Yezidis, or 'devil-worshippers' of Assyria: an investigation into their social and religious cult

Abstract

The thesis seeks to submit a modern survey of the distribution and employments of the sect; their territorial and hierarchal organisation; a description of their temple with an account of their festivals; a critique of their alleged sacred books; their social codes and taboos and the nature and objects of their adoration. it also presents the writer’s conclusions on what appear to him to be the source and evolution of the peculiarly Yezidi problem i.e. Sheikh Adi, Melek Taus and the origins of the cult. It likewise endeavours to vindicate his conclusion that Yezidism is not merely an agglomeration from the surrounding faiths, notwithstanding the existence of this latter view among writers on the subject, but that the important and preponderating religious theories in the Yezidi cult appear to be traceable into centuries far anterior to modern contiguous religions; that the cradle of the faith was the Ancient Assyrian pantheon but that, through the vicissitudes of its struggle for survival, the Yezidi cult could hardly escape being influenced by those religions which subsequently held sway on the soil of Assyria. It likewise submits the conclusion, issuing from the writer’s investigations, that Melek Taus is not the devil as the latter is known in Judaism, in Christianity or in Islam; but rather, that he is an aeon and a daiman and that the designation ’devil-worshippers’ is, therefore, a misnomer for that strange sect.