Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T19:31:59.322Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aspirations for Ethnonationalist Identities among Religious Minorities in Iraq: The Case of Yazidi Identity in the Period of Kurdish and Arab Nationalism, 1963–2003

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2019

Majid Hassan Ali Open the ORCID record for Majid Hassan Ali [Opens in a new window]
Majid Hassan Ali*
Affiliation:
Bamberg Graduate School of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany; College of Humanities, University of Duhok, Duhok, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The aspirations of religious minorities in Iraq for becoming recognized ethnonationalist entities have rarely been investigated from a historical perspective, particularly in the case of the Yazidis. This article addresses changing attitudes about the Yazidi religious minority identity across different historical periods. Yazidi identity is examined as an ancillary undercurrent to the ethnonationalist identity conflict between the central government of Iraq and the Kurdish movement. This contrasts with identity as a religious minority in prior eras, when religious minorities preserved their distinct core identities based on their own social and religious customs and idiosyncrasies, making them self-defining communities bound together by coherent religious identities. In the case of the Yazidi minority, despite the multiplicity of theories and hypotheses about the origins of the Yazidi people and their national and ethnic affiliations and increasing rumors about Yazidis related to their existence as a potential sub-ethnicity or ethno-religion, the important truth is that Yazidis consider themselves religiously, culturally, and historically distinct from other ethnonationalist groups and communities in Iraq.

Keywords

Yazidireligious minoritiesethnonationalist identitiesKurdish political movementIraq
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , November 2019 , pp. 953 - 967
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamson, David. 1964. The Kurdish War. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Ainsworth, W. Francis. 1861. “The Assyrian Origin of the Izedis or Yezidis—the So-Called ‘Devil Worshippers.” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, n.s., 1: 11–44. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Ali, Hazim Hassan. 1987. Intifadhat al-Mawsil: “Thawrat ash-Shawwaf” 8 Adhar 1959: “al-qisah al-kamilah lil-thawwrah” dhikrayat wa-khawatir [Mosul uprising, “Shawwaf revolution,” March 8, 1959. The full story of the revolution: Memories and thoughts]. Baghdad: n.p.Google Scholar
Ali, Majid Hassan. 2017. “Religious Minorities in Early Republican Iraq (1958–1968): Between Granting Rights and Discrimination, a Sociopolitical and Historical Study.” PhD diss., Bamberg University, Germany.Google Scholar
Ali, Majid Hassan. 2019. “The Controversy of the Religious Minorities Identities in Iraq: The Crystallization of the Yazidi Identity after 2003.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.Google Scholar
Allison, Christina. 2001. The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan. Richmond: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Arakelova, Victoria. 2010. “Ethno-Religious Communities: To the Problem of Identity Markers.” Iran and the Caucasus 14 (1): 1–17.Google Scholar
Aziz, Mahir A. 2011. The Kurds of Iraq: Ethnonationalism and National Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan. London: I. B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Bennigsen, Alexandre. 1971. “Islamic or Local Consciousness among Soviet Nationalism.” In Soviet Nationality Problems, edited by Edward Allworth, 170–182. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bois, Thomas. 1966. The Kurds. Beirut: Khayats.Google Scholar
al-Damaloji, Sadiq. 1949. Al-Yazidiyyah [the Yazidis]. Mosul: Al-Itihad Printing.Google Scholar
Donabed, Sargon George. 2015. Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Eagleton, William. 1988. An Introduction to Kurdish Rugs and Other Weavings. New York: Interlink Books.Google Scholar
Fuccaro, Nelida. 1994. “Aspects of the Social and Political History of the Yazidi Enclave of Jabal Sinjar (Iraq) under the British Mandate, 1919–1932.” PhD diss., University of Durham.Google Scholar
Fuccaro, Nelida. 1999. The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq. London: I. B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Godfrey, A. F. 2006. “Assessing Kurdish Militancy in Armenia—So Far, Not Too Much” (telegram). October 24. WikiLeaks. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06YEREVAN1484_a.html.Google Scholar
Gunter, Michael M. 1996. “The KDP-PUK Conflict in Northern Iraq.” Middle East Journal 50 (2) (Spring): 224–241.Google Scholar
al-Hasani, Abd al-Razzaaq. 1982. Al-Yazidiyyun fi Hadhirihum wa-Madhihum [The Yazidis in their present and past]. Baghdad: al-Yaqdha al-Arabiyyah Library for Publications.Google Scholar
Hussein, Khalil Ibrahim. 1987. Thawrat al-Shawwaf fi al-Mosul 1959 [Shawwaf revolution in Mosul, 1959]. Baghdad: Maktabat Bash.Google Scholar
Joseph, Isya. 1919. Devil Worship: The Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yezidis. Boston: Richard G. Badger.Google Scholar
Kinnane, Derk. 1964. The Kurds and Kurdistan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kreyenbroek, Philip G. 1995. Yezidism—Its Background, Observances, and Textual Tradition. Lewiston: Edwn Mellen.Google Scholar
Kreyenbroek, Philip G., and Jindy, Khali Rashow. 2005. God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect: Sacred Poems and Religious Narratives from the Yezidi Tradition. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Layard, Austen Henry. 1867. Ninevah and Its Remains: A Narrative of an Expedition to Assyria during the Years 1845, 1846 and 1847. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Lee, I. C., Pratto, F., and Johnson, B. T.. 2011. “Intergroup Consensus/Disagreement in Support of Group-Based Hierarchy: An Examination of Socio-structural and Psycho-cultural Factors.” Psychological Bulletin 137 (6): 1029–1064.Google Scholar
Malek, Yusuf. 1935. The British Betrayal of the Assyrians. Chicago: Assyrian National Federation/Assyrian National League of America. http://www.aina.org/books/bbota.pdf.Google Scholar
McDowall, David. 1996. A Modern History of the Kurds. London: I. B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Othman, Mamo Farhan. 2013. Dirasat wa-Mabahith fi Falsafat wa-mahiyat al-Diyyanah al-Izidiyyah [Studies and investigations in the philosophy of the Yazidi religion]. Duhok: University of Duhok Publications.Google Scholar
Pirbari, Dimtri, and Rzgoyan, Rustam. 2014. “K voprosu ob identichnosti ezidov“ [On the question of Yazidi identity]. Kavkazskii emnologicheskii sbornik [Papers of Caucasian Etnology XV] 15: 170–195.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina P. 2006. The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, Avshalom H. 2007. “Abd Al-Kareem Qasim and the Kurds of Iraq: Centralization, Resistance and Revolt, 1958–63.” Middle Eastern Studies 43 (3): 353–382.Google Scholar
Rush, Alan de Lacy, and Priestland, Jane, eds. 2001. Records of Iraq, 1914–1966, Vol. 6: 1930–1932: Mandate to Treaty. Slough: Archive Editions.Google Scholar
Rush, Alan de Lacy, and Priestland, Jane, eds. 2001. Records of Iraq, 1914–1966, Vol. 15: 1963-1966: ‘Arefites, Nasirities and the Ba’athist Challenge. Slough: Archive Editions.Google Scholar
Salloum, Saad. 2017. At Crossroads: Iraqi Minorities after Isis. Baghdad: Heartland Alliance International.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Dana Adams. 1964. Journey among Brave Men. Toronto: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Singleton, Fred. 1989. A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. Reno: University of Nevada Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. 1996. “Culture, Community and Territory: The Politics of Ethnicity and Nationalism.” Ethnicity and International Relations 72 (3): 445–458.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. 2003. Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Stafford, R. S. 2004. The Tragedy of the Assyrian Minority in Iraq. London: Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Stalin I.V. n.d. Voprosy leninizma. [Questions of Leninism]. 11th ed. Moscow.Google Scholar
Stalin I.V. 1953. Kak ponimaem sotsial-demokratiia natsional’nyi vopros? [How Does Social Democracy Understand the National Question?]. Vol. 1. Moscow.Google Scholar
Sorby, Karol R. 2006. “Iraq: The Mosul Uprising of 1959.” Asian and African Studies 15 (2): 133–151.Google Scholar
Sykes, Mark. 1908. “The Kurdish Tribes of the Ottoman Empire.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland xxxviii (July): 451–486.Google Scholar
Takhar, Opinderjit Kaur. 2005. Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups among Sikhs. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, Martin. 1992. Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, Martin. 1994. “Nationalisme kurde et ethnicités intra-kurdes.” Les kurdes et les Etats. Peuples 677 Méditerranées/Mediterranean Peoples 68/69: 11–37.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zaman, Amberin. 2016. “From Tribe to Nation Final: Iraqi Kurdistan on the Cusp of Statehood.” Wilson Center Middle East Program Occasional Paper Series. https://www.scribd.com/document/323899101/From-Tribe-to-Nation-Final-Iraqi-Kurdistan-on-the-Cusp-of-Statehood.Google Scholar