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Melek Taûs, also spelled Malak Tāwūs and Tawûsê Melek, translated in English as Peacock Angel, is one of the central figures of the Yazidi religion. In Yazidi creation stories, before the creation of this world, God created seven Divine Beings, of whom Tawûsê Melek was appointed as the leader. God assigned all of the world's affairs to these seven Divine Beings, also often referred to as the Seven Angels or heft sirr.
Yazidism or Sharfadin is a monotheistic ethnic religion that has roots in a western Iranic pre-Zoroastrian religion directly derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition. It is followed by the mainly Kurmanji-speaking Yazidis and is based on belief in one God who created the world and entrusted it into the care of seven Holy Beings, known as Angels. Preeminent among these Angels is Tawûsê Melek, who is the leader of the Angels and who has authority over the world.
Kurmanji (Kurdish: کورمانجی, romanized: Kurmancî, lit. 'Kurdish', also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northern dialect of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern Syria and the Caucasus and Khorasan regions. It is the most widely spoken form of Kurdish.
Yazdânism, or the Cult of Angels, is a proposed pre-Islamic Mithraic religion of the Kurds. The term was introduced and proposed by Kurdish and Belgian scholar Mehrdad Izady to represent what he considers the "original" religion of the Kurds.
Yazidis in Armenia are Yazidis who live in Armenia, where they form the largest ethnic minority. Yazidis settled in the territory of modern-day Armenia mainly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, fleeing religious persecution by the Ottoman Turks and Sunni Kurds. While Yazidis were counted as Kurds in censuses for much of the Soviet period, they are currently recognized as a separate ethnic group in Armenia. According to the 2011 census, around 35,000 Yazidis live in Armenia.
The Kurds in Armenia, also referred to as the Kurds of Rewan, form a major part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space, and live mainly in the western parts of Armenia.
Yazidis or Yezidis are a Kurmanji-speaking endogamous minority group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok. 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.
The Sinjar Mountains are a 100-kilometre-long (62 mi) mountain range that runs east to west, rising above the surrounding alluvial steppe plains in northwestern Iraq to an elevation of 1,463 meters (4,800 ft). The highest segment of these mountains, about 75 km (47 mi) long, lies in the Nineveh Governorate. The western and lower segment of these mountains lies in Syria and is about 25 km (16 mi) long. The city of Sinjar is just south of the range. These mountains are regarded as sacred by the Yazidis.
The Sinjar District or Shingal District is a district of the Nineveh Governorate. The district seat is the town of Sinjar. The district has two subdistricts, al-Shemal and al-Qayrawan. The district is one of two major population centers for Yazidis, the other being Shekhan District.
The Kurds in Georgia form a major part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space, and are members of the eponymous ethnic group that are citizens of Georgia. In the 20th century, most Kurds fled religious persecution in the Ottoman Empire to the Russian Empire. The return of their Kurdish surnames needs effort according to a Kurdish activist in Georgia. The Kurds also have their own schools, school books and a printing press in Georgia. Illiteracy among them disappeared in the early 1900s. Kurds in Georgia are politically neutral; however, in 1999 they staged a huge demonstration in Tbilisi, demanding the release of the founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, Abdullah Öcalan. Kurds in Georgia today use Cyrillic script. Earlier, in the 1920s, they used the Latin script.
The Yazidis in Turkey are a part of the Yazidis who remained in modern-day Turkey after the division of the Ottoman Empire. The Yazidis in Turkey live mainly in the south-east of the country.
The Yazidis in Georgia are a part of the Yazidis who fled from the Ottoman Empire due to persecution in the 19th and early 20th centuries and sought refuge in Georgia.
The Ba'athist Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq involved Arabization and ethnic cleansing of minorities, in line with settler colonialist policies, to shift the demographics of northern Iraq towards Arab domination. In 1978 and 1979, 600 Kurdish villages were burned down and around 200,000 Kurds were sent to other parts of Iraq.
The November Sinjar offensive was a combination of operations of Kurdish Peshmerga, PKK, and Yezidi militias in November 2015, to recapture the city of Sinjar from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It resulted in a decisive victory for the Kurdish forces, who expelled the ISIL militants from Sinjar and regained control of Highway 47, which until then had served as the major supply route between the ISIL strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul.
The Êzîdxan Women's Units is a Yazidi all-women militia formed in Iraq in 2015 to protect the Yazidi community in the wake of attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other Islamist groups that view Yazidis as pagan infidels.
Garnik Serobi Asatrian is an Iranian-born Armenian professor who studies and teaches Kurdish culture at Yerevan State University in Yerevan, Armenia.
The persecution of Yazidis has been ongoing since at least 637 CE. Yazidis are an endogamous and mostly Kurmanji-speaking minority, indigenous to Kurdistan. The Yazidi religion is regarded as "devil-worship" by Muslims and Islamists. Yazidis have been persecuted by the surrounding Muslims since the medieval ages, most notably by Safavids, Ottomans, neighbouring Muslim Arab and Kurdish tribes and principalities. After the 2014 Sinjar massacre of thousands of Yazidis by ISIL, which started the ethnic, cultural, and religious genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq, Yazidis still face discrimination from the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Aziz Tamoyan was a Yazidi politician and the president of the Yezidi National Union in Armenia.
Khdr Hajoyan, is the President of the National Union of Yezidis and the Director of Yezdikhana, the official newspaper of the Yezidi National Union.
References
- ↑ Helix Consulting LLC. "Yezidis are Not Kurds, But Kurds are Yezidis: Aziz Tamoyan". Tert.am. Retrieved 16 February 2015.