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MAY, 1928)
THE YEZIDIB OR DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS OF MOSUL
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More convincing is the derivation from Yazdan, which is a Persian name of the Supreme Being; for the Almighty enjoys among the Yezidis a remote and abstract supremacy, although it is in truth littlo more than a succès d'estime. Their more serious attention is bestowed upon him whom we denominate, when we wish to be polite, the Fallen Angel, but whom they regard as invested by the Lord of All with full authority over this world below. Hence, though it may be difficult to love him, the Devil is a power to be propitiated, to be treated with all respect; hence their terror lest anyone should pronounce in their hearing the accursed word Sheitan. For this is the opprobri ous name bestowed on the object of their devotions by those who, in their ignorance, regard him as the spirit of evil, working in opposition to the Almighty, whereas all Yezidis know him for a supernatural potentate of the first magnitude, who has received for his activities a Divine carte blanche.
Satan Visualized. Hence, too, this ubiquitous, if not precisely benevolent, power is personified in a fashion very different from that obtaining among those who mistake him for Beelzebub. No cloven hoofs and forked tail, no horns and luminous eyes, figure in the Yezidi iconography. It is as the regal, the divine peacock, as Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel or King, that Satan is visualized by his fearful but faithful followers. It is, indeed, not impossible that Melek Taus was once Melek Deós “the Lord God," and was originally the attribute of the Almighty ; that it was snatched from the feeble hands of Yazdan by the celestial Mayor of the Palace and conferred, with an altered meaning, upon himself. At all events, the bronze peacock, Melek Taus, is the sanjag, the banner, the Palladium of the Yezidi people, the one object of their ritual never shown to those outside the fold.
This, then, is the fundamental article of Yezidi belief, the worship of the Peacock Angel, but it is by no means the only one. The recognition of the principles of good and evil, which it perpetuates, is derived in all likelihood from the Persian dualists; from Persia, too, the Yezidis may have drawn their cult of the sun, for Urumiah, the birth-place of Zoroaster, is very near to the lands of the Dasnayi. On the other hand, their Sun worship may be much older, for they adore him at his rising and setting and kiss the spot on which his ray first rests; and on great festivals they sacrifice white oxen at his shrine. Now we know that the Assyrians dedicated bulls to the sun ; and what is more likely than that this strange people, whose origin and beliefs point to a remote antiquity, should be a remnant of the race which once ruled in this very region ? Another circumstance, which lends support to this theory, is the extreme hairiness of the Yezidis. The men, almost without exception, have beards abnor. mally long and curly, and their hair is as coarse and thick as that of the hairy Ainus. When we consider how prominent a part is played by the beard in Assyrian sculpture, it is impossible not to be struck by this curious parallel.
An Accommodating Seet. Nothing if not broad-minded, the Yezidis regard as inspired the Old and New Testament, and the Koran. They accept the divinity of Christ, but believe that His reign will not come until that of the Devil is over, and that the latter has another 4,000 years to run. The language of their prayers is Arabio, although they do not understand it, and they assert that the water of the sacred spring at Sheikh Adi is miraculously derived from the well Zemzem at Mecca. They circumcize with the Moslems (though this may be a measure of self-protection), they baptize with the Christians, they abstain with the Jews from unlawful foods, they abhor with the Sabeans the colour blue. Moses, Manes, Melek Isa (Jesus), Mohammed, and even the Imam Mahdi oombine with Melek Taus to produce a medley of undigested and half-understood tenets unequalled in any other sect. That no teacher has come forward to bland those ill worted beljefs into a somewhat more coherent whole is
