YAZIDI. - Name of populations of Kurdish race and language, professing a religion of their own. Their overall number, progressively declining, was recently calculated (A. H. Hourani, see bibliography, pp. 76, 91) at a little more than 30,000. They are distributed in groups across the following regions: 1) Sayhān, north of Mosul, the seat of the most numerous nucleus and of the principal sanctuary; 2) Gebel Singār, west of the same city; 3) Gebel Sim'ān, near Aleppo. Smaller nuclei are found near Dujārbekir, in Soviet Armenia and in Persia.
I. NAME AND ORIGINS
The investigations of Aḥmad Tajmār, 'Abbās 'Azzāwī and M. Guidi derive the name J. from Jazīd, second Umayyad caliph (680-683), famous for the massacre of Ḥusajn, son of 'Alī, at Karbalā', and therefore particularly hated by the Shī'ites (v. ISLĀM, Le sète). It was, in particular, M. Guidi's merit to have identified, in the oldest Arabic literature, the traces of the extremist heterodoxy (guluwu) favorable to Jazīd, showing in it a phenomenon parallel, though antithetical, to that of Shī'ite extremism, and therefore analogous to it in many constituent elements.
Although the traces of the Jazīda movement in the most ancient period remain scanty, M. Guidi's thesis is at present to be preferred to the other, upheld most recently by G. Furlani and T. Menzel, according to which the name J. would derive from the Persian ized "angel" and the origins of the movement would have nothing to do with the caliph Jazīd.
II. HISTORY
Almost nothing is known about the vicissitudes and beliefs of the followers of Yazīd in Kurdistan during the first centuries of the Hegira. The information becomes more precise when, in the 12th century A.D., the mystic 'Adī b. Musāfir, a descendant of the Umayyad family, settled at Lālish, in the region of Šajhān, founding there a confraternity that took its name from him ('adawijjah).
Within this confraternity there soon emerged an extremist current which, against the will of the mystic and his successors, turned toward the worship of them, coupling it with the almost obliterated cult of Yazīd. Between the 13th and 14th centuries the Muslim polemicist Ibn Taymiyyah, in his Risālah al-'adawijjah, clearly indicates the heterodoxy of the movement and the developed formation of its creed.
Of this one is not in a position to follow the further developments up to the present formulation; more information is available on the political vicissitudes of the Yazīdī groups, well collected by R. Lescot. The confraternity reached its greatest development in the 14th and 15th centuries, spreading also into Syria and Egypt; then the decline began. While the communities of Syria and Egypt for the most part flowed back into orthodoxy, the Y. of the Kurdish mountains were subjected to periodic raids and massacres on the part of the Ottoman governors; after the interlude of the British mandate, the persecution has resumed on the part of the new 'Irāqī State, which tends to assimilate the Y. ethnically and religiously into the Arab majority.
III. DOCTRINES
The doctrines of the J. are constituted by a strange and jumbled congeries of factors: Islamic elements, a pagan Kurdish substratum, certain Christian rites (due to contact with the Mesopotamian Christian Churches), Iranian beliefs, and through these, Gnosticism.
The J. believe in a supreme God, who exercises his power through seven angels. The first and principal one is Melek Tā'ūs, the peacock angel, who corresponds to Satan, but because of his repentance after the fall he is not a principle of evil, but of good. Therefore the name of "devil worshippers" frequently given to the J. is not accurate. The name of peacock, known also to the Mandaeans and the Druze for Satan, derives from the legend according to which these wished to assume first the form of a peacock upon entering the Earthly Paradise. Melek Tā'ūs is the ruler of the world: Jazīd and Šajh 'Adī (that is, 'Adī b. Musāfir) seem to have to be considered his incarnations. The other six angels also, whose names are not constant in the various accounts (interesting is the inclusion among them of Jesus), have incarnations, in the descendants of 'Adī and in certain great Muslim ascetics and mystics, such as the famous Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and al-Ḥallāǧ. The J. believe in successive reincarnation, according to the merits or demerits acquired, in Paradise and in Hell. Accompanying these beliefs are strange legends about the origins of the world. There are two principal sacred books: the "Book of Revelation" and the "Black Book".
IV. RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
The J. perform their prayers facing the sun, which, together with the presence of a feast of the sun, has suggested remnants of an astral paganism. They have two fasts a year, of three days each, and they carry them out according to the Muslim system, from dawn to dusk. They also obey many prohibitions, relating to clothing and food. Every year, from Sept. 15 to 20, a pilgrimage is made to the tomb of Šajh 'Adī. Other minor sanctuaries have local veneration. In use are baptism, of evident Christian origin (the J. were in frequent contact with Nestorian groups), and circumcision.
Among the feasts, the principal one is that of the new year. Wednesday is considered a day of rest.
The most characteristic aspect of the Jazīda cult is given by the periodic processions of the saṅgāq, images of peacocks that represent the seven angels and that are carried around once or twice a year for collections.
V. ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMUNITIES
The Y. are divided into laymen (murīd) and clerics (rūḥān). The clerics comprise: 1) šajh, the five highest-ranking priests, descendants of Šajh 'Adī; 2) pīr, a lower category of priests; 3) qawwāl, singers, who carry the saṅgāq in procession; 4) kočak, dancers, auxiliaries of the preceding. There are also lower categories. There exists a kind of confraternity, that of the Jaqīr.
A capo di tutta la comunità stanno un principe supremo, di asserita discendenza da Jazīd, risiedente nello Šajhān ed il capo degli šajh; al primo compete l'autorità temporale, al secondo quella spirituale.
Every layman depends from birth on a šajh and a pīr. He must moreover choose for himself a "brother of the other world."