Yazidis

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1918, the Yazidis of Shingal mountain received a letter from the Ottoman authorities. It carried an ultimatum. They were to hand over their weapons and the Christian refugees they were sheltering, or face the consequences. The Yazidis tore the letter up and sent the messengers back naked. The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious group, indigenous to Kurdistan, a region of Western Asia that takes in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Their beliefs are unfamiliar to most outsiders, and much of what outsiders have written about them is unreliable. Who are the Yazidis, and where did their faith come from? Are they a people of their own, or a branch of the Kurds? And why have their neighbours so often turned against them, while at other moments handing them land, titles and power?

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• 2. Roots and Names

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  The Yazidis call themselves Êzidî, or in some areas Dasinî, although Dasinî strictly speaking is the name of a tribe. Where the word Yazidi comes from is disputed. Some Western scholars link it to the Umayyad caliph Yazid ibn Muawiyah, known as Yazid I. Every Yazidi rejects that connection, even though the caliph is revered within the faith. Other scholars point to the Old Iranian word yazata and the Middle Persian yazad, both meaning a divine being. A third idea ties the name to Ez dā, meaning created me. Yazidis echo it in the phrases Xwedê ez dam, God created me, and Em miletê ezdaîn, we are the Ezdayi nation. In the community's own reading, the word means the servant of the creator.

  The faith has close relatives. It resembles the religions of the Yaresan and the Kurdish Alevis. Their shared features trace back to an ancient belief that was probably dominant among the western Iranic peoples. That belief was distinct from Zoroastrianism and grew from a pre-Zoroastrian Iranic tradition. Scholars generally treat Yazidism as an independent tradition, formed through a complex process. Its ingredients were a pre-Islamic Kurdish religious layer, the teachings of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, and later Sufi influence. It has parallels with Zoroastrianism but did not grow out of it. Early writers tried to explain Yazidi origins as a form of Islam, a Persian creed, or even "pagan" religion. Research published since the 1990s has shown that approach to be simplistic.

  The belief itself is monotheistic. One God created the world and entrusted it to a Heptad of seven Holy Beings, often called Angels or heft sirr, the Seven Mysteries. The foremost of them is Tawûsî Melek, also known as Melek Taûs, the Peacock Angel. By the 12th-14th centuries, the community had consolidated, and its political history begins from that point.

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• 3. Seven Banners

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  Yazidism reached as far west as Antioch and as far east as Sulaymaniyah, embraced by many Kurdish tribes and emirates. Yezidi manuscripts called mişûrs, written down in the 13th century, list Kurdish tribes tied to Yezidi Pir saints. Only two of about 40 such manuscripts have been published: the Mişûr of Pîr Sini Daranî and the Mişûr of Pîr Xetîb Pisî. The first names large tribes that are now mostly or wholly Islamised, including the Shikak, Reşan, Dumilî, Memkan, Kîkan and Musareşan. The writer Sherefkhan Bidlisi records in the Şerefname that seven of the most important Kurdish tribes were Yezidi. Several principalities took Yezidism as their official religion, among them Sheikhan, Ezdikhan, Bohtan, Mahmudi, Donboli and the Emirate of Kilis.

  From the 14th century onward, the Yazidis built their own religious and political institutions. Their territory was divided into seven administrative centres. Each had its own Sincaq, meaning banner, flag or province, which Yezidis more often call a Tawis. A Sincaq is a sacred bronze effigy in the shape of a bird or peacock, symbolising Tawûsî Melek and the power of its centre. The first centre was Welatşêx, the Sheikhan region around Lalish. The second was the Shingal district. The third covered the historical region of Hakkari, taking in Hakkari, Şırnak, Van and Duhok. The fourth was the region around Siirt, Batman, Diyarbakir and Mardin. The fifth was Aleppo and Afrin. The sixth was the city of Tabriz in today's Iran, with Yazidis living in the Khoy hinterland to its west.

  The seventh was first called Serhed, a region covering Kars, Ardahan, Erzurum, Ağri, Van, Bitlis and Muş. After Yazidis left Serhed for the Russian Empire, its banner was renamed Tawisa Misqofa, meaning Moscow. Every six months, the Qewals, trained reciters of the sacred oral tradition known as Qewls, were sent out from Sheikhan and Lalish to the other regions. They travelled with military protection and carried a Sincaq through Yazidi villages, supported by voluntary alms. Their rounds preserved doctrine and displayed the authority of Lalish and the Mîr, the community's prince. The seventh banner's new name records a migration that later chapters follow.

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• 4. Courts and Mountains

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  In 1246, the Yezidi leader Sheikh Hassan ibn Adi was killed by Badr Ad-Din Lulu. It was one of the two best-known early expeditions against the community. The other came in 1414, when a joint army of neighbouring Sunni Kurdish tribes ransacked Lalish. Yazidi strength had grown enough that Muslim neighbours came to see it as a threat. Arabs, Persians, Turks and Sunni Kurds all persecuted them. Many chiefs were forced to convert, and Yazidi power slowly declined from the 15th century. Yet alliances were also possible. Some Yazidi tribes backed Qara Yusuf of Kara Qoyunlu, while others sided with Uzun Hasan of the rival Aq Qoyunlu against the Timurids. Under Saladin, Yazidis served as troops and ambassadors and were given lands to govern.

  The Ottomans first met the Yazidis in the early 16th century, and the Yazidis lived as semi-independent entities within the empire. In 1516, Sultan Selim the Grim invaded Syria and took Aleppo and Damascus from the Mamluks of Egypt. In Aleppo, the Mamluks wanted a Yezidi named Sheikh Izz ed-Din to replace the Kurdish chief Qasim Beg. Qasim Beg paid homage to the Sultan, yet Izz ed-Din persuaded local Ottoman governors to execute him for treason and was named Emir of the Kurds. He left no heirs, so the title returned to Qasim Beg's family.

  The chronicler Evliya Çelebi reports Yezidis in Bingöl, Bitlis, Van, Amedi, Diyarbekir, Hasankeyf, Cizir and Duhok. Their leaders held important posts in the provincial system and governed as far as Tikrit and Kerek. They took part in trade and river transport. Çelebi called their grapes and honey priceless and wrote that their raisins fetched high prices in Baghdad, Basra and Lahsa. He also reports that they ferried travellers for a fee from Hasankeyf to the far bank.

  In 1534, Sultan Suleyman gave the Yezidi leader Hussein Beg the Soran Emirate, with its capital Erbil, and the Bahdinan Emirate, with its capital Amediye. His father, Hassan Beg, had allied with the victorious Ottomans after the Battle of Chaldiran and won fame for his diplomacy. Hussein Beg's short reign brought a rare spell of peace. Then neighbouring Muslim rulers formed an alliance and seized Erbil while he was away. His attempt to retake it cost 500 Yezidi warriors their lives. He was summoned to Istanbul and executed.

  In 1566, the Ottoman mufti Abu al-S'ud al-'Amadi al-Kurdi issued fatwas that legitimised killing Yezidis, enslaving Yezidi women and selling Yezidi slaves in the markets. Their lands came to be treated as Dar Al-Harb. Sunni Kurdish princes of Bahdinan pressed for more. An Ottoman document from 1568 asks for orders to the governors of Mosul and Erbil to punish the Dasini sect. A document from 1571 records Prince Sultan Husayn Waly demanding orders to arrest Yezidi leaders.

  The next century brought both a Yezidi governor and a mountain war. A young commander named Ezidi Mirza became famous after a counter-attack on Muslim raiders in his hometown of Bashiqa, despite being outnumbered. He fought for the Ottomans at the Battle of Baghdad and served as governor of Mosul from 1649 until his death in 1651. Yezidi sagas still mention him.

  The Yezidis of Shingal meanwhile controlled the trading routes, attacked Ottoman caravans and refused taxes. In 1613, Grand Vizier Nasuh Pasha led the first expedition against them. Evliya Çelebi reports a Yezidi victory, with 7,000 Ottoman soldiers slaughtered. In 1640, Grand Vizier Melek Ahmed Pasha of Diyarbekir surrounded the mountain and took it, despite heavy casualties. Çelebi was an eyewitness and counted 3,060 Yezidis killed. He wrote that the plunder from the Saçlı Dağı caves took ten days to haul away. "These Yezidis were as wealthy as Croesus," he declared.

  In 1655, Governor Firari Mustafa Pasha camped at Shingal to collect taxes. The Yezidis answered that he would get only ten loads of silk. He called for reinforcements, and the outcome is unknown. In 1671, a battle on the mountain between the Sacheli tribe and the armies of neighbouring Pashas lasted three years. It ended in victory for the mountaineers, who captured around 4,000 prisoners.

  In 1782, Yezidi raiders on the routes between Anah and Baghdad seized 30 donkey-loads of cotton goods from one caravan. Their favourite targets were lightly armed official couriers. One captured courier was carrying 40,000 carats of high-grade pearls. Punitive expeditions from Baghdad in 1715 and 1753 caused heavy casualties. Later campaigns grew milder, and the raiders came to count them as a cost of doing business.

  In 1785, Abd el-Baqi Pasha, the governor of Mosul, raided the Dina tribe near Duhok. Its young chief was Kor Namir Agha, the Blind Namir Agha, who was blind in one eye. As the Pasha's troops looted empty villages, they were ambushed, and the Pasha and his brother were killed. The French orientalist Roger Lescot counted 15 Ottoman campaigns against the Yezidis of Shingal and Sheikhan in the 18th century alone. In 1809, Governor Sulayman Pasha of Baghdad burned Yezidi farms and beheaded chieftains. Theologians classed the Yezidis as heretics, which justified enslaving captives. Excluded from the status of People of the Book, they were denied the religious rights that Christians and Jews enjoyed under the Ottoman millet system.

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• 5. The Sheikhan Massacre

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  A cleric of the Sunni Kurdish Mizuri tribe issued a fatwa in 1724 declaring the Yezidis infidels and apostates. It called killing them a religious duty and treated Yezidi women and property as spoils of war. The feud that followed turned bloody. In 1802, the Alghushiyya branch of the Mizuris raided the village of Ghabara in western Sheikhan and killed nearly a hundred people. They then occupied Lalish for eight months.

  In 1804, the Mizuris clashed with the principality of Bahdinan. They stormed Amadiya, captured the family of the prince Qubad Pasha, imprisoned him with his brother, and plundered the city. Ahmed Pasha, another Bahdinan prince, who ruled Akre, asked the Yezidis of the Dina tribe for help. They drove the Mizuris out and restored order.

  Ahmed Pasha wanted to end the feuds. The Yezidi leader Ali Beg sent word to the Mizuri chieftain Ali Agha al-Balatayi, offering peace and friendship. He proposed to act as kirîv, the sponsor, at the circumcision of the chieftain's son. Another Bahdinan prince, Said Pasha, had other plans. He urged Ali Beg to kill the chieftain so that a different leader could take his place. Some sources say he threatened to kill Ali Beg's entire family if he refused.

  Ali Agha accepted the invitation and arrived at Baadre, the home of the Yezidi princely family, with a small escort. It is unknown whether he brought few men out of disdain or to show trust. Ali Beg had him and his son, Sinjan Agha, murdered. Yazidi clergy and chieftains condemned the killing as contrary to Yazidi canons and tribal custom. The Mizuris gathered for a great raid on Baadre, where thousands of Yezidi warriors took position. The raid was called off when the Pasha of Amadiya, suspected of conspiring in the murder, announced his opposition.

  Mulla Yahya al-Mizuri, a respected cleric and a cousin or nephew of the dead chieftain, pleaded for justice with the Bahdinan princes Ahmed Pasha and Said Pasha. They refused to punish the Yezidis and blamed Ali Agha for entering enemy country without enough escort. They also killed Mulla Yahya's son. He turned to Muhammad Pasha of Rawanduz, by then the most powerful and independent ruler in Kurdistan. Muhammad Pasha minted his own coins and had declared independence from the Ottomans, who were busy with the rebellion of Muhammad Ali Pasha in Egypt. In 1815, he executed his two uncles, Timur Khan and Wahbi Beg, along with their sons, to remove rivals. Accounts differ on how the Mullah won him over. In one, the wali of Baghdad wrote urging Muhammad Pasha to punish the Yezidis. In another, the Mullah went to him directly, as a friend.

  In March 1832, an army of 40,000 to 50,000 marched in two columns, one led by his brother Rasul and the other by Muhammad Pasha himself. They crossed the Great Zab River and killed many people in the Yezidi village of Kallak-a Dasinyya, near Erbil. They took Khatara and marched on Alqosh. There they met a joint force of Yezidis and Bahdinan, led by Yusuf Abdo of Amadiya and Baba Hurmuz, head of the Christian monastery in Alqosh. The defenders fell back to Baadre. Ali Beg wanted to negotiate, but Muhammad Pasha, influenced by the clerics Mulla Yahya and Muhammad Khati, rejected any reconciliation. The Yezidis of Sheikhan were defeated in massacres that spared neither old nor young. Rape and enslavement followed, gold and silver were plundered, and many towns were demographically Islamised.

  In Shingal, the army met resistance led by Ali Beg's wife. It captured the district only after numerous defeats. Survivors fled to Tur Abdin, Mount Judi and the less affected Shingal region. Around 10,000 captives, mostly women and children, were taken to Rawanduz along with Ali Beg. Asked to convert to Islam, many refused, including Ali Beg and his entourage, and they were executed at a place that is still called Gali Ali Beg.

  Christians in the army's path suffered as well. Alqosh was sacked and many of its people put to the sword. The Rabban Hormizd monastery was plundered, and its monks were killed together with the Abbot, Gabriel Dambo. Many ancient manuscripts were destroyed or lost. The monastery of Sheikh Matta met the same fate. Muhammad Pasha then besieged the fortress of Akre, which was regarded as almost impregnable, and met resistance from the Kurdish Zibari tribe. Amadiya capitulated after a brief siege. His rule now stretched from the Khabur to the Great Zab, including Zakho and Duhok, and he named Musa Pasha governor of the capital.

  Between 1840 and 1844, the ruler of Bohtan, Bedirkhan Beg, repeatedly attacked the Yezidis of Tur Abdin. He belonged to the Ezizan family, which Sharafkhan Bidlisi says were originally Yezidis. In 1844, he sent a large army to force the Yazidis to accept Islam, and those who refused were captured and killed. Seven villages converted out of fear. Christians suffered massacres in 1843 and 1846. At the Bayram feast, he would round up Yezidi captives and personally slaughter those who had refused to convert. A medical missionary from Urmia who visited Derguleh in 1846 reported seeing 40-50 Yezidi converts in Bedirkhan's castle.

  France and England protested and demanded an end to the massacres of Nestorians and the removal of Bedirkhan. Ottoman forces, supported by Yezidi fighters, invaded his lands in 1846-47. He first defeated the army sent against him and proclaimed independence, minting coins inscribed "Bedirkhan, the Emir Of Bohtan". The Ottomans struck again. He fled Cizre for the fortress of Evreh, and his ally Han Mahmoud was intercepted at Tillo and defeated by Ottoman and Yezidi forces. Bedirkhan surrendered at Evreh Castle in Eruh, Siirt, on the 4th of July 1847. He was put in chains with his family and sent to Constantinople.

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• 6. Revival and War

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  Sultan Abdulhamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909, came to see Muslim identity as essential to his subjects' loyalty. As missionary activity and nationalism among non-Muslim groups rose, his government treated conversion as a route to political loyalty, and conscription was one of its tools. The Sultan sent Omer Wehbi Pasha to Mosul to introduce conscription, collect taxes, resettle tribes and crush local rebellions. When the Yezidis would not cooperate, he turned to violence. Around 500 Yezidis died in the Shingal campaign of November-December 1892. Lalish was forcibly turned into a madrasah, sacred objects were confiscated, and mosques were built in Yezidi villages. The Yezidi Mir, Mirza Beg, was pressed into converting to Islam.

  The campaign backfired. Refugees fleeing Sheikhan, both ordinary people and clergy, took shelter on Shingal mountain with stories of atrocities. Two religious figures from Sheikhan, Mirza al-Kabari and Alias Khallu, used them to preach that a new Yezidi reign of justice was near. Their message set off a widespread religious revival. Omar Wehbi Pasha's intervention in Shingal failed. The faqir Hemoyê Shero, who had proclaimed himself Paramount of Shingal, became the focus of resistance. His followers seized a huge store of Turkish weapons and ammunition that would prove decisive in World War I.

  On the 9th of December 1892, Sultan Abdulhamid telegraphed an order dismissing Omar Wehbi Pasha and keeping him in Mosul to await an inquiry. The charge was using troops in combat without permission from the Ministry of War. Four months later, the Pasha returned to the capital in disgrace. Aziz Pasha, the new governor of Mosul, brokered a peace in Shingal and let the Yezidis of Sheikhan practise their religion again. Mirza Beg and other converts returned to the old faith. The price was military service, voluntary Islamic schools in the settlements, and the surrender of Lalish to Muslim dervishes, who ran a retreat and school there. Lalish fell into ruin, with nettles growing where roofs had collapsed and the dome above Sheikh Adi's tomb smashed. Yezidis regained the sanctuary in 1904 and rebuilt it, and the stolen sacred objects were returned in 1914.

  As Hemoye Shero gained the Paramountcy of Sinjar, his followers multiplied and became the Fuqara tribe. All its male members belonged to the faqir religious class, which held the tribe together. Another Yezidi chieftain, Hasan Kanjo, converted to Islam and joined the Hamidiye with his tribe. His people were allowed to keep their Yezidi faith, and he built a fortress at Haleli, east of Viranşehir, as a base against desert Arab tribes such as the Shammar.

  The Armenian genocide of 1915 drove Yezidis from Van, Kars and Bazîd in a mass exodus to Transcaucasia. Many Armenians fled alongside them. They followed kinsfolk who had settled in Russian Empire territory after earlier flights during the Russo-Turkish wars of 1828-1829 and 1877-1878. In May 1918, Ottoman forces crossed the Akhuryan river to invade the Armenian Republic. One column captured Alexandropol and marched north of Mount Aragats, where eighty Yezidis were massacred at Kurdsky Pamb. The other column marched southeast toward the line to Tabriz. At Sardarabad, it faced a force of 4,000 Armenians that included 700 Yezidi cavalry. A few days later, Armenians and Yezidis drove back the northern column at the Bash-Aparan defile. Armenians still commemorate the Yezidi role in the decisive Battle of Sardarabad.

  In the Tur Abdin and Shingal mountains, Yezidis made common cause with Christians and defended their strongholds. In 1914-1915, Hemoye Shero sheltered Christian refugees. In 1917, he led a mixed Yezidi force in raids on Turkish convoys and posts on the route to Nusaybin, disrupting communications north of the mountains. He also resisted a siege in which Ottoman troops briefly occupied Yezidi villages to the south, using Tel Afar as their supply base. In 1915-16, the Ottomans and many Sunni Kurdish tribes persecuted the Christians of Mardin, Nusaybin and Cizre. Armenians and Assyrians fled to Shingal hoping for shelter. By 1916, about 900 people had settled permanently in Balad and the village of Bardahali, which had become the Fuqara headquarters. Hemoye Shero offered protection under a Shingali custom that welcomed Christians if a local Yazidi agha vouched for them. The support of local Christian merchants helped him seize full control of Shingal city, the commercial capital of the mountain.

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• 7. Kurdish or Distinct

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  In 1966, the mayor of Shekhan wrote to Mosul after meeting Yazidi leaders, among them the prince Tahsin Said and the Baba Sheikh, the religious head. He concluded that the community's origin lay in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq, so its members' nationality was Kurdish. Eight years later, the Swedish journalist Tord Wallström met the Yezidi Mir, Tahsin Beg, who had joined the Kurdish revolt. "I am Kurdish, and all the Yezidis are Kurdish," he said. He added that if he asked, at least 95 percent of Yezidis would join. Older voices agree. Evliya Çelebi called them Yezidi Kurds and described their soldiers as "wild, bloodthirsty, insanely brave and loyal to their comrades." The leader Usuv Beg wrote to the Romanov Emperor of Russia on behalf of 3,000 families of Yezidi-Kurds whose grandfather, Temur Agha, had left Turkey 60 years before.

  Other evidence points the other way. During research trips in 1895, the anthropologist Ernest Chantre found Yazidis in today's Turkey calling their language zyman e ezda, the language of the Yazidis. They claimed that Kurds spoke their language, not the reverse. Today the community itself is divided. Some Yazidis identify as a subset of the Kurds, while others see a separate ethno-religious group. Armenia and Iraq recognise them as a distinct ethnic group. Georgia and Germany regard them as ethnic Kurds. The Soviet Union listed Yazidis and Kurds as separate groups in the 1926 census, then merged them in the censuses from 1931 to 1989. The autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq calls Yazidis the "original Kurds". Vian Dakhil, the sole Yazidi member of the Iraqi Parliament, opposes any move to separate them from the Kurds. Aziz Tamoyan, president of the Yezidi National Union, says Yazidi is the name of a nation, with its own language, Ezdiki, and its own religion, Sharfadin. The Yezidi Spiritual Council in Lalish has stated its pride in the Kurdish identity of Yezidis, in a statement signed by the Mir, the Baba Sheikh, Sheikh al-Wazir, a Peshimam and a Qawwal.

  In the Soviet Union, Yazidis in Georgia and Armenia helped promote a secular form of Kurdish nationalism. They built the first Kurdish theatre and radio station. The Yazidi intellectual Erebê Şemo created the first Latin-based Kurdish alphabet. In 1929, he published the first Kurmanji novel, Şivanê Kurmanca, meaning The Kurdish/Kurmanji Shepherd. Kurdish names also survive on the map. The Armenian village of Sipan, settled by Yezidis in 1828, was called Pampa Kurda until the 1970s. Another village nearby, once called Armenian Pamb, was renamed Lernapar.

  Language and marriage mark the boundaries. Yazidi cultural practices and nearly all the orally transmitted religious traditions are in Kurmanji. The twin villages of Bashiqa and Bahzani are the exception, since their Yazidis speak Arabic, although their tribes, including the Xaltî, Dumilî and Hekarî, have historically been classed as Kurdish. Yazidis marry only other Yazidis. Those who marry outsiders are expelled and may not call themselves Yazidis. The Armenian anthropologist Levon Abrahamian reports a common belief that Muslim Kurds betrayed Yazidism by converting to Islam. Some traditional myths even say Yazidis descend from Adam alone, not Eve, which sets them apart from the rest of humanity.

  One saying captures the debate. Miletê min Êzîd, Dîne min Şerfedîn means my nation is the Yazidis, my religion is Sharfadin. Yet the official qewls never use that pairing. Where they mention Şerfedîn and Êzîd together, they put the word Atqat beside Ezid, not Millet. Şerfedîn was a son of Sheikh Hasan, who led the Yezidis in the 13th century, when the faith received its final canonisation. He is seen as the personification of the religion, while Sultan Ezid, a manifestation of God, personifies belief. The word millet may originally have meant religion or religious community, not ethnicity. On that reading, Miletê min Ezid would mean I belong to the religious group of Ezid. The researcher Victoria Arakelova takes the opposite view and calls Yazidism a remarkable illustration of ethno-religious identity, in which religion and ethnicity are united.

  Genetics adds more evidence. The Modal Kurdish Haplotype, a typical Kurdish genetic profile, appears most often among Yezidis in Armenia, at 11.9 percent, ahead of Muslim Kurds of Iraq at 9.5 percent. A 2022 study in Iraq found Yazidis genetically closer to Kurds than Kurds are to Turkmen, which suggests a long shared history and homeland. Another study found that Yazidis of northern Iraq may have stronger genetic continuity with the original Mesopotamian people.

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• 8. Scattered and Misread

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  Germany is home to a Yazidi community of more than 230,000, living mostly in Hannover, Bielefeld, Celle, Bremen, Bad Oeynhausen, Pforzheim and Oldenburg. Most came from Turkey and, more recently, Iraq, and they live in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. Sweden has seen sizeable growth since 2008, to around 4,000 by 2010. Smaller groups live in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. The Yazidi community of Turkey declined sharply in the 20th century, and those who remain live mostly in villages in Tur Abdin.

  The majority of Yazidis still live in Iraq, but estimates of their number range from 70,000 to 500,000. They are concentrated in the Nineveh Governorate. The two biggest communities are in the Shekhan District, northeast of Mosul, where Sheikh Adi's shrine stands at Lalish, and in the Sinjar District, 80 km west of Mosul. Yazidis there once lived in isolated villages of their own, but Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government destroyed many of them. It forced Yazidis into collective villages. Human Rights Watch says they were subjected to Arabisation between 1970 and 2003. In 2009, some Yazidis complained that since 1992 the leaders of the Kurdistan Region had been pushing them to identify as Kurds. Human Rights Watch reported the same.

  In Syria, the community lives mainly in Al-Jazira and the Kurd-Dagh. The 1963 census put it at 10,000. There may be between 12,000 and 15,000 today, and more than half may have left since the 1980s. Georgia's Yazidi population fell from over 30,000 in the 1989 census to about 18,000 in 2002. Other estimates say fewer than 5,000 remain, with some as low as 6,000 today, including refugees from Sinjar. On the 16th of June 2015, Yazidis opened the Sultan Ezid Temple and cultural centre in Varketili, a suburb of Tbilisi, the third such temple in the world.

  Armenia counted 35,272 Yazidis in its 2011 census, making them its largest ethnic minority, down from 40,620 in 2001. Most descend from refugees who fled Ottoman persecution, including during the Armenian genocide, when many Armenians found refuge in Yazidi villages. In September 2019, Quba Mere Diwane, the largest Yazidi temple in the world, opened in Aknalich, beside the older Ziarat temple. The Moscow-based businessman Mirza Sloian, who comes from the Armavir region, funded it privately. Moscow is also home to the largest Yazidi population in Russia. In the United States, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Houston, Texas, are major centres. Nebraska probably has the largest settlement, at least 10,000 people, thanks to refugee programmes that began in the late 1990s. Many Yazidi men there served as translators for the US military.

  In 2014, the Islamic State carried out a genocide against the Yazidis. Over 5,000 were killed, thousands of women and girls were forced into sexual slavery, and more than 500,000 fled as refugees. Terrorist attacks in the Kurdish regions had already driven many Yazidis to seek refuge in Western countries.

  Outsiders have long projected their own ideas onto the Yazidis, partly because of their secrecy. William Seabrook, in Adventures in Arabia, calls them "a mysterious sect scattered throughout the Orient" and says Muslims and Christians feared them as worshippers of Satan. George Gurdjieff reported that other peoples in the region considered them devil worshippers. Idries Shah, writing in 1961 under the pen-name Arkon Daraul, described a Yazidi-influenced secret society in the London suburbs, the Order of the Peacock Angel. H.P. Lovecraft's story The Horror at Red Hook names some murderous foreigners as belonging to the Yezidi clan of devil-worshippers. Elif Shafak's 2024 novel There Are Rivers in the Sky presents a Yazidi girl, Narin, living in Turkey in 2014, and addresses the persecution of her community.

  US soldiers in Iraq left their own accounts. Kayla Williams served with the 101st Airborne Division in 2003 and 2004 and describes a mountain-top Yazidi shrine as a small rock building with objects dangling from the ceiling. She learned that local Muslims considered the Yazidis devil worshippers. Tony Lagouranis, an Army interrogator, writes in Fear Up Harsh about a Yazidi prisoner and about the mystery surrounding the community. What drew him, he says, was that Yazidis have no Satan. In his telling, Malak Ta'us is an archangel and God's favourite.

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