Melek Taus

When he came down into the world, the seven colours of the rainbow gathered into a single bird and took wing. The peacock flew over every quarter of the earth, its tail throwing the light back in bands of green and gold, and everywhere its shadow passed the ground was blessed. Where it finally settled, in a narrow valley folded into the mountains of northern Iraq, the Yazidis raised the holiest place they possess. The valley is Lalish. The bird is Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock Angel, and the people who tell this story hold him to be the lord of this world.

He was the first thing God made, struck from the divine light before the world had any shape to it. When the seven Holy Beings were appointed to take the creation in hand, it was Tawûsî Melek who was set over the other six, and to him God gave the running of everything that happens beneath the sky. The Creator then drew back, remote and complete, leaving the day-to-day of the world in the keeping of his deputy. That is the office the Yazidis give him: not a distant god of the heavens but the near one, the Lord of this World, answerable for all of it, the good and the harm alike.

The story that shadows him begins with the making of Adam. God shaped the first man from dust and commanded the angels to bow before him. Tawûsî Melek would not. He had been made from light and told to bow to no one but his Maker, and he held to that first command even when a second seemed to cancel it, refusing to kneel to a thing of clay. In the Yazidi understanding this was not pride but the deepest fidelity, a test that he alone passed, and God answered it by raising him above all others and handing him the world. Anyone who knows the Quran will recognise the shape of it. It is almost exactly the story of Iblis, the angel whose identical refusal is counted the first sin and the origin of the devil. The same act damns one angel and exalts another. Everything turns on who is telling it.

There is a gentler story bound up with the harsher one. After his parting from God’s presence, Tawûsî Melek wept. He wept for seven thousand years, and his tears ran down and filled seven great jars, and when the jars were full they were carried to hell and poured out, and the fires went out. Yazidis take from this that there is no everlasting punishment. The world is the place where people are tried and refined, and the Peacock Angel is the one who leads them up out of it, back toward the God from whom everything came.

You will not often see him drawn as a man. His image is the bird, and above all it is the sinjaq, a standard cast in bronze with a peacock perched at its top, tail folded, no larger than a big lamp. Seven of these were made, one for each of the seven districts of the Yazidi world. Once a year, in the old days, a holy man would take one up and carry it from village to village in a procession called the tawûsgeran, the parading of the peacock. People came out to meet it, pressed their lips to the cold green metal, gave what coins they had, and were blessed. The hundred eyes and shifting colours of the bird were read as the whole variety of the world held in one creature, and the fan of its tail as the rays of the sun let down each morning onto the earth.

Much of what holds the faith together runs through a man named Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, a Sufi mystic of the twelfth century who settled in the valley of Lalish and whose tomb is now its heart. The Yazidis came to see in him a living appearance of Tawûsî Melek himself, the angel walking in a human life. Almost none of this was ever written down by the people who believe it. The tradition is carried in the qewls, sacred hymns learned by heart and sung, and the passages that survive place the Peacock Angel everywhere at once, in the sky and the sea, on the mountain and among the people who live on it. The two short books sometimes paraded as Yazidi scripture, a Black Book and a Book of Revelation, are almost certainly the work of outsiders, assembled and sold to European collectors barely a century ago. The real record was never on paper.

The likeness to Iblis has cost the Yazidis more than any argument of doctrine ever could. From the sixteenth century onward their Muslim and Christian neighbours took the refusal to bow as proof that they worshipped the devil, and the charge, once made, proved impossible to shake. Yazidis do not believe in a devil at all. They hold that evil has no divine author, that it rises out of the human heart, and they will not so much as speak the name of Satan, avoiding even ordinary words that sound too near it. None of that has protected them. The slander has been used to justify massacre after massacre, most recently the assault on the Sinjar region in 2014, when tens of thousands were killed or enslaved for a heresy they do not hold.

His powers are those of a regent rather than a creator. He makes nothing of his own; everything he commands was first given him to command, and he governs the world only because God stepped back and let him. Once a year, on the Red Wednesday that opens the Yazidi calendar in April, he is remembered as the one who first came down to a raw and lifeless earth and coaxed it into bloom, and graves are dressed and painted eggs are set on them in his honour. What limits him is written into the same story that made him. He is bound to the world he was set over, close to its suffering as much as its plenty, and he carries, with no hope of correcting it, the oldest case of mistaken identity in the region, revered by the few who know him and cursed as the enemy of God by nearly everyone who does not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Melek Taus?

Melek Taus, or Tawûsî Melek, is the Peacock Angel, the central divine figure of the Yazidi religion. Yazidis believe he was the first being God created, made from divine light and set as leader over the seven Holy Beings who govern the world. He is regarded not as a god apart from the Creator but as God’s deputy and the Lord of this World, responsible for everything that happens in it.

Is Melek Taus the devil?

No. Yazidis venerate Melek Taus as a benevolent angel and the leader of the archangels, not as a fallen or evil being, and they do not believe in a devil at all. The confusion comes from a story in which he refused God’s command to bow to Adam, which resembles the Quranic account of Iblis becoming Satan. Where Islam treats that refusal as the first sin, Yazidis read it as proof of Melek Taus’s total devotion to God alone.

Why did Melek Taus refuse to bow to Adam?

In Yazidi belief, God had first commanded the angels to bow to no one but himself, so when he later ordered them to bow before the newly created Adam, Melek Taus alone held to the original command. He argued that he had been made from light and would kneel only to his Maker, not to a creature of dust. Yazidis understand this as a test of loyalty that he passed, and God rewarded him by making him ruler of the world.

Why is Melek Taus shown as a peacock?

When Melek Taus descended to earth, the seven colours of the rainbow are said to have become a seven-coloured peacock that flew across the world to bless it before resting at Lalish. The peacock’s shifting, iridescent colours are taken to represent the diversity of the whole world, and the fan of its tail is read as the rays of the sun. His most sacred images are bronze standards called sinjaq, each topped with a peacock, which were once carried among Yazidi villages in a blessing procession.

Where is Melek Taus worshipped?

Melek Taus is worshipped by the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious community concentrated in northern Iraq, especially the Sinjar region, with communities also in Syria, Turkey, the Caucasus, and a large diaspora. The faith’s holiest site is the valley and temple of Lalish, believed to be where the Peacock Angel came to rest and where the twelfth-century reformer Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir is entombed. Lalish is the focus of Yazidi pilgrimage.

Related Entries

Shaitan, Djinn, Ifrit, Anzû, Simurgh, Angra Mainyu, Lucifer, Grigori, Irin, Guardian angel, Angels, Mayura