Islamic extremists in Iraq are believed to have trapped 40,000 people in northern Iraq, most of them members of a religious minority called the Yazidis. The ethnically Kurdish Yazidis who are facing death at the hands of fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are believed to be the last of their community in Iraq.
The Yazidi religion is believed to be one of the oldest in the world that has been kept alive by drawing in practices from other religious traditions. The central figure in the Yazidi religion is the Peacock Angel called Melek Tawwus. According to Yazidi belief, Malek Tawwus is a fallen angel but not one who is beyond redemption. The Melel Tawwus plays a more important role in Yazidi religion than the god that forgives him, a belief that has led to the Yazidi being marginalised and often persecuted as "devil worshippers".
The Yazidis’ religion and customs that have been passed on orally have remained mostly obscure. But some observers believe that the Yazidis have a connection with India.
In his book Land of Seven Rivers: History of India’s Geography, Sanjeev Sanyal points out that the Yazidis, like Hindus, believe in reincarnation and avatars. "...they pray facing the sun at dawn and dusk and have a system of endogamous castes", he writes. Yazidi temples have spires that make them look very similar to Hindu places of workshop, he notes.
Sanyal says that though the Peacock Angel Tawuse Melek is central to the Yazidi religion, the colourful bird is not native to the region in which the Yazidi live but is native to India. "Is it possible that the Yezidi have somehow preserved an ancient link to India?" he speculates. "Indeed, the Yezidi themselves have a tradition that they came to the Middle East from India about 4,000 years ago – around when the mature Harappan civilisation would have begun to disintegrate...”
In Peacock Angel: Being Some Account of the Votaries of a Secret Cult and their Sanctuaries published in 1941, British cultural anthropologist Ethel Drower describes her conversation with a Yazidi bard.
"We qawwâls travel," he continued, "and meet people of all races and religions. We used to take the sanjak (bronze image of the sacred peacock) as far as Russia and India as well as about Turkey, Palestine, and Syria. But those days are no more because all [100] these places now will not let one enter, and passports have become very difficult because of the war," she writes.
Drower adds, "I said that I had not known that there were Yazidis in India. He replied that there were, and also people whose customs were very much like their own. I spoke of the sacred girdle of the Parsis which is tied at prayer with ablutions, and told him that when a Parsi soldier was in Iraq during the last war and had lost his girdle, he went to a Mandaean priest to weave him another in its place. 'You Yazidis, too, have a girdle.'"
A website called YezidiTruth provides an explanation of how the religion may have come to incorporate practices and beliefs from the subcontinent.
"During and after a great flood around 4000 BCE, the Yezidis dispersed to many countries in Africa and Asia, including India, Afghanistan, Armenia, and Morocco," it says. "Returning from their adoptive countries around 2000 BCE the Yezidis played an important role in the development of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Jewish civilizations of the Middle East. Ultimately, the Yezidis amalgamated elements of all these civilisations into Yezidism..."
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The Yazidi religion is believed to be one of the oldest in the world that has been kept alive by drawing in practices from other religious traditions. The central figure in the Yazidi religion is the Peacock Angel called Melek Tawwus. According to Yazidi belief, Malek Tawwus is a fallen angel but not one who is beyond redemption. The Melel Tawwus plays a more important role in Yazidi religion than the god that forgives him, a belief that has led to the Yazidi being marginalised and often persecuted as "devil worshippers".
The Yazidis’ religion and customs that have been passed on orally have remained mostly obscure. But some observers believe that the Yazidis have a connection with India.
In his book Land of Seven Rivers: History of India’s Geography, Sanjeev Sanyal points out that the Yazidis, like Hindus, believe in reincarnation and avatars. "...they pray facing the sun at dawn and dusk and have a system of endogamous castes", he writes. Yazidi temples have spires that make them look very similar to Hindu places of workshop, he notes.
Sanyal says that though the Peacock Angel Tawuse Melek is central to the Yazidi religion, the colourful bird is not native to the region in which the Yazidi live but is native to India. "Is it possible that the Yezidi have somehow preserved an ancient link to India?" he speculates. "Indeed, the Yezidi themselves have a tradition that they came to the Middle East from India about 4,000 years ago – around when the mature Harappan civilisation would have begun to disintegrate...”
In Peacock Angel: Being Some Account of the Votaries of a Secret Cult and their Sanctuaries published in 1941, British cultural anthropologist Ethel Drower describes her conversation with a Yazidi bard.
"We qawwâls travel," he continued, "and meet people of all races and religions. We used to take the sanjak (bronze image of the sacred peacock) as far as Russia and India as well as about Turkey, Palestine, and Syria. But those days are no more because all [100] these places now will not let one enter, and passports have become very difficult because of the war," she writes.
Drower adds, "I said that I had not known that there were Yazidis in India. He replied that there were, and also people whose customs were very much like their own. I spoke of the sacred girdle of the Parsis which is tied at prayer with ablutions, and told him that when a Parsi soldier was in Iraq during the last war and had lost his girdle, he went to a Mandaean priest to weave him another in its place. 'You Yazidis, too, have a girdle.'"
A website called YezidiTruth provides an explanation of how the religion may have come to incorporate practices and beliefs from the subcontinent.
"During and after a great flood around 4000 BCE, the Yezidis dispersed to many countries in Africa and Asia, including India, Afghanistan, Armenia, and Morocco," it says. "Returning from their adoptive countries around 2000 BCE the Yezidis played an important role in the development of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Jewish civilizations of the Middle East. Ultimately, the Yezidis amalgamated elements of all these civilisations into Yezidism..."