Ethnoreligious group or Kurdish minority primarily from northern Iraq
This article is about Yazidis, the people. For their religion, see
Yazidism .
Yazidis ئێزیدی, Êzidî est.
700,000–1,500,000[ 1] [ 2] [ 3] See list of Yazidi settlements Iraq 500,000–700,000[ 4] [ 5] Germany 200,000 (2019 estimate) [ 6] [ 7] Belgium 35,000 (2018 estimate) [ 8] Armenia 31,079 (2022 census) [ 9] Russia 26,257 (2021 census) [ 10] Georgia 12,174 (2014 census) [ 11] United States 10,000 (2017 estimate) [ 12] France 10,000 (2018 estimate) [ 13] [ 14] Syria 10,000 (2017 estimate) [ 15] [ 16] Sweden 6,000 (2018 estimate) [ 17] Turkey 5,000 (2010 estimate) [ 18] [ 19] Australia 2,738 (2019 estimate) [ 20] Canada 1,200 (2018 estimate) [ 21] Northern Kurdish ,[ 22] North Mesopotamian Arabic (in Bashiqa and Bahzani )[ 23]
Yazidis , also spelled Yezidis (;[ 24] Kurdish : ئێزیدی , romanized: Êzidî ),[ 25] [ 26] are a Kurdish -speaking[ 23] endogamous [ 27] [ 28] religious group indigenous to Kurdistan , a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq , Syria , Turkey , and Iran .[ 29] [ 30] [ 31] The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok .[ 32] [ 33]
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 .[ 34] [ 35] Yazidism is the ethnic religion of the Yazidi people and is monotheistic in nature, having roots in a pre-Zoroastrian Iranic faith .[ 36] [ 37] [ 38] [ 40]
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 they have commonly been charged with heresy by Muslim clerics for their religious practices.[citation needed ] Despite various state-sanctions in the Ottoman Empire , Yazidis historically have lived peacefully in proximity with their Sunni neighbours .[ 41] In modern times, Yazidis face persecution by the PKK and ISIS .[ 42] [ 43] Due to ongoing terrorist attacks in Kurdish regions , many Yazidis sought refuge in Western countries.[ 44] Recently, some Yazidis have returned to their home villages in Turkey.[ 45]
The 2014 Yazidi genocide that was carried out by the Islamic State saw over 5,000 Yazidis killed and thousands of Yazidi women and girls forced into sexual slavery ,[ 46] as well as the flight of more than 500,000 Yazidi refugees.[ 47] [ 48] [ 49]
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^ Armstrong, Kerrie (22 August 2017). "The Yazidi people: who are they and why are they on the run?" . Explainer . SBS. Retrieved 25 February 2019 .
^ Andrea Glioti (18 October 2013). "Yazidis Benefit From Kurdish Gains in Northeast Syria" . al-monitor . Archived from the original on 19 February 2014. Retrieved 1 April 2014 .
^ "Många yazidier fortfarande försvunna" (in Swedish). SVT. 9 January 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2019 .
^ "Turkey" . U.S. Department of State . Retrieved 22 January 2019 .
^ International Religious Freedom (2010): Annual Report to Congress . DIANE Publishing. ISBN 9781437944396 .
^ "Statement on ABC Four Corners reporting" . homeaffairs.gov.au . Retrieved 21 August 2019 .
^ "For a Yazidi refugee in Canada, the trauma of ISIS triggers rare, terrifying seizures" . 1 December 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2019 .
^ Dalalyan, Tork (January 2011). "Construction of Kurdish and Yezidi Identities among the Kurmanji-speaking Population of the Republic of Armenia, in" . Changing Identities: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (Collection of Selected Works, Edited by V. Voronkov, S. Khutsishvili, J. Horan), Heinrich Böll Stiftung South Caucasus : 189.
^ a b Cite error: The named reference iranica
was invoked but never defined (see the help page ).
^ "Yazidi" . Oxford Dictionaries | English . Archived from the original on 3 August 2017. Retrieved 13 March 2019 .
^ Kreyenbroek, Philip G. ; Rashow, Khalīl Jindī (2005). God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect: Sacred Poems and Religious Narratives from the Yezidi Tradition . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 118. ISBN 3-447-05300-3 .
^ خانمانی ئێزیدی جــلـی رهش فڕێدهدهن (in Kurdish). Retrieved 13 February 2020 .
^ Açikyildiz, Birgül (23 December 2014). The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion . I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9780857720610 .
^ Gidda, Mirren (8 August 2014). "Everything You Need to Know About the Yazidis" . TIME.com . Retrieved 7 February 2016 .
^ Nelida Fuccaro (1999). The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq . London & New York: I. B. Tauris. p. 9. ISBN 1860641709 .
^ Pirbari, Dimitri; Grigoriev, Stanislav. Holy Lalish, 2008 (Ezidian temple Lalish in Iraqi Kurdistan) .
^ Omarkhali, Khanna (2017). The Yezidi religious textual tradition, from oral to written : categories, transmission, scripturalisation, and canonisation of the Yezidi oral religious texts: with samples of oral and written religious texts and with audio and video samples on CD-ROM . Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-10856-0 . OCLC 994778968 .
^ Kane, Sean (2011). "Iraq's disputed territories" (PDF) . PeaceWorks . United States Institute of Peace . Retrieved 15 October 2018 .
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^ Ali, Majid Hassan (15 February 2019). "The identity controversy of religious minorities in Iraq: the crystallization of the Yazidi identity after 2003". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies . 47 (5): 15. doi :10.1080/13530194.2019.1577129 . ISSN 1353-0194 . S2CID 150358224 .
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^ Kaczorowski, Karol (2014). "Yezidism and Proto-Indo-Iranian Religion" . Fritillaria Kurdica. Bulletin of Kurdish Studies .
^ Omarkhali, Khanna (2011). The status and role of the Yezidi legends and myths: to the question of comparative analysis of Yezidism, Yārisān (Ahl-e Haqq) and Zoroastrianism: a common substratum? . OCLC 999248462 .
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^ Allison, Christine (25 January 2017). "The Yazidis" . Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion . Oxford : Oxford University Press . doi :10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.254 . ISBN 9780199340378 . Archived from the original on 11 March 2019. Retrieved 15 May 2021 .
^ "Statement by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria on the second anniversary of 3 August 2014 attack by ISIS of the Yazidis" . ohchr.org . OHCHR . Retrieved 17 May 2019 .
^ Suvari, Çakır Ceyhan (2018). "Being Ezidi in the Middle East" . Understanding Religious Violence . Springer International Publishing. pp. 195–212. doi :10.1007/978-3-030-00284-8_8 . ISBN 978-3-030-00284-8 .