I’VE WRITTEN A SHORT PIECE for the Art Newspaper, asking why there are so few artefacts in western museums connected with the Yazidi, a religious group traditionally based in Kurdistan, many of whom are still displaced following the genocide of their people on Mount Sinjar at the hands of Islamic State in 2014.
In a recent event at the British Museum, the Turkish author Elif Shafak spoke about the Yazidi in relation to her latest novel There are Rivers in the Sky, which includes a harrowing account of the 2014 genocide. Shafak’s talk led me back to Austen Henry Layard’s famous account of his travels to Iraq, Nineveh and its remains, with an account of a visit to the Chaldæan Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or devil-worshippers; and an enquiry into the manners and arts of the ancient Assyrians, first published in 1849.
I first read Layard’s book a few years back when writing about Assyrian art, and was entranced by his description of the ruins of the great palaces of Nineveh, and the story of transporting the sculptures and wall reliefs back to the British Museum.
At the time I was less interested in his visit to the Yazidi, but now see it as the most important part of his book. Layard describes the persecution, massacres, and regular capture and enslavement of Yazidi women and children by the ‘Pashas of Baghdad and Mosul’. His description foreshadows the 2014 genocide, and terrible history of abduction and sexual slavery, and makes for grim reading in the light of recent events.
In direct contrast to this ongoing history of persecution, Layard describes the festive annual gathering of the Yazidi at the tomb shrine of Sheikh Adi, in the mountain valley of Lāleš (Lalish), north of Mosul, in present-day Iraqi Kurdistan. He sheds light on Yazidi religion and customs, and his account is worth quoting from at some length.
In the company of Hussein Bey, the ‘political chief’ of the Yazidi, Layard rides out one morning from the village of Baadri to the hills where, after a steep ascent, they look down on the ‘richly wooded valley of Sheikh Adi’:
As soon as the white spire of the tomb appeared above the trees, all our party discharged their guns. The echoes had scarcely died away, when our signal was answered by similar discharges from below. As we descended through the thick wood of oaks, we passed many pilgrims on their way, like ourselves, to the tomb; the women seated under the trees, relieving themselves awhile from their infant burdens ; the men re-adjusting the loads which the rapid descent had displaced. As each new body of travellers caught sight of the object of their journey, they fired their guns, and shouted the cry of the tribe to those below.
The tomb sanctuary of Sheikh Adi stands in a courtyard in the middle of a rocky ravine, one end of which is occupied by a reservoir fed by a mountain spring; sacred water for the Yazidi. Dimly lit by a single lamp, the inner sanctum of Sheikh Adi’s tomb is inscribed with a verse from the Qu’ran. Symbols on the doorway to the shrine, a lion, a snake, a hatchet, a man, and a comb, were carved, Layard is told, by a Christian artisan, not out of scriptural necessity, but ‘suggested by his mere fancy’.
It seems from Layard’s description, however, less the images and carvings, and more the people themselves that stand at the heart of the Yazidi culture and faith. His account of the arrival of the pilgrims, winding their way through the trees up to the shrine, is magical:
Long lines of pilgrims toiled up the avenue. There was the swarthy inhabitant of the Sinjar, with his long black locks, his piercing eye and regular features — his white robes floating in the wind, and his unwieldy matchlock thrown over his shoulder. Then followed the more wealthy families of the Kochers, — the wandering tribes who live in tents in the plains, and among the hills of ancient Adiabene; the men in gay jackets and variegated turbans, with fantastic arms in their girdles ; the women richly clad in silk antaris ; their hair, braided in many tresses, falling down their backs, and adorned with wild flowers ; their foreheads almost concealed by gold and silver coins ; and huge strings of glass beads, coins, and engraved stones hanging round their necks. Next would appear a poverty-stricken family from a village of the Mosul district ; the women clad in white, pale and care-worn, bending under the weight of their children ; the men urging on the heavily-laden donkey.
There followed much reverence of Hussein Bey, Sheikh Nasr, and of Layard himself (probably more as a curiosity), and after the ritual of purification, much dancing, feasting, and singing.
As the daylight faded, oil lamps were placed around shrine and in the surrounding forest, on rocks and in the hollows of trees. ‘Innumerable stars appeared to glitter on the black sides of the mountain, and in the dark recesses of the forest’, Layard writes.
As night advanced, those who had assembled — they must now have amounted to nearly five thousand persons — lighted torches, which they carried with them as they wandered through the forest. The effect was magical; the varied groups could be faintly distinguished through the darkness; men hurrying to and fro; women, with their children, seated on the house-tops; and crowds gathering round the pedlars who exposed their wares for sale in the court-yard. Thousands of lights were reflected in the fountains and streams, glimmered amongst the foliage of the trees, and danced in the distance. As I was gazing on this extraordinary scene, the hum of human voices was suddenly hushed, and a strain, solemn and melancholy, arose from the valley. It resembled some majestic chant which years before I had listened to in the cathedral of a distant land. Music so pathetic and so sweet I had never before heard in the East. The voices of men and women were blended in harmony with the soft notes of many flutes. At measured intervals the song was broken by the loud clash of cymbals and tambourines; and those who were without the precincts of the tomb then joined in the melody.
[…]
The tambourines were beaten with extraordinary energy; the flutes poured forth a rapid flood of notes; the voices were raised to their highest pitch; the men outside joined in the cry; whilst the women made the rocks resound with the shrill tahlehl. The musicians, giving way to the excitement, threw their instruments into the air, and strained their limbs into every contortion, until they fell exhausted to the ground. I never heard a more frightful yell than that which rose in the valley. It was midnight. The time and place were well suited to the occasion; and I gazed with wonder upon the extraordinary scene around me.
The festivities continued all night, the people seeking repose only as the daylight broke. But then new streams of pilgrims began arriving, Layard writes, and the religious ceremony and festivities were repeated once again.
Layard goes on to detail some of the beliefs and origins of the Yazidi, gathered in discussion with Sheikh Nasr, the Yazidi leader. This includes a description of the bronze or copper effigy of Melek Taus, the ‘Peacock Angel’, a sacred symbol associated with the rebel Angel, Satan, which gave rise for many years to the mistaken epithet for the Yazidi as ‘devil-worshipping’.
Layard’s book is now almost two hundred years old, but his account remains highly readable, and not that dissimilar to one of the most up-to-date sources on the Yazidi, the online entry in the Encyclopeadia Iranica. It confirms both the richness of Yazidi culture, its endurance, and what you might call its ‘museum-proof’ status — a culture based largely on an oral tradition of poetry and story-telling, rather than images and objects.
This might have changed in recent years, particularly in the light of the Yazidi diaspora into the west. And yet the oral tradition remains strong. One of the most moving recent expressions of Yazidi culture, so shaped by the long history of persecution, is a poem by the young writer Emad Basher, a translated excerpt of which can be found on the Poetry Foundation website:
I wish I were a slave…
Says the match man
Lighting his last cigarette
I wish I were a slave…
Says a lost tourist
Tossing his passport in the sea
I wish I were a slave…
Says a girl with curly hair
Wearing a hospital uniform
We wish we were slaves…
Say street vendors
Scattering at the outskirts of the village
We wish were slaves…
Say the drunks at dawn
Staggering their way back to life.
— From The Slave, by Emad Bashar. (Translated by Bryar Bajalan and David Shook).
I’d like to read the whole poem.