The Yazidi are a Kurmanji-speaking ethnoreligious minority centered historically on the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, holding a syncretic monotheistic faith with elements documented as drawing on ancient Mesopotamian, Zoroastrian, Christian and Islamic traditions, centered on veneration of the Peacock Angel (Melek Taus). Yazidi society is organized into an endogamous caste-like structure of sheikhs, pirs and murids, and the faith does not accept converts. In August 2014 the Islamic State launched a documented campaign of mass killing, sexual enslavement and forced displacement against the Yazidi of Sinjar, recognized by the United Nations and multiple national governments as genocide, an event now central to contemporary Yazidi communal memory and diaspora identity. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountEthnoreligious community 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountIraqi Kurdistan (Sinjar/Shingal region) with diaspora communities in Europe 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own account Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically agrarian village communities in the Sinjar and Sheikhan regions of northern Iraq. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateapproximately 500,000 to 700,000 (pre-2014); substantially reduced and dispersed since 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountThe 2014 genocide by the Islamic State killed and displaced a very large share of the Yazidi population around Sinjar, and subsequent displacement to Europe and elsewhere makes any current total highly approximate. Connections
Associated With
Yazidi religious identity is maintained through strict endogamy: marriage is required within the Yazidi community and, traditionally, within one's own internal caste (sheikh, pir or murid), with no conversion into or out of the faith.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Yazidi
WikipediaIntroductionQuote, Introduction
Yazidis, also spelled Yezidis, are a Kurdish-speaking endogamous religious group indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in West Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, with small numbers living in Armenia and Georgia.
Wikipedia: Yazidis
Introduction, first sentenceQuote, Introduction, first sentence
also spelled Yezidis
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