Yezidi religious oral poetic literature: Status, formal characteristics, and genre analysis: With some examples of Yezidi religious texts

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the investigation of the religious textual heritage of the Yezidis, adherents of the monotheistic, non-proselytizing pre- Islamic Kurdish religion. Yezidis always had a great fear of writing down their religious texts and hence avoided the practice. The basis of Yezidi dogmas is kept mainly in the oral tradition, literature which is represented by diff erent kinds of religious poetry and prose and which has its own set of categories that cannot easily be compared with the genres in known written traditions. In this investigation, the publication of Yezidi religious texts and their status, formal characteristics, and language, as well as diff erent categories of Yezidi poetic literature are explored. At the end of the study, the Yezidi Declaration of the Faith (Sehdetiya Dîn) and another example of a religious poetic text, Beyta Heyî Malê, are given with English translation as illustrations of the Yezidi religious poetic literature.