Yezidism

“ But the severest of all persecutions, to which I was an eye-witness, was perhaps the one which the Yezidis208 of both Šeiḫan and Sinjar suffered in 1892 at the hands of Fariḳ ‘Omar Paša, Lieutenant-General of the Turkish Army. This Fariḳ was sent in the summer of 1892 as a special commissioner by the Sultan to accomplish certain definite things in the states of Mosul and Bagdad: to collect twenty years’ unpaid taxes; to induce the Bedouins to exchange their nomadic life for village life; to convert the Yezidis of Šeiḫan and Jabal Sinjar from their idolatry to the true faith. ”

“ The theory is also refuted by our understanding of the nature of the affinity in question between the Yezidis and the Christians. It is not a matter of sympathy but of religion. They believe in some forms of Christianity; and when they visit a church, they want to exercise their faith and not to express their sympathy. What is more, the eastern Christians have no sympathy for the devil worshippers, at least,103 not more than they have for any other religious body. Such an affinity is wanting between the Jews and the Christians or the Yezidis, yet they all live under the same conditions. ”

“ This hatred of the presumed worshiper of the devil has not yet been outlived, and a devout Mohammedan will today spit upon the ground and mutter a curse whenever the abhorred name crosses his lips.
The Yezidis enjoy fame as agriculturists who know how to exact good yield from their mountain farms. They live a retired life and rarely allow strangers to travel through the Sinjar range. The modern armament of Turkish expeditions has cowed the present generation into a submission which their fathers would have scorned. ”

“ The tradition of the Yezidis that they are descended from Yezid bn Mu‘Awiya which has been accepted as the fact by some western scholars is only a myth, without historical justification. As to the Christian tradition, all that can tell us is that some Yezidis might have been at one time Christians; but as to who was the founder of the sect it gives us no light. Likewise, all that we can learn from the theory advocated by the second school is that some phases of the Persian religion might have survived with that of the devil-worshippers. ”

“ The Yezidis form one of the recognized millets, or subject religious sects, existing in the Turkish Empire. But recognition in their case by no means implies toleration. They are universally abhorred as outcasts—almost as “untouchables”—like the cagots of the Pyrenees, or the lowest pariahs of Hindustan. A Christian is a “dog” to a Moslem, and a Jew ranks many octaves lower; but there is no room on the chromatic scale to show the position of a Yezidi: he is the sort of human being that is less regarded than a beast.
A Yezidi crossed our path some five or six miles from Mosul. ”

“ The Yezidis with the Christians have been exempt from the military service on the general law sanctioned by the Koran; namely, that none but true believers can serve in the armies of the state. But from time to time the Turkish government has endeavored to raise recruits for the regular troops among the Yezidis on the ground that, being of no recognized infidel sect,206 they must be included like the Druses of Mount Lebanon among Mohammedans. ”

“ The Arabs fear exactly the three things which he says they need. Only the Arabs would call it a knowledge of financial trickery and an experience of political intrigue, and the power given by hoards of money not only of their own but of other peoples. About Dr. Weizmann and the true Zionists this is self-evidently unjust; but about Jewish influence of the more visible and vulgar kind it has to be proved to be unjust. Feeling as I do the force of the real case for Zionism, I venture most earnestly to implore the Jews to disprove it, and not to dismiss it. ”

“ The Yezidis, frequently called “Devil-Worshippers,” are a small and obscure religious sect, numbering about 200,000. [3] They are scattered over a belt of territory three hundred miles wide, extending in length from the neighborhood of Aleppo in northern Syria to the Caucasus in southern Russia. The mass of them, however, are to be found in the mountains of northern and central Kurdistan and among the Sinjar Hills of Northern Mesopotamia.
By reason of their mysterious religion, the Devil-Worshipers have been an object of interest and investigation for several generations. ”

“ He exercises a secondary184 authority over the Yezidis. He is a mediator between his sect and the Turkish government. He has the power to cut off any refractory member from the community. He has charge of fifty ḳawwals who try to collect for him at their annual visits to each Yezidi district a certain amount of money. The money received by them is divided into two equal parts, one of which goes to the support of the tomb of Šeiḫ ‘Adi, and the second part is divided, one-half being for the amir, the other half being shared equally by the ḳawwals. ”

“ Only a few years ago it was regarded as a mark of a blood-thirsty disposition to admit that the Jewish problem was a problem, or even that the Jew was a Jew. Through much misunderstanding certain friends of mine and myself have persisted in disregarding the silence thus imposed; but facts have fought for us more effectively than words. By this time nobody is more conscious of the Jewish problem than the most intelligent and idealistic of the Jews. The folly of the fashion by which Jews often concealed their Jewish names, must surely be manifest by this time even to those who concealed them. ”

“ But both these views are only versions of the same view of a great American: "God never made one people good enough to rule another."
The primary point about Zionism is that, whether it is right or wrong, it does offer a real and reasonable answer both to Anti-Semitism and to the charge of Anti-Semitism. The usual phrases about religious persecution and racial hatred are not reasonable answers, or answers at all. These Jews do not deny that they are Jews; they do not deny that Jews may be unpopular; they do not deny that there may be other than superstitious reasons for their unpopularity. ”

“ For there is nothing in the sacred book to indicate that Melek Ṭâ ́ûs is an evil spirit or a fallen angel. On the contrary the charge that he was rejected and driven from heaven is repudiated.155 The mentioning of his name is looked upon as an insult to and blasphemy against him because it is based, the Yezidis think, on the assumption that he is degraded. Finally, he is declared to be one of the seven gods, who is now ruling the world for a period of 10,000 years.
It is interesting to note that, in the history of religion, the god of one people is the devil of another. ”

“ One can see the hills of Ba‘adrie and Šeiḫ ‘Adi. Among the sacred places of this district are two villages: Assofa, where two ziarahs are found, and distinguished from afar by their white spires, and Aldina, where one ziarah exists. In almost every Sinjar village, there is to be found a covered water which they use as a fortress during their fights with the Kurds or with the Turkish army. The devil-worshippers of this locality are commonly called Yezidis, while those of Šeiḫan are known both as Yezidis and Dawaseni. ”

“ I will give one curious example from one of the best and most brilliant of the Zionists. Dr. Weizmann is a man of large mind and human sympathies; and it is difficult to believe that any one with so fine a sense of humanity can be entirely empty of anything like a sense of humour. Yet, in the middle of a very temperate and magnanimous address on "Zionist Policy," he can actually say a thing like this, "The Arabs need us with our knowledge, and our experience and our money. If they do not have us they will fall into the hands of others, they will fall among sharks." ”

“ Certainly the Christians are not cherishing this theory with any expectation of receiving honor by assuming relation with the Yezidis. The devil-worshippers are utterly despised by all their neighbors. Nor do they do it out of love, that they may arouse the sympathy of the dominating race for this degraded people. Oriental Christians themselves despise the Yezidi sect. ”

“ Again, the Yezidis kiss the stones that satisfy their imagination, and make vows to them (see pp. 41, 50) . Nor is this all. The shouting of the Yezidi pilgrims, as they reach the sacred territory, and the noisy ceremony of their ḥajj, with its dancing127 and its excitement—a rite which has brought against them all sorts of accusations128—are nothing but the remnants of Pre-Islamic paganism.129
Such, then, are the steps which the religion of Yezid took before it came to shape itself into its present form. ”

“ Small as their sect has always been, they can count their martyrs by hundreds of thousands. And seldom indeed has any Yezidi of full age been known to abjure his religion, either under stress of torment or through fear of death. The massacre of 1892 was but the latest (and one of the mildest) of a long list of similar inflictions. Less than fifty years previously all the Yezidis of the Sheikhan were driven from their villages by a great irruption of Kurds under the Beg of Rowandiz, and fled for refuge to Mosul. ”

“ Rightly or wrongly, certain people in Palestine fear the coming of the Jews as they fear the coming of the locusts; they regard them as parasites that feed on a community by a thousand methods of financial intrigue and economic exploitation. I could understand the Jews indignantly denying this, or eagerly disproving it, or best of all, explaining what is true in it while exposing what is untrue. What is strange, I might almost say weird, about the attitude of some quite intelligent and sincere Zionists, is that they talk, write and apparently think as if there were no such thing in the world. ”

“ The true test of Zionism may seem a topsy-turvy test. It will not succeed by the number of successes, but rather by the number of failures, or what the world (and certainly not least the Jewish world) has generally called failures. It will be tested, not by whether Jews can climb to the top of the ladder, but by whether Jews can remain at the bottom; not by whether they have a hundred arts of becoming important, but by whether they have any skill in the art of remaining insignificant. ”

“ There is not only enmity between tribe and tribe, but between village and village, and, as in parts of the Bakhtiari country, guides refuse to conduct travellers beyond certain spots, declaring that "blood" bars their farther progress.
Besides the Kurdish and Ashiret inhabitants of these mountains of Kurdistan there are Yezidis, usually called devil-worshippers, and a few Jews and Armenians. Probably there is not a wilder population on the face of the earth, or one of whose ideas, real beliefs, and ways Europeans are so ignorant. ”

“ In short, the popular impression is tolerably true to life, as popular impressions very often are; though it is not fashionable to say so in these days of democracy and self-determination. Jews do not generally work on the land, or in any of the handicrafts that are akin to the land; but the Zionists reply that this is because it can never really be their own land. That is Zionism, and that has really a practical place in the past and future of Zion.
Patriotism is not merely dying for the nation. It is dying with the nation. ”

“ If some one of our sect make a shirt or a new dress, he cannot wear it without baptizing it in the blessed water which is to be found at the shrine of his highness Šeiḫ ‘Adî, may God sanctify his mystery! If he wear it, he is an infidel.
Article XII
We may not wear a light black dress at all. We may not comb our heads with the comb of a Moslem or a Christian or a Jew or any other. Nor may we shave our heads with the razor used by any other than ourselves (Yezidis) , except it be washed in the blessed water which is to be found at the shrine of his highness Šeih ‘Adî. ”

“ Its target has never been the Jew, as a person, but racist zionism and undisguised aggression. In this sense, ours is also a revolution for the Jew, as a human being, as well. We are struggling so that Jews, Christians and Muslims may live in equality, enjoying the same rights and assuming the same duties, free from racial or religious discrimination.
44. We do distinguish between Judaism and zionism. While we maintain our opposition to the colonialist Zionist movement, we respect the Jewish faith. ”

“ For the inhabitants of the village of Martaban, on the road from Latakia to Aleppo, who offer travellers the enjoyment of their wives and daughters, and who consider their refusal as an affront, are Motewellis.295
In still worse report than the Ismailites, Motewellis, Nossairis and Druses, are some tribes of Syrian and Assyrian kurds, who are called Yezidis, because they hold in peculiar veneration Yezid, the khalif of the Ommia family, who persecuted, sanguinarily, the family of the prophet, and likewise the devil, neither of whom they curse like other Moslimin. ”

“ It is more likely, I think, that the archaic Jews were really not unamused and perhaps not unsympathetic spectators; for the Zionist problem is complicated by a real quarrel in the Ghetto about Zionism. The old religious Jews do not welcome the new nationalist Jews; it would sometimes be hardly an exaggeration to say that one party stands for the religion without the nation, and the other for the nation without the religion. Just as the old agricultural Arabs hate the Zionists as the instruments of new Western business grab and sharp practice ”