A Yezidian Village in Turkey

The first of the winter rains had come to southeastern Turkey in early November. There was a low ceiling of gray clouds and the wind was biting. “That used to be my house,” Ibrahim said pointing to a crumbling of tan stone down the slope. I stood on the hillside with he and Fathel (actual names not used) looking over the rocky landscape mutely adorned by the remains of a Yezidi Kurd village. With effort I imagined the village with a thousand inhabitants 25 years ago.

The Yezidi Kurds of this and virtually all Yezidian villages left Turkey in the 1980s during the early years of the Separatist War in eastern Turkey (1984-1999) that pitted Kurdish military guerrilla forces against the steroidal Turkish military. The war was an inevitable outcome of 50 years of State-sponsored spherical oppression of the Kurds. A central feature of Turkey's military strategy during the war was to destroy and empty Kurdish villages (Muslim and Yezidi alike) to deny the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) guerrillas support, whether such support was voluntary or coerced.

“And over there,” Fathel said, “is the school bombed by the "asker" (Turkish soldiers).” Even its once-white concrete walls were turning tan, disappearing into the landscape. The Yezidis had been granted political asylum principally by Germany and Belgium, and so they went. They had little choice Ibrahim said, drawing his finger across his throat.

They had returned from Europe to their village for a 2-month visit, as a few others have intermittently done as well. Two others had built new “summer homes” in the village, not willing to give up their past entirely, but not at the expense of their new found security. “In Belgium nobody cares if you are Yezidi,” Ibrahim said, still with a hint of wonder.

The Yezidis are an ultra-minority within the Kurdish family, itself a minority in the greater Middle East. It was this double whammy that convicted the Yezidians in Turkey to a near-complete diaspora in the matter of a few years.

There are many such vacant and crumbling Kurdish Yezidian villages in southeastern Turkey, another chapter in the their millennia-long history; in fact in the broader Kurdish history as well. Yezidi'ism is an ancient religion, believed by many to be a direct descendant of Zorastrianism, by others to predate it, and by a few to be an apostate offspring of Islam. Regardless of its longevity, its adherents have been routinely persecuted by Muslims – Arab, Turkic, and Kurdish alike - as Yezidis are not even afforded the shell of Qoranic legitimacy granted to Jews and Christians.


We walked over the sticky blood red soil that filled the spaces between the limestone bedrock, towards a modest mazar (Yezidi shrine or temple) named after the sun, roj. It looked tired and lonely sitting on another hilltop surrounded by a rock wall, kept company only by two mulberry trees, one bedecked by few swatches of cloth bearing wishes. “It is like Lalish [the Yezidi holy site in Iraqi Kurdistan],” Ibrahim said, knowing that it really wasn't true. It was a small mazar with a tented crown topped by a stubby spire. The Yezidi stone inscription above the 3-foot high locked door had been chiseled away by the Muslims he said. He didn't say "asker."

Ibrahim now owned a herd of 25 cows, and in an ironic twist of fate, hired a Muslim Kurd to tend to them. It was dusk when the shepherd walked the cows back from the day at pasture. We hurried to help corral them into their night quarters. From the outside it looked like a small stone house built into the hillside, but its back end was a cave that bore its way deep into the hillside. It was very dark inside.

At the Spring - Sinjar, Iraq

On Iraq's Sinjar Mountain (Shingal), Pir Maholo and his son arrived at the spring-fed well with four donkeys in tow, each ladened with a dizzying variety of empty water containers. Their clothes were tattered and their deeply bronzed faces glowed under the loosely wrapped red-and-white kaffiyas. They had walked for 3 hours, leaving their flock of sheep grazing in higher in the mountains.


Pir Maholo's attempt to maintain his small flock of 20 sheep was an act of determination and desperation, desperation born from natural and political causes. The Sinjar region was in its 4th year of drought and the mountain showed it - brown and barren. The Sinjar is home to a large population of Yezidi Kurds, adherents to an ancient non-Islamic religion persecuted for centuries by Muslims. Unlike the Yezidians who live in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Sinjari Yezidis' security is vulnerable in the broken-glass pattern of  the Kurdistan Regional Government's and the central Iraqi Government's  military presence and jurisdictions. They are as isolated as the Sinjar Mountains.

I was the guest of Sheikh Gharbi, a Yezidi I had met the year before at Lalish during the annual Jama'iyya celebration. At first I hesitated to accept his invitation, noting that I would be leaving the security of Iraqi Kurdistan; but the doubt was quickly dispatched knowing I would be well taken care of.  It was a singular opportunity to visit this legendary community of Yezidians.

That morning we had left Sheikh Gharbi's home in Zorafa, one of seven collective villages strung along the northern toe of the Jebel Sinjar brutally imposed on the Yezidians by Saddam Hussein some 20 years ago. Later we arrived in the 3-house mountain village of Zerwa, home to one of Gharbi's brothers. He and others were slowly repatriating their villages. Yusef had killed a small goat in anticipation of our arrival. After the mandatory tea in a dim and small room, we piled into two pick-up trucks full of men and children driving up the mountain. It was a celebration.


The Yezidi mazar (temple) appeared as we bumped around yet another bend in the dusty wash, its blindingly white and fluted spire piercing the cloudless sky. Although monotheistic, Yezidis build such mazars at places deemed to be holy in their own right, such as springs; locales of historical events in their cosmology; and, to honor holy persons often in conjunction with their cemeteries. This mazar, Pir Ewra, dedicated to person, clouds, and the nearby spring, anchored one of three hillside cemeteries.

As Yusef started the fire of thumb-sized branches collected by the children, and Gharbi sat with Sheikh Fakir Murad in the mazar's anteroom, Pir Maholo arrived at the well. His son had already climbed down the well to reach the water now 10 feet below the concrete rim. It took an hour to fill all of the containers, and knowing that they would be lucky to reach their flock by nightfall, Pir Maholo refused the invitation to share in food. We watched as they left, donkeys laboring under their life-giving load.

We returned to the temple for our meal. Yusef presented the tin platter of charred and tasty goat meat, and his son unwrapped a bag of flat bread and another of fresh tomatoes. Spring water was our drink.



Robert Leutheuser
October 2009

The Yezidian Sa'ama Ceremony at Lalish

Yezidi'ism is a little known religion practiced by a minority of Kurds. With the advent of the information age, their diaspora to western societies, and the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan, Yezidis are straddling the threshold between their past and future.

As they attempt to seek their 21st century identity after centuries of brutal repression at the hands of Muslims – Turkic, Arab and Kurdish alike – the debates on their ethnic and religious history are significant. After visiting Yezidians in Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, Armenia, and Georgia (almost all Yezidis left Turkey for Europe during the 1984-1999 separatist war), I'm comfortable agreeing with the majority of scholars and many, but by no means all, Yezidians themselves that Yezidis are ethnically Kurdish, and that Yezidi'ism predates Islam by centuries, if not millennia.

Although Yezidians have many many holy sites, THE Yezidi holy site is Lalish - the place of earthly beginnings and home to the tombs and shrines of their most venerated. It is compactly tucked into the upper reaches of a valley and studded with the characteristic fluted spires. This is the third year in a row I have visited Lalish, and the second year I have attended the 8-day Autumn Assembly (Jema'iyye). Yezidians flock to the small site by the thousands, crowding into a space and time of religious and secular celebration. It seems impossible that more can fit, but they do, arriving with bedding and provisions to last for the duration of their stays.

This year I was privileged to watch the Sa'ama Dance, a dramatic religious night ceremony.

“The courtyard in front of Sheikh Adi's Sancutary's courtyard was packed – young and old, men and women – vying for position to watch the ceremony. To take a breath required effort. But now being familiar to many, an American, and the beneficiary of the harsh insistence of my friend Sheikh Gharbi, I was able to crouch on the inner margin of the cleared space. The sitting musicians - three playing flutes and two playing hand-held drums - began to play reedy and rhythmic music. The crowd roared in anticipation. Fakir Hasan lit the ceremonial fires fueled by olive oil on a small metal stanchion, his bearded face dramatically glowing in the darkness.


“Slowly the massive wooden doors to the Sanctuary opened and from the darkness stepped the head fakir, unrecognizable in a black robe and meter-tall conical hat bedecked with long knotted fringes that covered his face. Excitement turned to frenzy. Ever so slowly he took a series of four steps forward, followed by a paired procession of 12 bearded, turbaned, and white-robed holy men. Around the fire they circled three times – four steps with the final leaning forward dragging one foot and placing a hand over their chest – before pausing again. The drama of their glacial pace was accentuated by the frenzied rhythm of the musicians and deafening roar of the crowd. After a half an hour, the procession snaked its way back into the dark maw of the Sanctuary and the cleared circle quickly filled.


“Shortly thereafter the Yezidians were allowed to go inside to pay their respects to the tomb of Sheikh Adi, and the Baba Sheikh retook his place under the open-air roofed area to accept the devotional prostrations and blessings, and donations, from the faithful."



No mention of my visits to Lalish would be complete without thanking my many friends at the Lalish Center in Dohuk, especially my dear friend Qader Saleem Shammo. Thank you.

Robert Leutheuser,
October 2009