Sultan Ezid

Also Known As: Kurmanji Siltan Êzîd; also Êzî, Êzîd, Êzda, and the epithet Êzîdê Sor, “Ezid the Red”; the community’s own name, Êzîdî, is taken from his
Region/Culture: West Asia/Middle East
Mythos: Yazidi Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is at once one of the names of God and the name of God’s manifestation on earth, standing with Tawûsî Melek and Sheikh Adi as one of the three faces in which Yazidis meet the divine.
Role in Mythos: He is the figure the Yazidi people are named for and descended from, whose winter fast and feast turn the solar year.
Relation to Humans: Every Yazidi keeps three obligatory fast days in his honour and eats again at his feast on the last Friday before the solstice, and the whole community understands itself as Êzîdxane, the House of Êzîd. The bond is one of descent as much as devotion, since the origin story makes the people his line rather than merely his worshippers.

For three days each December the Yazidi villages of Sheikhan and Sinjar go dry between sunrise and sunset. No food, no water, nothing smoked. These are the Rojiyên Êzî, and unlike the other fasts scattered through the religious year they are not left to the pious few; every Yazidi keeps them, with children, the sick and the very old excused. The fast runs Tuesday to Thursday. Then comes the last Friday before the twenty-first of December, and the drums and shawms come out, and the whole village eats in daylight again on the hinge of the solar year, at the point where the days stop shortening and the sun is held to be born a second time. The feast carries a single name.

Sultan Êzîd is one of the names of God. He is also the name of God’s manifestation on earth, which sounds like a contradiction until you notice that Yazidi theology is not much interested in resolving it. He stands in a triad with Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock Angel who leads the Seven, and with Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, the twelfth-century Sufi whose tomb at Lalish is the holiest ground the religion has. Three hypostases, one God, and enough overlap between them that the Heptad is not always listed the same way twice. The people themselves take their name from his: Êzîdî, and the whole body of the community is Êzîdxane, the House of Êzîd.

Where that name came from is the oldest quarrel about the Yazidis and it has never been settled quietly. One line of derivation runs back to Old Iranian *yazata* and Middle Persian *yazad*, a divine being, which would make Êzîd simply the god. The consensus among Western scholars runs elsewhere, to Yazid ibn Mu’awiya, the Umayyad caliph who reigned from 680 to 683 and whom the Yazidis are said to revere as an incarnation of Sultan Êzî. The medieval Muslim record already saw the connection. Al-Sam’ani, who died in 1167, noted a group in the hills near Lalish who held Yazid to be righteous, and Ibn Taymiyya a century later remarked on the veneration of Yazid running alongside the veneration of Sheikh Adi’s family. Modern Yazidis reject the identification, and they have a point that deserves hearing: inside their own hymns and stories the caliph does not appear at all. The resemblance is in the name and nowhere else.

The origin the community does tell begins with a domestic argument. Adam and Eve fell out over which of them supplied the creative part in the making of children, and settled it the way you settle a wager, each sealing their seed in a jar and waiting. Eve’s jar, opened, was full of insects and crawling things. Adam’s held a boy. He was called Shehîd bin Jerr, Shahid son of the Jar, and he grew up, and he married a houri, and from that marriage the Yazidis descend. The tellings differ over exactly where Êzîd stands in that sequence; in one version he is the child of Shehîd and the houri, with Tawûsî Melek arranging the match himself.

A second story pulls him into Islamic history and makes the pull deliberate. Mu’awiya, serving the Prophet as his barber, let the razor slip and drew blood from Muhammad’s scalp. The warning that followed was that Mu’awiya would father a nation set against the Prophet’s own. Mu’awiya swore he would never marry. He broke the vow late, to an elderly woman named Mahusa, and she became young again, and the child she bore was Êzîd. The story is not an apology. It takes the accusation that the Yazidis are descended from the wrong side of Islamic history and turns it into a charter.

He is present in the qewls, the Kurmanji hymns carried for centuries by the qewwal families of Ba’shiqa and Bahzane on frame drum and flute. The Qewlê Cimcimî Siltan, the Hymn of the Sultan’s Skull, opens with the claim that Sultan Êzî made Eve a bride and Adam a groom, and then a company comes across a skull lying in open ground and the skull starts to talk. Another hymn, with the prose chirok that explains it, has Êzî convert a judge of the sharia to the true religion. The qewls allude rather than narrate, which is why each one needs its story attached, and why a figure this central can leave so little in the way of plot.

No one draws him. The religion carries one processional image, the senjaq, the cast peacock standard, and that belongs to Tawûsî Melek rather than to him. What he has instead of a face is a colour, in the by-name Êzîdê Sor, Ezid the Red, the same red that marks the Yazidi New Year as Çarşema Sor, Red Wednesday. At Lalish the shrine of Melek Taus is taken to be Sultan Ezid’s shrine as well, the two figures collapsing into one another the way the Heptad’s members habitually do. Yazidis hold that the Seven are periodically reborn in human form, a change they describe as *kiras guhorîn*, changing the shirt, and a figure who can put on and take off bodies is not well served by a portrait.

His power is the plainest kind a divine figure can hold, which is that a people carry his name and keep his fast, and that the year turns on his feast. His limits are the mirror of it. He has no battle, no death, no cycle of adventures to be recited; the most-repeated sentence about him is a denial, that he is not the caliph. The community has gone on building for him anyway. In June 2015 the Yazidis of Georgia opened the Sultan Ezid temple in Tbilisi, modelled on Lalish, a single fluted spire over bare stone walls, on land the Georgian government had given them six years earlier, in a country that had recognised their religion only in 2011.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Sultan Ezid in the Yazidi religion?

Sultan Ezid is a divine figure in Yazidism, understood both as one of the names of God and as the name of God’s manifestation on earth. He forms a triad with Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock Angel, and Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir. The Yazidi people take their own name, Êzîdî, from his.

Is Sultan Ezid the same as the caliph Yazid I?

Most Western scholars derive the name Yazidi from Yazid ibn Mu’awiya, the Umayyad caliph who reigned from 680 to 683, and medieval writers including al-Sam’ani and Ibn Taymiyya recorded a group near Lalish who venerated him. Modern Yazidis reject the identification and hold Sultan Ezid to be a separate figure. Their own hymns and religious stories contain no trace of the caliph.

What is the Feast of Ezid?

The Feast of Ezid, Cejna Êzî, falls on the last Friday before the twenty-first of December and commemorates Sultan Ezid. It is preceded by three days of fasting, Rojiyên Êzî, running Tuesday to Thursday from sunrise to sunset, and those fasts are obligatory for every Yazidi apart from children, the sick and the elderly. The timing places the feast at the winter solstice, when the sun is held to be reborn.

Where do the Yazidis say they come from?

Yazidi tradition holds that Adam and Eve each sealed their seed in a jar to settle which of them supplied the creative element in making children, and that Eve’s jar produced insects while Adam’s produced a boy, Shehîd bin Jerr. He married a houri, and the Yazidis descend from that union. Some versions make Sultan Ezid the child of that marriage, arranged by Tawûsî Melek.

What does Sultan Ezid look like?

No Yazidi source describes him and no image of him is made. His only fixed attribute is a colour, preserved in the by-name Êzîdê Sor, meaning Ezid the Red. The single processional image in Yazidi practice is the peacock standard, the senjaq, which belongs to Tawûsî Melek rather than to Sultan Ezid.