Yezidism without Shaykh Adī: Transformations in the Yezidis’ Perception of Adī b. Musāfir

It is a fact that rapid cultural changes deeply shake the closed religious communities and lead them to a crisis with respect to their sense of belonging. One of the most vivid examples of this is the Yezidi community. In the course of moving from closed society to open society, they found themselves in quest of new ways, and there thus appeared new approaches to their traditions. This article aims to illustrate such quests through the example of attitudes towards Adī b. Musāfir, who is considered to be founder of the Yezidi religion. To that end, we made unstructured interviews with four Yezidis, two of whom live in Northern Iraq and the other two in Germany. Data obtained from these interviewees have made it possible for us to observe and examine the differentiation in the attitudes of contemporary Yezidis towards Shaykh Adī under three headings: conscious neglecting, questioning, and ostracizing. And in order to make sense of these approaches, a preamble is offered concerning the historical personality of Shaykh Adī and his place in the Yezidi faith.