Numen 65 (2018) 562–588 brill.com/nu “Your Son Will Be the Scourge of Islam” Changing Perceptions of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya in Yezidi Oral Tradition Eszter Spät Central European University, Budapest [email protected] Abstract Using analyses of myths and fieldwork material, the article studies the way Yezidis, a small ethno-religious group of the Middle East, appropriated the Muslim figure of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya, the second Umayyad caliph. In his Yezidi myth, he appears as a divine being who was incarnated on earth in order to subvert sharia and replace it with a more spiritual form of Islam, equated with the Yezidi religion at the time the myth was composed. The myth is constructed around the historical reputation of Yazīd as an antinomian figure, but interprets it in a way that mocks orthodox Islam and echoes the ethos of Yezidi religion. In their turn, the Prophet Muhammad and Caliph Muʿāwiya appear as inferior figures, representing a religious tradition that is supersed- ed by Yazīd’s arrival. The myth throws light on the historical development of Yezidi re- ligion, as it reflects an earlier stage, when Yezidis considered orthodox Islam a related, albeit rival and inferior, form of religion. However, today, as Yezidis emphasize their dis- tance from anything related with Islam and Arabic culture, the myth may come to be rejected despite its profoundly Yezidi nature. Keywords Yezidism – Islam – mythology – syncretism – oral tradition – religious minorities in the Middle East – Sufism in Kurdistan – religious appropriation – scripturalization © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15685276-12341512Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:05:41PM via free access “Your Son Will Be the Scourge of Islam” 563 1 Introduction* In the summer of 2014, the world’s attention was drawn to a small ethno- religious community in Northern Iraq that few had heard of before. The Yezidis entered the limelight of global media after the so-called Islamic State (also referred to as ISIS) staged a wholesale attack against their community in the Sinjar region near the Syrian border. While Yezidis’ treatment at the hands of ISIS became symbolic of the savagery of the extremist group, the people least surprised by the radical Islamist group’s relentless hatred toward them were the Yezidis themselves. Yezidis have long seen Islam as their implacable enemy, and they perceive their own history as a series of persecutions by Muslims. In fact, this sense of constant persecution forms the basis of Yezidi commu- nal identity today. This view is shared and often quoted by Western journalists writing about Yezidis — especially since the ISIS attack. It is an undeniable fact that many traditional Muslims consider Yezidis impure kafirs or infidels, without a real religion, that is, a religion based on revealed written texts. Some Muslims even claim that Yezidis worship the devil. At the same time, modern Kurdish nationalist mythology, which tends to take a somewhat ambiguous attitude toward Islam (often perceived as the tool of cultural imperialism by Arabs and Turks), considers Yezidism the “original Kurdish religion.” In this view, Yezidism predates Islam and was once, before the coming of Islam, fol- lowed by all the Kurds. Today, this view is shared by most Yezidis, who like to emphasize how they are the guardians of the real Kurdish religion, while Muslim Kurds are apostates who have abandoned their original faith. However, if we look at the — admittedly meager — historical sources on Yezidis, they seem to tell a less straightforward story regarding the origins of the community and their relationship with Islam and the Muslim communi- ty.1 Although Yezidi religious oral tradition, as we know it today, undoubtedly retains many important concepts and motifs that can be traced back to pre- Islamic roots,2 there is little doubt that Islam, especially in its mystical, Sufi form, had a great role in the formation of Yezidi religion and the Yezidi socio- religious system. What is more, for centuries Yezidis may have been considered * The research on this subject was generously supported by the Hungarian Research and Science Foundation (OTKA, grant number PD 839210 and the Gerda Henkel Research Foundation (grant number AZ 28_F_10). I would also like to express my gratitude to George Soros for funding the Central European University. 1 For a detailed study of Yezidi history, see Guest 1993. For a more concise account of the early history of Yezidis, see Kreyenbroek 1995: 27–44. 2 For the Western-Iranian roots of Yezidi religion, see Kreyenbroek 1992: 57–79; 1995: 45–67; 1998: 163–184. For the impact of late antique religious milieu, see Spät 2010. Numen 65 (2018) 562–588 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:05:41PM via free access 564 Spät Muslims, both by themselves and outsiders, even if often at odds with the “official” or “orthodox” Muslim establishment. It is not the aim of this article to debate the exact origins of Yezidi reli- gious tenets or to decide which of the many roots of this syncretic religious tradition should be considered the “authentic root.” Instead, the article ana- lyzes, through the Yezidi myth of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya, the way in which Islamic figures are appropriated by Yezidi mythology, how this reflects an earlier stage of the development of Yezidi religion, and what happens to these “Islamic- Yezidi” mythical figures and their legends today in light of Yezidism’s total alienation from Islam. These questions have received little attention so far in the academic literature devoted to Yezidis.3 3 The most attention to the Islamic elements in Yezidi religion was paid by scholars of the first half of the twentieth century, many of whom saw Yezidis as a deviant sect of Islam, such as Joseph (1909), Guidi (1932), Lescot (1938), Frayha (1946) and Bois (1961). However, these scholars were generally satisfied with trying to find the historical links to Islam in the works of Arab historians and/or on drawing attention to certain ritual practices (for example cir- cumcision, Muslim-style fast), shared holidays, and certain social institutions (the Sufi origin of Yezidi castes), as well as the Islamic names of some Yezidi holy beings revered at various shrines or of holy spots (such as the spring of Zemzem and the hilltop of Arafat). At the same time, none of these authors paid much attention to Yezidi mythology or analyzed the myths behind figures bearing Muslim names. This is hardly surprising, given that before the work of Philip Kreyenbroek (1995 and 2005), Yezidi texts and myths were hardly available to Western scholars (apart from a few short accounts of myth collected by Lescot in Sinjar, which he, however, treated as legends of little interest). The main source of knowledge on Yezidi mythology were the alleged Yezidi holy books, the Splendour or Revelation (Jilwe) and the Black Book (Mesḥefa Resh). Several manuscripts of these “books” were discovered at the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th century. Present scholarly opinion holds that while the manuscripts themselves are forgeries (probably created for Westerners looking for the Yezidi holy books), their content reflects genuine Yezidi oral tradition, including an account of the creation of the world and of the origins of Yezidis (see Kreyenbroek 1995: 14–15). Though a very short version of the myth of Yazīd Ibn Mu‘āwiya analyzed in this article can be found in some of the manuscripts, it did not garner any interest among translators or other research- ers. One of the translators, Frayha, who believed the books to be genuine, states “Names occurring in these texts should be examined. The philosophical and religious allusions are interesting in that they show the early Moslem element in the Yezīdī sect” (Frayha 1946: 19). However, he did not follow up these observations with any further analysis. Lescot collected the detailed oral account of the myth used in this article (Lescot 1938: 60–64), but he paid it no further attention. Finally, Jasim Elias Murad, a Yezidi researcher who finds the roots of Yezidism in the “Yazdan Parasti” (i.e., worshippers of Yazd/Izid/God) of ancient times (Murad 1993: 53–57), quotes a short version of the same myth in his PhD dissertation. He writes: “this legend supports the hypothesis that Yazid, son of Mu‘āwiya abandoned his faith and converted to Yazidism, an assumption that implies the existence of Yazidism before the miraculous birth of Yazid.” (48) In the next few sentences, he summarily dismisses the whole myth, declaring: “As is clear, the whole legend is implausible. The Islamic historians did not record that Yazid had apostated from his religion, Islam. Therefore, the mention of Yazid NumenDownloaded 65 from (2018) Brill.com10/02/2021 562–588 07:05:41PM via free access “Your Son Will Be the Scourge of Islam” 565 The article is based on two different types of sources: – Yezidi myths collected and published by Roger Lescot (1938) and Philip Kreyenbroek (2005). – Material collected during my own twenty-two months of field work and interviews in Iraqi Kurdistan between 2002 and 2015. Insights gained in the field concerning traditional Yezidi religious language and imagery was criti- cal for analyzing the myths (published by the above scholars) and interpret- ing special Yezidi expressions or references to Yezidi religious concepts in these texts. This understanding also made possible the analysis of the way in which old myths are treated and understood among Yezidis today. 2 The Origin of Yezidis and Islam The beginning of the Yezidis as an organized religious community with a con- scious sense of identity can probably be traced back to a certain Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir.4 Sheikh Adi, as an incarnated angel or rather divine being,5 is the central figure of Yezidi mythology.