Accordingly all through the vilayet the unhappy Yezidis were attacked and plundered; their women were carried[{100}] into captivity, their men were tortured and slain. And while the Government troops were ravaging the plain villages, Sheikh Adi itself (hitherto immune from such visitations) was completely ransacked by the Kurds. It was not till after sixteen years that the poor proscribed Yezidis were reinstated. Until the general amnesty at the revolution they remained in exile from their shrine. Consequently when “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” visited the place in 1907 he found it only tenanted by the Moslem Mollah in charge.
The Mollah allowed him to go anywhere, scoffing valiantly at Yezidi superstitions; and through that gloomy doorway the investigator accordingly went. But afterwards the sceptic admitted that down there he had never ventured; and had never in the least expected to see his visitor come up again alive!
Unfortunately at the time the searcher failed to realize the unique nature of his opportunity and consequently did not push his explorations as thoroughly as he otherwise would. It was very dark down the staircase, and he was only provided with matches. But it seemed to him that he had penetrated into a vast natural cavern, teeming with rills of trickling water—the birthplace of the sacred spring, which feeds the temple tanks, and forms the main source of the rivulet which flows down the glen below.
And here, perhaps, we have the key to the time-honoured sanctity of Sheikh Adi. It was primarily a seat of that fountain worship which is one of the earliest of all known cults. Melek Taüs himself was but a later accretion, though now he has usurped pre-eminence; and even yet his worshippers are half-conscious of a god behind their god. Sacred fountains by the dozen, and sacred trees by the score, may still be met with in these outlandish regions. But in Christian and Moslem villages they are reverenced somewhat shamefacedly. Among the followers of a lower religion the old superstition has retained a firmer hold.
The Yezidis possess no systematized religion woven by some great teacher into one harmonious whole. They make shift instead with a bewildering agglomeration of superstitions[{101}] pieced together into an amazing patchwork. The central article of their creed is that propitiation of the Evil Principle which was originally the conception of the Persian dualists; but with this is incorporated the world-old Nature worship of trees and fountains and fire and of all the host of heaven; upon it are grafted innumerable later doctrines derived from the Jews the Christians and the Moslems; and apparently it was by the Gnostics that the whole medley was finally moulded into something approaching its present form.
Their reverence for Sheikh Shams-ed-din, the sun, is evinced by the fact that they daily kiss the ground at the spot where his rays first rest; that they adore him at rising and setting, and sacrifice white oxen at his shrine. A somewhat similar homage is also paid to the moon; and they always bury their dead facing towards the north star. Their reverence for fountains of water appears in their ceremonial lustrations, including the baptism of their children in the temple tank at Sheikh Adi. Fire they so far honour that they deem it impiety to spit into it; and perhaps a survival of serpent worship may be traced in the famous black snake.
From the Persians they borrowed the conception of a good and an evil principle; and probably also their belief in the transmigration of souls. From the Jews they learned to identify Ahriman, the evil principle, with Satan; to practise circumcision, and blood offerings, and other points of the Mosaic ritual;[53] and to reverence the writings of the Old Testament, which they consider equally authoritative with the New Testament and the Koran. They share our Christian belief in the divinity of the Founder of our religion, albeit they consider Melek Taüs a greater divinity than Him. They respect the Sign of the Cross; but perhaps not exclusively as a Christian symbol, for the use of that sign was established even in pre-Christian days. Other tenets they have borrowed from Islam; for they regard Mohammed[{102}] as a prophet, and Mecca as a holy place; and texts from the Koran are engraved on the walls of their temple. Moreover they hold that their sacred spring is derived from the well Zemzem, whose waters Sheikh Adi miraculously conducted to their present fount.
Many points of this weird belief have no doubt been adopted piecemeal, in the hope of obtaining toleration from their Mohammedan lords. But if such was their hope it was futile. Their admitted reverence for Sheitan constitutes an abomination which neither Moslem nor Christian can condone. Thus their lot has been always oppression and often the bitterest persecution. How can such a strange compound superstition have inspired them with their heroic fortitude?
If the truth of a creed can be gauged by the number and constancy of its martyrs, then the place we should yield to the Yezidis must be one of the highest of all. Small as their sect has always been, they can count their martyrs by hundreds of thousands. And seldom indeed has any Yezidi of full age been known to abjure his religion, either under stress of torment or through fear of death. The massacre of 1892 was but the latest (and one of the mildest) of a long list of similar inflictions. Less than fifty years previously all the Yezidis of the Sheikhan were driven from their villages by a great irruption of Kurds under the Beg of Rowandiz, and fled for refuge to Mosul. The flooded Tigris cut them off; and so many thousands were massacred by their pursuers upon the site of Nineveh that the principal mound over Sennacherib’s palace acquired the ominous name of Kouyunjik—“the shambles of the sheep.” The tale of earlier massacres runs back to the very dawn of their history. Even Sinjar has not always proved a sanctuary, though there they have been less hard pressed.
But still the sect lives on; and (what is stranger yet) it occasionally attracts proselytes! Why a Christian should turn Moslem, we can understand—at least he ensures worldly advancement. But what conceivable benefit can he look to acquire by turning Yezidi? Unless indeed he is tired of life, and has a conscientious objection to suicide.[{103}]