Landscapes of Resistance

Narratives around Sacred Places in Sinjar (Iraq) and the Islamic State’s Genocide against Yezidis

丛编：

著者：
Benjamin Rassbach
On August 3, 2014, the Sinjar region of Northern Iraq was attacked by the “Islamic State”. Killing and abducting thousands, the jihadists also destroyed many of the religious minority’s shrines. Others, however, were defended by local fighters and groups affiliated with the PKK. In the aftermath of the genocide, stories of divine intervention into the defence bolstered land claims of serveral Kurdish political groups. Through extensive fieldwork in the region, I trace imaginaries of Sinjar as a landscape of resistance and a communal history of continuous persecution to current political disputes and attempts to construct a unified Yezidi identity.
Copyright Year:
2025
电子书 (PDF)
状态:
Publiziert
Publisher ISBN:
978-90-04-71165-5
Publication date:
11 Nov 2024
精装本
状态:
Publiziert
Publisher ISBN:
978-90-04-71164-8
Publication date:
21 Nov 2024
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Benjamin Raßbach, Ph.D. (2024), Orient-Institute Beirut, is a postdoc researcher working on politics and traditions of Middle Eastern religious minorities, looking back on ten years of fieldwork experience. He studied at Philipps University Marburg and Leipzig University, and received his Ph.D. from Leipzig University.
"Raßbach has undoubtedly authored a work that deserves a place on the shelf of anyone seriously engaged with the study of Yezidism – and especially those seeking a deeper understanding of the Yezidis of Sinjar." - Peter Nicolaus, in: International Journal of Yezidi Studies, 2 (2025), pp. 145-151 [DOI: 10.1555/yezidistudies/2/6/1/2025/145-151]
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Notes on Transcription and Transliteration

Introduction

Part1 Communal Identities, Sacred Places and Concepts of History



1 Kurdish Territories, Yezidi Landscapes
 1 The Kurdish Question
 2 The Yezidis—an Encounter through the Kurdish Militants’ Perspective
 3 Yezidi Shrines’ Embeddedness in Middle Eastern Landscapes

2 Visiting the Holy Beings in Their Places
 1 Dividing Time and Thinking Temporalities—the Shrines’ Relation to the “Mystery”
 2 “Sign-Places” and Symbolic Graves
 3 Laliş—the Yezidi Axis Mundi
 4 Worship of Emplaced Powers throughout the Middle East
 5 Traces Left on the Land by the Holy Beings
 6 “Strong Incarnation”
 7 The Emplacement of Ritual

3 Yezidi Sacred Places and Communal Memory
 1 Communal Memories of Conflict around Sacred Places
 2 Genres of the Yezidi Oral Tradition
 3 Conceptualising Yezidi History
 4 The Time of Şêx ʿAdî
 5 The Evolvement of Yezidism from a Historical Perspective
 6 The Fermans

Part2 Contention and Symbolic Order: Yezidi Sacred Landscapes



4 Sinjar—a Landscape of Miracles and Contention
 1 “All Sacred Things Must Have Their Place”
 2 A Landscape of Miracles
 3 “The Mountain of the Hairy Ones”—Political Contentions Over Sinjar
 4 Narratives about the Yezidi Settlement in Sinjar

5 Symbolic Order and Spatialised Narratives of Conflict
 1 Şêx ʿAdî’s Revelation
 2 “You Have Stopped the Pilgrimage to Mecca!”
 3 Şêx Mend—Ruler of Aleppo and Master of the Snakes
 4 An Ambivalent Relation to Islam
 5 Conflictual Mimesis
 6 Appropriation and Layers of Meaning

6 Yezidi Shrines, Social Formations and the Consolidation of Identity
 1 People Belong to Their Shrines
 2 Exclusion
 3 Şêx(ê) Maḥama
 4 Collective Identities in Sinjar and the Rise of Religion
 5 Şêx Kurêş, Şêx Rumî, Pîr Zekr: Sharing Sacred Places in Sinjar
 6 Seeing the Future from the Past: Yezidi Identity in Apocalyptic Times

Part3 Defending Sinjar: Kurdish Nationalism, Religious identity and the Making of the Past



7 The Miracle of Şerfedîn
 1 The Figure of Şerfedîn
 2 The Hymn of Şerfedîn (Qewlê Şerfedîn)
 3 Narrating the Miracle, Claiming the Shrine
 4 Traditional Tribal Authority at the Şerfedîn Shrine: The Şeşo Family
 5 Traditional Religious Authority at the Shrine: The Baḥrî Micawirs of Şerfedîn
 6 Sharing Şerfedîn

8 Mezarê Şehidên—Monuments, Martyrs and “the PKK” in Sinjar
 1 The Material Construction of Memory
 2 Death, Revolution and the Sacred Martyrs
 3 “Martyrs of the Sacred Earth”
 4 The PKK and Its Affiliates in Sinjar

Concluding Reflections

Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Topographical Terms
Index of Concepts and Foreign Terms
Index of Published Yezidi Oral Accounts
The book is aimed at scholars of Anthropology, Middle Eastern and Religious Studies, Kurdish and Yezidi Studies, and researchers interested in the experimential use of method and theory in these fields.
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