the

higher of the priests. They are known as curers, and they wear a sacred goat vest which is a sacred animal among the Yezidis), the quewels (they are singers who sing in order to spread religious values among their people; they usually pass from father to son) and the Kocheks (they are the seers, they can diagnose any physical illness or disease and are said to have supernatural powers; only a few are left today in Northern Iraq).

Cultural Events

• New Year!! - They recognize it as a Sere Sal, which means “Head of the Year”, and is celebrated on a particular Wednesday of April, which they call as a Red Wednesday. They celebrate this day in order to recall Tawsi Melek's first day on Earth, millions of years ago, where the Tawsi's objective was to calm the Earth down and spread it's beautiful colours all over the word. The Yezidi community celebrate this important day of the year by colouring eggs with red, blue, green and yellow (peacock colours), they also celebrate it by honouring the dead which is taken place at the graves by the women of the particular region who take food to the graves! and even sing to them.The Parade of the Sanjaks or Parade of the Peacock is an essential part of the celebration on a new year for the Yezidis, where lamps surmounted with peacocks are taken from their home (the residence of the Yezidi Prince), are paraded through villages.The Sanjaks, from the Yezidi homeland of India, are the most precious sacred objects among the Yezidi. Originally there were seven Sanjaks, one for each of the Seven Sacred Angels, but five were taken in 1892 by the Turkish Moslem. Of the two remaining Sanjaks, the largest and most sacred one is the Sheikhani Sanjak, the Sanjak directly associated with Tawsi Melek. The two Sanjaks are taken in procession to the Yezidi villages by the qewels, who then remain in each village for one night while giving discourses to the inhabitants on Yezidi spirituality.

• Fast of the Sacrifice - it is a forty day fast observed by Yezidi holy man in Lalish, once completed there is a feast known as the feast of sacrifice and a sheep is sacrificed this day in order to clean the people's sins (it commemorates when Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son Ishmail but then replaced a sheep for his son), there is also an evening dance

• FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT THIS SITE (NOT owned by me!!!!!)

http://www.yeziditruth.org/yezidi_genocide