Religious Minorities in Kurdistan
Khanna Omarkhali
Harrassowitz
This anthology represents an account of the religious milieus flourishing beyond the Islamic mainstream in all parts of Kurdistan. Although nowadays Kurdistan is mostly identified with Islam, practiced by the majority of Kurds, it can be called a reservoir of religions because various religious groups of minority faiths coexist there.
During this period of profound and rapid change, especially in the last few decades, various economic, political, and social transformations have taken place throughout the Middle East. The Kurds are now living under very different political conditions and the profound changes in the political landscape of each of the involved regions during the past few decades have affected the religious minorities in the Kurdish regions in various ways.
Religious minorities have always remained beyond the mainstream both in Kurdistan itself and elsewhere. Most of the literature on religious minorities in the Middle East that has appeared in recent years is dedicated to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition, while many other religious minority groups are frequently overlooked in this research. Until now very little has been published in the field of study of the non-Christian and non-Jewish minorities in the Middle East.1 Moreover, the focus of the scholarship, as well as that of international human rights institutions, has primarily been on the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.
The idea to publish this volume was partly inspired by the ...
Contents
List of Illustrations / VII
List of Tables / VIII
Abbreviations / IX
Preface and Acknowledgements / XIII
Transcription / XV
Introduction - Religious Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream / XVH
Khanna Omarkhali
Ahl-e Haqq (Yaresan I Kaka î)
The Yaresan of Kurdistan / 3
Philip G. Kreyenbroek (Göttingen)
Hajj Ne'matollah Jayhunabadî (1871-1920) and His Mystical Path within the
Ahl-e Haqq Order / 13
Mojan Membrado (Paris)
Life as Ritual: Devotional Practices of the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq of Guran / 47
Partow Hooshmandrad (Fresno, California)
Yezidis
Current Changes in the Yezidi System of Transmission of Religious
Knowledge and the Status of Spiritual Authority / 67
Khanna Omarkhali (Göttingen)
One Community, Two Identities: Syria’s Yezidis and the Struggle of a
Minority Group to Fit in / 79
Sebastian Maisel (Allendale, Michigan)
Yezidis in Censuses in the USSR and Post-Soviet Countries / 97
Nodar Mossaki (Moscow)
Alevis
“Our Alevi and Kurdish Brothers” - Some Remarks on Nationalism and
Minority Politics in Turkey / 139
Markus Dressler (Bayreuth)
An Inside View of the Kurdish Alevis: Dîwana Heq of Pir Ali Bali / 159
Lokman Turgut (Erfurt)
The Politics of Religious and Ethnic Identity among Kurdish Alevis in the
Homeland and in Diaspora / 173
Janroj Keles (London)
Sufi Orders and Shabak
The Haqqa Community: A Heterodox Movement with Sufi Origins / 227
Thomas Schmidinger (Vienna)
Khaksar Order in Kurdistan / 235
Shahrokh Raei (Gottingen)
The End of Heterodoxy? The Shabak in Post-Saddam Iraq / 247
Michiel Leezenberg (Amsterdam)
Jews
The Kurdish Jewish Communities - Lost Forever / 271
Birgit Ammann (Potsdam)
Kurdish and Neo-Aramaic Literature of Kurdistani Jews / 301
Yona Sabar (Los Angeles)
Christians
Coping in Kurdistan: The Christian Diaspora / 321
Erica C.D. Hunter (London)
“The Thieving Kurds”: A Stereotype among Syrian Christians Concerning their
Coexistence with the Kurds / 339
Martin Tamcke (Gottingen)
Text, Religion, Society. The Modem Kurdish Bible Translations in the
Context of the Socio-political Changes in Kurdistan / 353
Marcin Rzepka (Krakow)
Illustrations / 371
Contributors / 385
Glossary of Terms / 391
Index
I. Personal Names / 397
II. Place Names / 401
III. General Index / 406
List of Illustrations1
Illustration 1 Three well-known kalam-khwans of the Guran region during the
Khawandkar annual celebrations in the village of Tûtshamî / 373
Illustration 2 Transcription of the group nazm Razhiyan Ddldhû / 374
Illustration 3 Yezidis during the religious feast Eyda Ezid, Armenia, 1963 / 375
Illustration 4 The village of Shadala, May 2008 / 376
Illustration 5 The cemetery of Shadala, April 2006 / 376
Illustration 6 Xaniim Ehmed Ebdul Qadir, April 2006 / 377
Illustration 7 The villages of the different branches of the Haqqa
Community in Iraqi Kurdistan / 377
Illustration 8 The entrance of the khaneqah of Kermanshah, March 2009 / 378
Illustration 9 MTr Tahers sons: MTr Kowşar and Mir Jamal al-Dîn, June 2010 / 378
Illustrations 10-11 Celebration of the birth of Imam Ali in khaneqah of
Kermanshah, June 2010 / 379
Illustration 12 The Shabak village Faziliye, July 2013 / 380
Illustrations 13-14 Jewish amulet to ward off negative influences, from Iraqi Kurdistan / 381
Illustration 15 Hakham I Rabbi 'Alwan Avidani of Amadiya, explaining a text to
Yona Sabar. Jerusalem, 1970 / 381
Illustration 16 The title page of the New Testament translation in
Kurmanji from 1872 in Armenian script / 382
Illustration 17 The New Testament translation in Kurmanji from 2000
in Cyrillic script / 383
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The idea to publish the anthology on the religious minorities in Kurdistan arose a few years ago, and it took shape after two panels “Religious Minorities and Political Changes in Kurdistan” I had organised during the International conference “The Kurds and Kurdistan: Considering Continuity and Change,” the University of Exeter, the United Kingdom, 6-8 September 2012.
I would like to express my heartiest thanks to the authors of the volume for their willingness to collaborate in the project and their worthy contributions. Throughout the composition of this volume, I derived great benefit from productive cooperation with the contributors. I am especially grateful to Prof. Dr. Birgit Ammann, Potsdam University, and Dr. Michiel LEEZENBERG, University of Amsterdam, for their valuable ideas and support.
I would like to extend special thanks to Mr. Reza Zanganeh, Bonn University, both for producing a coherent layout of the book, preparation of its indices and for his enormous assistance during unification of the transcription and personal and geographic names in the volume, as well as for his valuable ideas during the formatting of the book.
My gratitude goes to Dr. Barbara Kraur from the Harrassowitz publishing house for her support, organisation, and her suggestion to publish the volume in the series Studies in Oriental Religions. My thanks also go to Prof. Dr. Wassilios KLEIN, the general editor of this series, who kindly accepted this anthology for the Studies in Oriental Religions. 1 also wish to express my appreciation to Mr. Michael FRÖHLICH who devoted his utmost attention to the production of this volume.
The miscellany Religions Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream is designed for those who wish to familiarise themselves with the different religious minority groups in Kurdistan and enrich their knowledge of this subject. This volume aims to make a contribution to the literature on religious minorities in the Middle East and it is intended to be a contribution to the research in Religious Studies, Minority Studies, Iranian Studies, and Kurdish Studies. The volume can be used in university seminars in these fields.
It is perhaps necessary to point that statements and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the editor.
Göttingen, August 2013
Khanna Omarkhali
Transcription
This collection contains chapters dealing with different languages (Kurdish, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Georgian, etc.). Moreover, Kurdish can be written in different scripts, including Arabic, Roman, Cyrillic, and Armenian, and thus it causes special problems in transcription.
In this volume the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration system for the Arabic and Persian alphabets is used as a standard, with the exception of the short vowels -zz-, -z- and the diphthong -an- or -aw-, which are transliterated in this volume as -o-, -e- and -ow- for the Persian names, terms and certain specific expressions (e.g. Ab!-e Haqq, dowre, Soltan, etc.).
For Kurdish, the transcription used here is mainly that of the Bedir Khan brothers, which was developed in the early 1930s in “Hawar” (e.g. êzdiyatî, kirîv).
For the Russian alphabet DIN 1460, and for the Georgian the national system of Romanization adopted in February 2002 by the Institute of Linguistics, Georgian Academy of Sciences are used.
In this volume those geographic names that have no established form in English, or are not well-known in the English language literature are scientifically transcribed (e.g. ‘Arsh Oîbar, Başûfdti). To avoid additional complications, the editor decided not to transcribe geographic names that have established English forms (e.g. Guran, Hawraman, Kermanshah, Sahneh).
The majority of Arabic and Persian personal names that have no established form or are not known in the English language literature are transcribed according to the IJMES system for Arabic or Persian alphabets. Those names that are well-known and often used in the English language literature are not transcribed (e.g. Mustafa Barzani). All names that have common English forms, such as Muhammad (the Islamic prophet) or Ali (the son-in-law of Muhammad), are not transcribed. However, when a part of other personal names they are scientifically transcribed (e.g. A/TElahT, Muhammad Abû al-Saud al-HasTbî).
Terms that have established English forms (e.g. madrasa) are not transcribed. In case there is a different pronunciation or spelling of a term/name in literature, its alternative variant is given in the brackets, usually in its first occurrence (e.g. Yaresan (Yarsan/Ycirisan), Gorani (or Gurani), etc.). If an Arabic term is used by the Kurdish-speaking religious groups, then often both Kurdish and Arabic variants are given (e.g. Ar. madhhab', Kurd, mezheb). Arabic terms and names that are used by the Persian-speaking people are transcribed according to the IJMES transliteration system for the Persian alphabet (e.g. zekr, Ne 'matollah).
Kurmanji Kurdish, as well as Turkish, terms and names are given in the original Latin-based Kurdish and Turkish alphabets (e.g. Kurd. Elewî,pîr, qewlbêj, şêx', Tur. Aleviler, cemevi).
The personal and geographic names, as well as terms used in the volume in different articles are unified as much as possible (e.g. Sayyed Beraka, Ahl-e Haqq, Sulaymaniyafi).
Book titles in Arabic, Persian, and Russian are scientifically transcribed and their English translation is given in the brackets.
Introduction
Religious Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream
Khanna Omarkhali
This anthology represents an account of the religious milieus flourishing beyond the Islamic mainstream in all parts of Kurdistan. Although nowadays Kurdistan is mostly identified with Islam, practiced by the majority of Kurds, it can be called a reservoir of religions because various religious groups of minority faiths coexist there.
During this period of profound and rapid change, especially in the last few decades, various economic, political, and social transformations have taken place throughout the Middle East. The Kurds are now living under very different political conditions and the profound changes in the political landscape of each of the involved regions during the past few decades have affected the religious minorities in the Kurdish regions in various ways.
Religious minorities have always remained beyond the mainstream both in Kurdistan itself and elsewhere. Most of the literature on religious minorities in the Middle East that has appeared in recent years is dedicated to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition, while many other religious minority groups are frequently overlooked in this research. Until now very little has been published in the field of study of the non-Christian and non-Jewish minorities in the Middle East.1 Moreover, the focus of the scholarship, as well as that of international human rights institutions, has primarily been on the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.
The idea to publish this volume was partly inspired by the courses on religious traditions in Kurdistan which 1 have taught at the Georg-August University Gottingen in previous years. Except for the collection of articles by Prof, Martin van BRUIN ESSEN Mullas, Sufis and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society,2 it was difficult to recommend any other single volume that …
1 There is a great amount of literature studying the Aramaic dialects of Christian and Jewish groups in the Kurdish regions. This level of attention is unmatched by any of the other language groups.
2 Bruinessen, Martin van, Mullas, sufis and heretics: The role of religion in Kurdish society, collected articles, Istanbul, The Isis Press, 2000.
Khanna Omarkhali
Religious Minorities in Kurdistan:
Beyond the Mainstream
Harrassowitz
Harrassowitz Verlag
Studies in Oriental Religions 68
Religious Minorities in Kurdistan:
Beyond the Mainstream
Edited by Khanna Omarkhali
Studies in Oriental Religions
Edited by Wassilios Klein and Karenina Kollmar-Paulenz
Volume 68
2014
Harrassowitz Verlag - Wiesbaden
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese
Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie;
detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über
http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet
at http://dnb.dnb.de
For further information about our publishing program consult our
website http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de
© Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden 2014
This work, including all of its parts, is protected by copyright.
Any use beyond the limits of copyright law without the permission
of the publisher is forbidden and subject to penalty.
This applies particularly to reproductions, translations,
microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems.
Printed on permanent/durable paper.
Printing and binding: Hubert & Co., Gottingen
Printed in Germanyµ
ISSN 0340-6792
ISBN 978-3-447-10125-7
