The Yezidi Pantheon

Abstract

Besides the Holy Triad,' constituting the so-called dogmatic base of the Yezidi religion and standing distinctly out in the cult and in the beliefs, the pantheon of the Yezidis includes a multiplicity of deities and spirit guardians, which are not too easy to determine, by many reasons other than scarcity or sparseness of the available material. Identifying the denotata of the Yezidi nomenclature of divine beings is obstructed by the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the revered historical personalities-Sheikh 'Adi's kinsmen and ambience, locally significant saints, having restricted spheres of influence, the Sufi saints (Mansur al-Hallaj, Rabi'a 'Adawwiya), Biblical and Qur'anic characters (Ibrahim, Musa, 'Isa, 'Ali, etc.), as well as simply sheikhs and pirs possessing a certain halo of saintliness. At the same time, many mythical and semimythical figures, saints, often even historical characters, having retained their cults in various Near Eastern religious traditions, e. g. in Islam and, in particular, in its so-called heretical environment, gained popularity with the Yezidis who worship them along with their genuine deities. A specific regional figure from this category of characters can be included in the paradigm of the Yezidi divine beings in case it has been deeply implanted in the popular mind and adapted to the religious tradition (e. g. Ibrahim-khalil, Khidir-nabi). For the figures of the folk pantheon it is impossible to identify the unambiguous attributes of sanctity for a given figure even in the relig