A Shabak Contemporary Polemic against the Yezidi Religion

Abstract

s the transmitted heritage of Yezidi1 theology came to be more widely jljL known and cultivated in imdmi Shiite2 intellectual circles, a number of re ligious scholars came to have an increasing sense that traditional culama> and fiqh were fundamentally able to show the 'basic Yezidi lies' to the medieval imd mi Shiites. So we can show the same to the modern Shiites too. It is within this context that some contemporary scholars undertook the construction of the new synthesizes of imdmi polemics against the Yezidis, especially, because the vast majority of the imdmis, however, do not have knowledge in any fiqhi sense of the 'Yezidi deviated beliefs' and because there are, possibly, some scattered 'Yezi di saytanls' (i.e. Yezidi devil-worshippers), and not saytdni sects of Ahl-i Haqq,3 in the Kurdish lands of Shiite Iran. Several months ago, perplexed as to what might be the origin of a formally specialized use of the phrase 'Iranian Yezidis' which is peculiar to the imdmi informants and equally dissatisfied with my own earlier speculations on the matter, I set about looking into the writings offaqihs who were contemporary with the modern Yezidis, if perchance they might offer some evidence on which the question might be solved. In order to this one has to come to an understanding of how they construed and dealt with a number of related problems in which they talk of both Yezidis and Ahl-i Haqq, but the fo