Images
and Symbols of the Supernatural and Sacred Objects among
the Kurdish Yezidis
Text:
Eszter Spät
Photos: Christine
Allison, Estelle Amy de la Bretèque,
Eszter Spät,
Khanna Omerkhali,
Wassfi Haji Sulaiman
Yezidis are a Kurdish
speaking religious minority living
throughout the Middle East, mainly in Iraq, but also in Syria, Turkey,
Iran and
in the Transcaucasia, where they emigrated in the 19th
and 20th
century. The origin of their highly syncretistic religious system has
long been
a topic of debate among researchers. Assyrians, Babylonians,
Zoroastrians,
Manichaeans, and Sabaeans
have all been cited.
However, today a consensus seems to be emerging that the beginnings of
the
Yezidis, as an organized religious community with a conscious sense of
identity, can be traced back to a 12th c. Sufi
brotherhood. The
“al-Adawiya”
was founded by Sheikh Adi
bin Misafir in the
valley
of Lalish
in
the Kurdish mountains near. With time this Sufi order incorporated
so many
pre-Islamic elements from its environment, that it ceased to be a part
of Islam
and became a religious entity of its own. Though some Yezidis today
like
calling themselves “Sufis”, Muslims traditionally
see them either
as heretics, or, even worse, as infidels, who worship the devil.
Visual images
of the supernatural among the
Yezidis are far and few between. This is easily explained by the
circumstances.
Yezidis, a persecuted religious minority not belonging to the
so called
“religions of the book” lived in isolated rural
areas, and until
recently many of them continued a semi-nomadic way of life.
Furthermore, their
environment wasn’t one to encourage the production of images
or the physical
representation of the Divine. Their majority neighbours, Sunni Kurds
would have
considered any figural representation in religious context as
heretical. The
same is, of course, not true of the Christians, with whom Yezidis were
on
rather good terms. Icons were always a part of the Syriac
speaking churches, as attested by the Doctrine of Addai,
from the 4th century. However, living as a
minority in an Islamic
world that prohibited sacred images, visual representation of the
sacred was
mainly limited to manuscripts. Syriac
art found its
way within the Gospels and Lectionaries rather than in external
expressions on
church and monastery buildings. All the same, these manuscripts were
not easily
available to the Yezidis, especially since Yezidi religion strictly
forbade the
art of reading and writing, and Yezidis themselves transmitted their
religion
orally.
Though one
cannot talk of “images of the supernatural”
among traditional Yezidis in the sense this expression is used in
connection
with European sacral art, the need for tangible forms representing the
presence
of the divine or the supernatural is present among the Yezidis as well.
As regards
the strictu
sensu
use of the word “images,” we find only two images,
that of the
peacock, and that of the black snake. While there are no
representations of
human forms in Yezidi tradition, these two, especially the image of the
peacock, are of great importance. Besides these images we find the
physical
representation of the divine in a great number of sacred objects,
including
metal objects (nishans)
inherited by families
belonging the leading religious castes, clothes with symbolical
meaning, and
sacred pieces of cloth covering graves. We may include among the
representations of the supernatural the holy places of ziyaret
(pilgrimage,) which play a central role in the perpetuation
of Yezidi
faith, a faith of orthopraxy
rather than orthodoxy.
It must also be
noted that Yezidi faith
displays a great diversity. It is based on oral tradition, as reading
and
writing was banned, a fact that prevented the development of a unified
body of
dogmas. Consequently rituals and beliefs regarding sacred objects are
also very
diverse. This diversity is really highlighted if one looks at the
different
geographical regions inhabited by Yezidis, stretching from Armenia to
Aleppo,
but differences on a smaller scale can be detected even in adjoining
regions or
sometimes even between villages of the same area. This collection
brings
examples from
Content:
The
Yezidis of
The Sanjak
of the
Peacock Angel
Selected
Bibliography on the Yezidis