Faiths & Beliefs

Kurdish Alevism — known locally as 'Riya Heq' ('the Way of Truth') — is a syncretic mystical Islam practised by millions of Kurds in Turkey, especially in Dersim (today's Tunceli), Maraş, Malatya, Sivas, and in the Kurdish diaspora of Istanbul and Europe. It differs in character from Turkish Alevism: rooted in Kurmanji and Zazaki, layered over deeper pre-Islamic substrates, and increasingly self-defining as a tradition distinct from both Sunni and Shia Islam. Alevis venerate Imam Ali, but their theology bends toward wahdat al-wujud (unity of being), tolerance and gender equality. The cem assembly is the central ritual, where the sacred semah dance is performed to the saz (long-necked lute) and the deyiş — devotional poems — are chanted. The 1938 Dersim massacre by the Turkish state remains a defining wound in collective memory.

Christianity has had an ancient presence in the Kurdish lands, going back to the first centuries of the common era. The largest Christian communities in the Kurdish region are the Chaldeans, Assyrians and Syriacs of the Nineveh Plain, Zaxo and Duhok, alongside the Armenians who historically lived in Kurdish Turkey until the 1915 genocide. A number of important Kurdish artists and intellectuals were born to Christian or mixed families. Ethnically Kurdish Christians are today rare, but Christianity as part of the religious tapestry of Kurdistan remains alive in ancient churches such as Mar Qardakh in Erbil (4th century), Rabban Hormizd monastery at Alqosh (7th century), and the Virgin Mary church in Aqra. Kurdistan's Christian region produced the greatest Syriac scholars, including the historian Bar Hebraeus (Abu'l-Faraj of Malatya).

The majority of Kurds today — an estimated eighty per cent — are Sunni Muslims following the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence. This sets them apart from their Arab neighbours (predominantly Hanafi or Maliki), Turks (Hanafi) and Persians (Twelver Shia). Islam entered the Kurdish mountains gradually between the 7th and 10th centuries CE: first through Arab conquest, then through Sufi orders that found fertile ground in the Kurdish landscape. Two Sufi orders shaped Kurdish religious life: the Naqshbandiyya (dominant in Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan) and the Qadiriyya (with its centres in the Levant and Iraq). The leaders of these orders — known as şêx (sheikhs) — wielded spiritual, social and political authority that extended well into the twentieth century, when sheikhs such as Said Piran and Mullah Mustafa Barzani led major uprisings. Notable historical mosques include the Great Mosque of Amed (Diyarbakır), dating to the Artuqid period, and the Sheikh Khaznawi sanctuary in Qamishlo.

Yarsanism — also called Kakaism in Iraq — is an esoteric Kurdish religion with roughly one million adherents, concentrated in Kermanshah and Lorestan in western Iran, and around Kirkuk and Khanaqin in Iraq. It was founded in the fourteenth century by Sultan Sahak (d. 1424) in the village of Barzinjeh near Sulaymaniyah; its sacred book, the Saranjam, is written in the Gorani dialect of Kurdish. Yarsani theology revolves around the doctrine of seven divine theophanies and the transmigration of souls (dünadün), holding that a single divine truth has manifested itself through a succession of human faces. Music and the tanbur — the long-necked Kurdish lute — are integral to worship: the words of the saints are chanted communally in 'jem' gatherings. Yarsani men have traditionally kept their moustaches unshaven, a visible marker of identity, and practised taqiyya, the careful concealment of belief that has helped this religion survive centuries of pressure.

Yazidism (Êzîdîtî) is an indigenous Kurdish religion with an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 adherents, historically concentrated on Mount Sinjar (Şingal), the Lalish valley, and the Sheikhan villages north of Mosul, with diaspora communities in northern Syria (Cizîrê), Armenia, Georgia and Germany. It weaves together an ancient Mitanni-Median substratum with Zoroastrian, Gnostic, Christian and Islamic elements, and was given its present shape in the twelfth century by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir (d. 1162), the de-facto founder of the faith in its current form; his shrine at Lalish remains the holiest Yazidi site on earth. At the heart of Yazidi belief stands Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock Angel — chief of seven angels created by the Supreme God and entrusted with the governance of the universe. Yazidis have endured centuries of persecution, the most recent and brutal being the Sinjar massacre of August 2014, when ISIS killed thousands of men and enslaved thousands of women and children — later recognised by the United Nations as a genocide.