Landscapes of Resistance

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.

• AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsAbbreviationsNotes on Transcription and TransliterationIntroductionPart1 Communal Identities, Sacred Places and Concepts of History1 Kurdish Territories, Yezidi Landscapes1 The Kurdish Question2 The Yezidis—an Encounter through the Kurdish Militants’ Perspective3 Yezidi Shrines’ Embeddedness in Middle Eastern Landscapes2 Visiting the Holy Beings in Their Places1 Dividing Time and Thinking Temporalities—the Shrines’ Relation to the “Mystery”2 “Sign-Places” and Symbolic Graves3 Laliş—the Yezidi Axis Mundi4 Worship of Emplaced Powers throughout the Middle East5 Traces Left on the Land by the Holy Beings6 “Strong Incarnation”7 The Emplacement of Ritual3 Yezidi Sacred Places and Communal Memory1 Communal Memories of Conflict around Sacred Places2 Genres of the Yezidi Oral Tradition3 Conceptualising Yezidi History4 The Time of Şêx ʿAdî5 The Evolvement of Yezidism from a Historical Perspective6 The FermansPart2 Contention and Symbolic Order: Yezidi Sacred Landscapes4 Sinjar—a Landscape of Miracles and Contention1 “All Sacred Things Must Have Their Place”2 A Landscape of Miracles3 “The Mountain of the Hairy Ones”—Political Contentions Over Sinjar4 Narratives about the Yezidi Settlement in Sinjar5 Symbolic Order and Spatialised Narratives of Conflict1 Şêx ʿAdî’s Revelation2 “You Have Stopped the Pilgrimage to Mecca!”3 Şêx Mend—Ruler of Aleppo and Master of the Snakes4 An Ambivalent Relation to Islam5 Conflictual Mimesis6 Appropriation and Layers of Meaning6 Yezidi Shrines, Social Formations and the Consolidation of Identity1 People Belong to Their Shrines2 Exclusion3 Şêx(ê) Maḥama4 Collective Identities in Sinjar and the Rise of Religion5 Şêx Kurêş, Şêx Rumî, Pîr Zekr: Sharing Sacred Places in Sinjar6 Seeing the Future from the Past: Yezidi Identity in Apocalyptic TimesPart3 Defending Sinjar: Kurdish Nationalism, Religious identity and the Making of the Past7 The Miracle of Şerfedîn1 The Figure of Şerfedîn2 The Hymn of Şerfedîn (Qewlê Şerfedîn)3 Narrating the Miracle, Claiming the Shrine4 Traditional Tribal Authority at the Şerfedîn Shrine: The Şeşo Family5 Traditional Religious Authority at the Shrine: The Baḥrî Micawirs of Şerfedîn6 Sharing Şerfedîn8 Mezarê Şehidên—Monuments, Martyrs and “the PKK” in Sinjar1 The Material Construction of Memory2 Death, Revolution and the Sacred Martyrs3 “Martyrs of the Sacred Earth”4 The PKK and Its Affiliates in SinjarConcluding ReflectionsBibliographyIndex of NamesIndex of Topographical TermsIndex of Concepts and Foreign TermsIndex of Published Yezidi Oral Accounts

"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]