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Who Are the Yezidis?

The Yezidis or Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking people who live principally in northern Iraq. They number approximately 500,000 - 600,000 with another 200,000 settled in other parts of the world. They are mostly a poor and oppressed people, but they have a rich spiritual tradition that they contend is the world's oldest. They were the first people to be created in the Garden of Eden, which they claim is a large area centered around what is now known as Lalish in Iraq. A vestige of the Yezidis' Garden of Eden era is reputed to be Gobekli Tepe, a recently discovered archeological excavation in southern Turkey that has been dated to approximately 12,000 BCE. Then, during and after a great flood around 4000 BCE, the Yezidis dispersed to many countries in Africa and Asia, including India, Afghanistan, Armenia, and Morocco. Returning from their adoptive countries around 2000 BCE the Yezidis played an important role in the development of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Jewish civilizations of the Middle East. Ultimately, the Yezidis amalgamated elements of all these civilizations into Yezidism, including certain features of the Zoroastrian religion of Persia and some from Islamic Sufism, which were integrated into the Yezidi culture by the great 11th century reformer and Sufi Master, Sheik Adi Find out More

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