Women in the Êzîdî Faith

Women carry the Êzîdî faith, in the sanctuary of Laliş, in the family, in history, and in the survival of the community. They tend the religion’s holiest places, pass on everyday religious knowledge, and with Meyan Xatûn a woman stood de facto at the head of the Êzîdî principality for almost half a century. In the veneration of holy female figures such as Xatûna Fexra, the protectress of women and children, the Êzîdî faith possesses its own living, feminine dimension of the sacred.

At the same time, their history is bound up with the community’s history of persecution: the Ferman of 2014 struck women and girls in a particular way, and it was women who bore witness before the world and who drive the rebuilding forward, while the religious leadership responded with historic decisions. This article traces both lines.

1. Holy female figures

Xatûna Fexra: protectress of women and children

The most important female figure in Êzîdî veneration of the holy is Xatûna Fexra: Xudan (protectress) of women and children, patroness of pregnancy and birth. According to tradition she is the daughter of the great holy man Şêx Fexredîn and sister of Şêx Mend and Şêx Bedir; her birth name is said to have been Xezal, “gazelle”, an emblem of grace.

Her veneration is lived practice: Êzîdî women fast once a year in honour of Xatûna Fexra and ask protection for themselves and their children. Sanctuaries of her own are dedicated to her, the Quba Xatûna Fexra in Mağara (near İdil, Şırnak Province, Turkey) and a shrine in Laliş (see Sanctuaries and sacred architecture).

Sitiya Ês and the other holy women

Beyond this, the Êzîdî genealogy of the holy knows a whole series of venerated female figures (in detail: Holy genealogy):

A pattern stands out: female holy figures mostly appear as relatives of great male holy men, or as patronesses of birth, healing and the family. This mirrors the traditional social order, yet at the same time it shows: in the Êzîdî faith the sacred explicitly has a female face as well.

A theological anchor lies in the cosmogony: the Kaniya Spî (“White Spring”) in Laliş is held to be the primordial spring of creation; its motif of purity carries the Êzîdî baptismal rite, which, after 2014, would become decisive for the returning women (section 6).

2. Women in religious service: Faqra and Kebanî

The Faqra of Laliş

In the sanctuary of Laliş there is a distinct order of women: the Faqra (also Fakra or Feqra), unmarried women who have consciously chosen a chaste, ascetic life in the service of the religion. To them is entrusted the care and upkeep of the sanctuary of Laliş: the holiest place of the Êzîdî faith lies, quite literally, in women’s hands. The Faqra enjoy high standing in the community.

From the outside the Faqra are occasionally compared with Christian “nuns”, the comparison is misleading: the Faqra are not a monastic community on a Christian model but an independent Êzîdî institution of their own.

The Kebanî: the highest rank a woman can hold

At the head of the women’s order stands the Kebanî (literally “mistress of the house”). She leads the Faqra in Laliş, her office is the highest rank a woman can attain in the Êzîdî religious hierarchy. The rank is conferred by merit, not by descent, remarkable in a community whose estates are otherwise strictly hereditary.

The Feqîr estate and its limits

The ascetic estate of the Feqîr: the bearers of the holy black garment xerqe, is likewise not conceived as fundamentally male: the tradition describes the Feqîr as “holy men and women”. Most documented Feqîr, however, are men; how many women took this path is only thinly attested. Put cautiously: according to tradition the estate is in principle open to women as well.

At the same time there are limits: the Qewwals, the reciters of the sacred hymns, are traditionally men. Everyday religious knowledge, however, fasting, festivals, pilgrimage, household rituals, is essentially carried and passed on by women; the annual fast in honour of Xatûna Fexra is the most visible example of this female line of transmission.

3. A princess rules: Meyan Xatûn

That women could exercise the highest worldly power in the Êzîdî community is proven by Mîra Meyan Xatûn (Mayan Khatun, c. 1873/74 – 1957/58), the most significant Êzîdî ruler of recent history.

Born in Ba’edrê as the daughter of Mîr Abdi Beg, she married Mîr Ali Beg, the worldly head of the Êzîdî. She experienced persecution early: in 1892, in the “Year of the General”, when the Ottoman commander Omar Wehbi Pasha moved against the Êzîdî, she was forced into exile with her husband.

Her historic role began in 1913: from then on Meyan Xatûn was regent of the Mîr’s domain (principality) of Şêxan: first as guardian of her son Mîr Sa’id Beg, later of her grandson Mîr Tehsîn Beg (Mîr until January 2020). Until 1957, for almost half a century, she was the de facto ruler of the Êzîdî. Contemporaries described her as an “extraordinary personality”; also recorded is a long power struggle with her rival within the family, Ismail Beg, which she won politically.

Meyan Xatûn led the community through the end of the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate period and the founding of modern Iraq. That a woman held the highest worldly office of the Êzîdî for decades in this era is the strongest historical evidence that female authority in the Êzîdî faith was no foreign body but a lived possibility (further figures: Notable Êzîdî personalities).

4. Life between tradition and new departures

Endogamy as a structural principle

The life of Êzîdî women, like that of the men, is traditionally shaped by endogamy: Êzîdî marry only within the religious community and within their estate (Mirîd, Şêx or Pîr); marriage outside traditionally meant exclusion. Historically, this rule is to be understood as the survival strategy of a persecuted minority that passes on its religion by birth alone (more: Traditions). Formally it applies to both sexes equally, in practice it shapes the life decisions of young women especially strongly, above all in the diaspora.

Change in the diaspora

Germany is home to the largest Êzîdî diaspora in the world, estimates range from 60,000 to 120,000 people, more recent figures up to around 200,000 (see Diaspora and demography). Here, educational and professional opportunities for women are shifting fastest: they study, do research, found associations, appear in public.

Research describes how the old rules change in the process: endogamy and the order of estates have become “highly problematic” for many young Êzîdî in Western Europe; women stand under double pressure: to preserve the community’s norms while integrating into a majority society that knows no such rules. Caste and endogamy turn “from instruments of purity into a language of loyalty” that each generation negotiates anew, and women are active negotiators in this, not passive subjects.

Forced shift of roles after 2014

In Iraq, too, the distribution of roles has shifted, under tragic circumstances. A 2016 field study in the displacement camps near Duhok documented that after the Ferman many men could no longer fulfil their traditional roles, protection and provision; women took up paid work, organised camp life, and some fought the IS under arms. Research speaks of a “forced emancipation”: a change no one chose, but one that permanently widened women’s room for action. Documented from the same period is also the broad readiness to take freed women back into the community (section 6).

5. The Ferman of 2014 from the women’s perspective

The attack of the so-called “Islamic State” on Şingal (Sinjar) in August 2014 is, in the Êzîdî count, the 74th Ferman: the most recent genocide against the community. Its chronicle and its reckoning have articles of their own: Genocides against the Êzîdî and The Fermans, chronicle of the persecutions. Here, only what is indispensable for the women’s perspective.

The UN Commission of Inquiry found in its report “They came to destroy” (16 June 2016) that the IS is committing genocide against the Êzîdî, and grounded this expressly also in the gender dimension of the crimes: the enslavement of women and girls and targeted measures to prevent Êzîdî births. In 2014, according to the most-cited figures, 6,417 Êzîdî were abducted, among them 3,548 women and girls (other sources: up to c. 6,800). Ten years later, more than 2,600 people were still considered missing (some counts: around 2,700), among them an estimated 1,300 children. The following sections deal with what these people and their community have made of this.

6. The community’s answer

The decree of the Bavê Şêx (2014/2015)

Probably the most consequential religious decision of recent Êzîdî history came weeks after the Ferman began: the Bavê Şêx Xurto Hecî Îsmaîl (Baba Sheikh, 1933–2020), the spiritual head of the Êzîdî, issued a historic decree on 28 August 2014: all forcibly converted Êzîdî, women, girls, men and children, are received back into the community without any blemish. At the beginning of 2015 an express declaration of welcome for the returning women followed, a process in stages: decree 2014, affirmation 2015.

The decision was revolutionary: traditionally, conversion, even a forced one, meant exclusion; after 74 Fermans this strictness was part of the logic of survival. The Bavê Şêx reversed it: it was not the women who had left the community, but violence that had been done to them, the community owed them acceptance, not examination. He received the first returning women personally; in 2017 the Iraqi parliament and the UN honoured him. Nadia Murad called him a “light” who “treated survivors with love and respect”.

Rebaptism at the Kaniya Spî

A ritual in Laliş became the visible sign of readmission: freed women are baptised (anew) at the Kaniya Spî, the White Spring, by pouring the holy water over the head three times (on the sanctuary: Sanctuaries). The message: the women were never “lost”; their belonging and their dignity are intact. The practice is documented since 2015; research describes it as a ritual innovation rooted deep in the Êzîdî tradition of baptism. As late as 2025, a woman freed after eleven years was received in Laliş in this way together with her daughter.

The open question of the children (2019)

One of the community’s most painful questions remained unresolved. In April 2019 the Êzîdî Supreme Spiritual Council, chaired by Mîr Hazim Tahsin Beg, published a declaration to accept “all survivors”; many read in it also the acceptance of the children born in captivity. A few days later the Council clarified: only children of two Êzîdî parents were meant.

The dilemma is sharpened by Iraqi law: Article 26 of the National Identity Card Law of 2015 compulsorily registers children with one Muslim parent as Muslims. Some mothers were thus effectively forced to choose between community and child; many of these families live in third countries today.

This question is an open wound and an ongoing debate without a simple formula: on one side the identity logic of a community that survived 74 attempts at annihilation only thanks to strict rules of belonging; on the other, mothers and children, and in between an Iraqi registration law that cements the dilemma.

7. From surviving to acting

The world knows the Ferman of 2014 above all through the voices of Êzîdî women who made their stories public themselves, their agency stands at the centre, not the suffering inflicted on them.

Nadia Murad: Nobel Peace Prize 2018

Nadia Murad (born 1993 in Kocho near Şingal) survived IS captivity and chose to testify before the world. In 2016 the UN appointed her the first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking; in 2018 she received, together with the Congolese physician Denis Mukwege, the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war”. She is the first Iraqi and the first Êzîdî woman to hold a Nobel Prize.

Her memoir The Last Girl (2017; German: Ich bin eure Stimme) made her story known worldwide. Her organisation Nadia’s Initiative drives the rebuilding of Şingal forward, more than 2.6 million square metres of land have been cleared of mines, and stands for a survivor-centred approach to aid.

Lamiya Aji Bashar: Sakharov Prize 2016

Lamiya Aji Bashar (born around 1998, likewise from Kocho) almost lost her eyesight in a mine explosion during her flight; two companions died. In 2016 the European Parliament awarded her, together with Nadia Murad, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She lives in Germany and speaks publicly for her community.

Farida Khalaf: from witness to founder of an organisation

Farida Khalaf (born around 1995) published her story in 2016 under the title The Girl Who Beat ISIS (German: Das Mädchen, das den IS besiegte). She has lived in Germany since 2015; in 2019 she co-founded the Farida Global Organization: an aid organisation led by survivors themselves, of which she is president.

Vian Dakhil: the voice in parliament

Vian Dakhil (born 1971), Êzîdî member of the Iraqi parliament, gave a speech on 5 August 2014 that made history: “My people are being slaughtered!”, in tears, she collapsed at the lectern. Her words made the Ferman known worldwide and demonstrably contributed to the decision for the airlift to Mount Şingal. In the same year she received the Anna Politkovskaya Award (more: Notable personalities).

The Survivors’ Law (2021)

Under pressure from the survivors, the Iraqi parliament passed the Yazidi Survivors’ Law on 1 March 2021: a reparations law for survivors of sexualised IS violence (Êzîdî as well as Christian, Şabak and Turkmen women): a monthly pension, a plot of land or a flat, therapy centres, access to education. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch acknowledge the law as an important step, but criticise its sluggish implementation, the requirement to file a criminal complaint afterwards, and the fact that the children from captivity were left out entirely.

Trauma work: Kizilhan, the Baden-Württemberg special quota and the University of Duhok

The psychological consequences of the Ferman occupy the community to this day. The German-Kurdish psychologist Prof. Jan Ilhan Kizilhan, as chief psychologist, led the special quota programme of the state of Baden-Württemberg, which from 2015 brought 1,100 severely traumatised women and children to Germany for treatment. With one million euros in state funding he founded the Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychotraumatology at the University of Duhok, which trains local therapists. His research describes the traumatisation of the Êzîdî as individual, collective and transgenerational: 2014 meets the inherited knowledge of 73 earlier Fermans, and calls for culture-sensitive therapy that takes religious conceptions, family structures and bodily expressions of trauma seriously.

Organisations by and for women

Out of the catastrophe grew a dense landscape of organisations in which women play leading roles:

• Free Yezidi Foundation: a women’s centre in Khanke (Iraq) with trauma therapy and education, carried by young Êzîdî women;
• Yazda: trains survivors in their reparation rights through the Yazidi Survivors Network, documents crimes and provides humanitarian aid;
• HÁWAR.help: founded in Berlin by Düzen Tekkal with her sister Tuğba; women’s-rights and education programmes in Iraq and in Germany.

8. Women today: voices, culture, the young generation

Public voices of the diaspora

The most prominent Êzîdî voice in the German public sphere is Düzen Tekkal (born 1978 in Hanover): journalist, filmmaker, activist. Her documentary Háwar, Meine Reise in den Genozid (“Háwar, My Journey into the Genocide”, 2015) brought the Ferman into German living rooms; with HÁWAR.help (2015) and GermanDream (2019) she joins Êzîdî engagement with educational work. She stands for a new type: the Êzîdî woman born in Germany who is, as a matter of course, both, part of her community and part of the public sphere.

Women preserve the music

The cultural heritage, too, increasingly lies audibly in women’s hands. In the Khanke displacement camp near Duhok (around 14,000 residents), the then 22-year-old Rana Sulaiman Halo founded the Ashti Choir (“Peace Choir”) in 2019, supported by the AMAR Foundation. Young singers such as Ghazal Dawoud Hussein understand singing the old songs as an “act of resistance”; recordings are archived, among other places, at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This is nothing new: with Sitiya Nexşan, the tradition already knows an Êzîdî saz player and singer centuries ago (on the musical tradition: Êzîdî music).

The young generation

In the diaspora a generation of women is growing up that does identity work in public, in associations, at universities, on social media. Research describes them as active shapers: they negotiate what being Êzîdî means in exile, they put questions to the order of estates and at the same time carry on the fast of Xatûna Fexra.

The history of women in the Êzîdî faith is not a closed chapter; it is being written right now, from the Faqra in Laliş to the student in Bielefeld, from the regent Meyan Xatûn to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Kocho.

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