Kreyenbroek, Philip G.

About the author: Dr. Philip Kreyenbroek received his PhD at Leiden University. He is the Lecturer in Modern Iranian Languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; the founder of the Society for Iranian Oral Studies; and Secretary, The Royal Asiatic Society.

Yezidism - Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition

1995 0-7734-9004-3
The Yezidi faith has fascinated and tantalized Western scholars since the mid-nineteenth centuries, but actual knowledge of the Yezidi tradition has remained limited. Recently a substantial corpus of Yezidi sacred Hymns has come to light, which had always been transmitted orally, and did not exist in written form until the late 1970s. These texts offered a more detailed insight into the beliefs, observances, and background of the faith. The first half of this volume re-examines the findings of earlier works on Yezidism in the light of the author's field-work with the Yezidi community of Northern Iraq, and of novel insights into the history of the religions of Iranian peoples. The second part consists of text and translations of nineteen Yezidi Hymns, with a commentary on points of philological and theological interest.