Download or read book Yezidism in Europe written by Philip G. Kreyenbroek and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2009 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yezidism is a minority religion that is largely based on tradition rather than scripture. In the homelands - Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Transcaucasia - its world-view is closely connected with local culture, and most easily understood in that context. From the 1960s onwards, an increasing number of Yezidis from Turkey, Iraq and Syria were forced to migrate to Western Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union many Yezidis from Armenia and Georgia moved to Russia and the Ukraine. This work addresses the question of differences in perception of the religion between Yezidi migrants who grew up in the homeland and those who were mainly socialised in the Diaspora. It is based on extensive qualitative research among Yezidis of different generations in Germany and Russia.
Download or read book The Yezidis written by Birgül Açikyildiz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-12-23 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yezidism is a fascinating part of the rich cultural mosaic of the Middle East. The Yezidi faith emerged for the first time in the twelfth century in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq. The religion, which has become notorious for its associations with 'devil worship', is in fact an intricate syncretic system of belief, incorporating elements from proto-Indo-European religions, early Iranian faiths like Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, Sufism and regional paganism like Mithraism. Birgul Acikyildiz here offers a comprehensive appraisal of Yezidi religion, society and culture. Written without presupposing any prior knowledge about Yezidism, and in an accessible and readable style, her book examines Yezidis not only from a religious point of view but as a historical and social phenomenon. She throws light on the origins of Yezidism, and charts its development and changing fortunes - from its beginnings to the present- as part of the general history of the Kurds. Her book is the first to place Yezidism in its complete geographical setting in Northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Transcaucasia. The author describes the Yezidi belief system (which considers Tawusi Melek - the 'Peacock Angel' - to be ruler of the earth) and its religious practices and observances, analysing the most important facets of Yezidi religious art and architecture (including funerary monuments and zoomorphic tombstones) and their relationship to their neighbours throughout the Middle East. Acikyildiz also explores the often misunderstood connections between Yezidism and the Satan/Sheitan of Christian and Muslim tradition. Richly illustrated, with accompanying maps, photographs and illustrations, this pioneering book will have strong appeal to all those with an interest in the culture of the Kurds, as well as the wider region.
Download or read book Yezidism its Background Observances and Textual Tradition written by Philip G. Kreyenbroek and published by Edwin Mellen Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yezidi faith has fascinated and tantalized a number of Western scholars since the mid-19th century, but actual knowledge of the Yezidi tradition has remained relatively limited. During the late-20th century a corpus of Yezidi sacred hymns has come to light, which had previously been transmitted orally, and did not exist in written form until the late 1970s. These texts have offered a more detailed insight into the beliefs, observances, and background of the faith.
Download or read book The Role of Nature in Yezidism written by Rezan Shivan Aysif and published by Universitätsverlag Göttingen. This book was released on 2021 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yezidis are a religious minority living in Kurdistan as the native land. They also live in Transcaucasia and in other countries as diaspora communities such as Russia and Western Europe and particularly in Germany. Their shared language is Kurmanji-Kurdish dialect. Yezidism is a cultural and religious system based on ancient religious traditions and it has roots in some ancient Iranian religions, Mesopotamian cultures and Sufism. Generally, it is regarded as a way to understand life, not an acquired dogma. In addition, each of monotheism, gnosticism, orthopraxy and the holiness of elements of nature play a central role in its traditions. What is more, its religious beliefs and practices have been preserved through oral traditions, which can be considered as a religious literature that has its own forms and categories such as Qewl, Beyt and Qeside, etc. Lalish which is located in Kurdistan is the Yezidis’ holiest place in the world. This book contains a detailed study of describing and analyzing the considerable role that the elements of nature, notably the four elements: fire, water, earth and air/wind play in Yezidism, in its religious beliefs and practices, and on the basis of the religious poetic texts and living religious traditions. The fieldwork of the study was carried out in Yezidi areas in the Kurdistan region of Iraq which is the centre of their religion.
Download or read book The Yezidis written by John S. Guest and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-01-27 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1987 The Yezidis: A Study in Survival traces the origin of Yezidi community’s religion, describes the discovery of the people by Western travellers in the early nineteenth century and details the Yezidi community’s traumatic history and their status in the 80s. The Yezidi religious group is spread out over Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and erstwhile USSR and have retained their identity for over 500 years. The Yezidi’s believe that Lucifer, the fallen angel, has been forgiven by God and reinstated as chief angel: their history is, like their faith, characterized by dignity and survival in the face of great odds. Chapters also cover Sultan Abdul Hamid’s cruel but vain efforts to force the Yezidis to embrace Islam, leading to the emergence of Mayan Khatun, a strong-willed Yezidi princess who ruled the community from 1913-1958. They include vivid account of her rivalry with her brother Ismail and the ill-fated marriage between her son and his daughter. The final chapter describes the community in Soviet Armenia and Georgia. This book is a must read for students of Middle East studies and Middle East history.
Download or read book Yezidism written by Khanna Omarkhali and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2022-03-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The genocidal attack of ISIS on the Yezidi community of the Sinjar region in 2014, with its murder of men and enslavement of women and children, has had enormous consequences for Yezidi communities both in the homelands and in the Diaspora. At the same time, many communities are facing the intrusion of the modern world upon their hitherto very conservative religious traditions. This book focuses on the tensions between conservatism and the need to adapt to current circumstances in a religion which so far mostly resisted change. A number of specialists have been brought together here to offer insights into Yezidis' often unexpected reactions to the pressures of genocide on the one hand, and modernity generally on the other. It deals with recent trends and developments concerning the Yezidis and is divided into two parts. The first part contains articles about the IS attack and its impact on Yezidi communities in the Middle East. The second part focuses on developments in the Yezidi Diaspora communities. The book will be of interest to specialists on religion, especially those working on the Middle East and on diaspora religion, but also to Iranists, Kurdologists and scholars of different disciplines working on the effects of genocide or other brutal attacks on the worldview of surviving victims, or on the influence of modernity on conservative societies.
Download or read book Peacock Angel written by Peter Lamborn Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Explains how the Yezidis worship Melek Ta’us, the Peacock Angel, an enigmatic figure often identified as “the devil” or Satan, yet who has been redeemed by God to rule a world of beauty and spiritual realization • Examines Yezidi antinomian doctrines of opposition, their cosmogony, their magical lore and taboos, the role of angels, ritual, and symbology, and how the Yezidi faith relates to other occult traditions such as alchemy • Presents the first English translation of the poetry of Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiya, venerated by the Yezidis as Sultan Ezi The Yezidis are an ancient people who live in the mountainous regions on the borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This secretive culture worships Melek Ta’us, the Peacock Angel, an enigmatic figure often identified as “the devil” or Satan, hence the sect is known as devil-worshippers and has long been persecuted. Presenting a study of the interior, esoteric dimensions of Yezidism, Peter Lamborn Wilson examines the sect’s antinomian doctrines of opposition, its magical lore and taboos, and its relation to other occult traditions such as alchemy. He explains how the historical founder of this sect was a Sufi of Ummayad descent, Sheik Adi ibn Musafir, who settled in this remote region around 1111 AD and found a pre-Islamic sect already settled there. Sheik Adi was so influenced by the original sect that he departed from orthodox Islam, and by the 15th century the sect was known to worship the Peacock Angel, Melek Ta’us, with all its “Satanic” connotations. Revealing the spiritual flowering that occurs in an oral culture, the author examines Yezidi cosmogony, how they are descended from the androgynous Adam--before Eve was created--as well as the role of angels, ritual, alchemy, symbology, and color in Yezidi religion. He also presents the first English translation of the poetry of Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiya, venerated by the Yezidis as Sultan Ezi. Showing the Yezidi sect to be a syncretic faith of pre-Islamic, Zoroastrian, Christian, Pagan, Sufi, and other influences, Wilson reveals how these worshippers of the Peacock Angel do indeed worship “the Devil”--but the devil is not “evil.” God has redeemed him, and he rules a world of beauty and spiritual realization.
Download or read book Devil Worship written by Isya Joseph and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-11-25 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Devil Worship: The Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yezidis is a study about ethnoreligious group of Yezidis who are considered a devil worshiping sect. Yezidis are a Kurmanji-speaking endogamous minority group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia. There is a disagreement among scholars and in Yazidi circles on whether the Yazidi people are a distinct ethnoreligious group or a religious sub-group of the Kurds, an Iranic ethnic group. Yazidism is the ethnic religion of the Yazidi people and is monotheistic in nature, having roots in a pre-Zoroastrian Iranic faith. Since the spread of Islam began with the early Muslim conquests of the 7th–8th centuries, Yazidis have faced persecution by Arabs and later by Turks, as their religious practices have commonly been charged with heresy by Muslim clerics. Yezidis are considered to be devil worshippers by other ethnicities in the region. The book covers essential areas that give a vivid and complete description of this group and author goes to great lengths to investigate theories about whether the Yazidi religion was a sect of either Islam or Christianity.
Download or read book Survival Among the Kurds written by John S. Guest and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1993 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect written by Philip G. Kreyenbroek and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2005 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the late 20th century the West was unaware of the existence of an extensive corpus of Yezidi religious texts. These were traditionally transmitted orally, and were kept secret from outsiders. It was not until the 1970s that a few Yezidi intellectuals began to commit these texts to writing. These first publications included only specimens of the most prestigious genres, which for a time were thought to be representative of Yezidi religious literature as a whole. It was later discovered, however, that this literature was far richer. Furthermore it became clear that an understanding of Yezidi oral culture as a whole was indispensable for a proper understanding of the religious texts.The present work offers the reader a representative selection of the main genres of Yezidi religious texts, with translation and commentary. The texts are intended, moreover, to cover the topics most often addressed in the Yezidi religious tradition.The first introductory chapter aims to introduce the reader to the Yezidi community's history, aspects of its religion, and its social structures and institutions. The next chapter focuses on some of the implications of the oral transmission of this literature and on its contents, especially the sacred history of Yezidism. The third chapter discusses aspects of orality and the transition to written culture, questions of performance and reception, and the formal characteristics of the various types of texts.
Download or read book Yezidis in Syria written by Sebastian Maisel and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-12-24 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yezidis in Syria: Identity Building among a Double Minority traces the development of Yezidi identity on the margins of Syria’s minority context. This little known group is connected to the community’s main living area in northern Iraq, but evolved as a separate identity group in the context of Syria’s colonial, national, and revolutionary history. Always on the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy, the two sub-groups located in the Kurdagh and the Jezira experience a period of sociological and theological renewal in their quest for a recognized and protected status in the new Syria. In this book, Sebastian Maisel transmits and analyzes the Yezidi perspective on Syria’s policies towards ethnic and religious minorities.
Download or read book The Yezidi Religious Textual Tradition from Oral to Written written by Khanna Omarkhali and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2017 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public and academic interest in the Yezidis, their religion and culture, has increased greatly in recent years. The study of Yezidism has also made considerable progress in recent decades. Still, several lacunae in our knowledge remain, notably concerning many concrete aspects of the textual tradition. These gaps are due in part to the fact that many elements of religious knowledge are generally not revealed to non-Yezidis. Khanna Omarkhali, a highly qualified academic who also stems from a respected Yezidi family of religious leaders (Pir), has had unique opportunities to investigate such aspects of the Yezidi tradition. This book is a comprehensive study of the Yezidi religious textual tradition, containing descriptions of many hitherto unknown aspects of the oral transmission of Yezidi religious knowledge. It presents a detailed account of the 'mechanisms' underlying various aspects of the tradition. It shows how the religious textual tradition functioned - and to a certain degree still does - in its pre-modern way, and also describes the transformations it is currently undergoing, including the issues and processes involved in the increasing trend to commit religious knowledge to writing, and indeed to create a written canon. The work contains several hitherto unpublished texts and the most comprehensive survey to date of the extant Yezidi sacred texts. It includes four maps, a glossary of terms and a list of Yezidi lineages, and is accompanied by a CD with an extensive collection of recordings of texts (208 minutes).
Download or read book The Yezidis written by Eszter Spät and published by Saqi Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first detailed survey of Yezidi culture to appear in English. Little is known about these ancient Kurdish mountain people, considered one of the oldest ethnicities in the Middle East, often unjustly derided as "devil-worshippers."
Download or read book Yezidi Texts written by Isya Joseph and published by . This book was released on 1909* with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essential Elements in Yezidism written by Isya Joseph and published by Kessinger Publishing. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Download or read book Eros and the Pearl written by Artur Rodziewicz and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monograph is devoted to the Yezidi cosmogonic myth and its parallels in other religious traditions, esp. Yarsanism, Mandaeism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Early Christianity, Sufism and Harranian 'Sabianism'. It is based on the author's field research, source analysis, and interdisciplinary methodology.
Download or read book Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements offers a multinational study of Islam, its variants, influences, and neighbouring movements, from a multidisciplinary range of scholars. These chapters highlight the diversity of Islam, especially in its contemporary manifestations, as a religion of many communities, theologies, and ideologies. Over five sections—on Sunni, Shia, Sufi, fundamentalist, and fringe Islamic movements—the authors provide historical overviews, analyses, and in-depth studies of large and small Islamic and related groups from all around the world. The contents of this volume will be of interest to both newcomers to the study of Islam and established scholars of religion who wish to engage with the dynamic label of Islam and the many impactful movements of the Islamic world.
