Qewl: the Oral Sacred Tradition

Qewl (Kurmancî qewl, “word, saying”; plural qewlên) is the name given to the religious hymns of the Êzîdî (Yazidis). They are the heart of the Êzîdî religion: artfully constructed, sung texts that for centuries were passed on exclusively by word of mouth, without books, without writing, without a fixed written canon. Within the hierarchy of Êzîdî religious literature, the Qewls occupy the highest position; traditionally they are regarded as being ultimately of divine origin (Amy de la Bretèque & Omarkhali).

Where Judaism, Christianity and Islam possess holy books, the Êzîdî possess a library held in memory: the religious knowledge of the community lives in the voices of trained reciters, above all the Qewwals from the twin villages of Başîqa and Bahzanê. Because of a taboo on writing that remained in force for centuries, the Qewls occupy precisely that central place in the transmission of the faith which scripture occupies elsewhere (Kreyenbroek & Rashow 2005). The true “sacred text” of the Êzîdî is the sung word.

This article explains what Qewls are, who carries them, why the Êzîdî deliberately refrained from writing for so long, and why this unique tradition is acutely endangered today, after the genocide of 2014, and is being rescued with great dedication.

1. What are Qewl? A religion that is sung

A Qewl is neither a folk song nor a mere poem, but a sacred text with a ritual status of its own. Three characteristics define it:

1. Highest rank. Among all the genres of Êzîdî religious tradition, the Qewls stand at the very top. Unlike other types of text, they are traditionally regarded as divinely inspired, their content is understood not as human poetry about the religion, but as part of the revelation itself.
2. Orality. For centuries, Qewls were transmitted exclusively by word of mouth and at the same time kept secret from outsiders. Until the late 20th century, Western scholarship did not even know of the existence of this extensive corpus of genuine religious texts (Kreyenbroek & Rashow 2005).
3. Song. A Qewl is not read but performed, with a fixed melody, often accompanied by the sacred instruments Def (frame drum) and Şibab (flute).

Only modern scholarship has made visible just how large this “invisible book” is: the scholar of religion Khanna Omarkhali, herself from an Êzîdî Pîr family, lists in her 2017 standard work more than 1,150 Êzîdî religious oral texts (including variants), unpublished ones as well as those published between 1891 and 2013 in various alphabets. According to her fieldwork, around 100 Qewls are considered “authentic”; for these she provides, for the first time, a systematic overview of status, performance practice, presumed authorship and melody (Omarkhali 2017).

Importantly: there is no standardized canon of the religious texts. Because the knowledge is transmitted orally, regional variants exist side by side, and no authority has ever fixed a binding “final version”, a fundamental difference from the religions of the book.

2. The genres: from Qewl to Qesîde

Êzîdî oral literature knows several clearly distinguished genres, each with its own rank and its own function (Amy de la Bretèque & Omarkhali; Kreyenbroek & Rashow 2005):

The difference between Qewl and Beyt is the theologically decisive one: both are venerable, sung texts, but only the Qewl is considered a bearer of revelation itself, while the Beyt orders and admonishes the life of the faithful.

The Qewlên Beran: the top of the hierarchy

Within the Qewls, the Qewlên Beran (“Ram Hymns”, by common count around a dozen texts) form the highest-ranking group. They owe their elevated status to their ritual setting: they are performed within the Sema, the formal procession of the religious dignitaries (Kreyenbroek & Rashow 2005). Among the Qewlên Beran is, among others, the great creation hymn Qewlê Zebûnî Meksûr (see section 7).

3. Form and music: stanzas, melodies, sacred instruments

All the sacred texts are transmitted in Kurmancî (Northern Kurdish). Qewls are strophic in structure, and that is exactly how they are learned: a novice memorizes the text “stanza by stanza, word by word” (Amy de la Bretèque & Omarkhali). This formulaic, bound language is not ornament but a survival strategy: rhyme, rhythm and stanzaic structure support memory across generations.

Inseparably bound to the text is the music. Qewls, Beyts and Qesîdes always have associated melodies, called kubrî in Kurmancî, which can vary by region and occasion. Êzîdî experts describe the melodies with categories of their own: bilind (“high”), giran (“heavy, solemn”) or bi lez (“fast”). The tonal material is related to the Middle Eastern maqam tradition, without the performers having to know this theoretical system formally; their knowledge is practical, heard and sung, not notated (Amy de la Bretèque & Omarkhali).

In ritual performance, the two sacred instruments are heard:

• Def: the frame drum (tambourine),
• Şibab: the flute.

They accompany the Qewls as well as well-known Beyts, such as the Beyta Cindî (Açıkyıldız 2014; Spät). A broader overview of the Êzîdî musical tradition as a whole, including the secular genres, is given in the article Êzîdî Music.

4. The Qewwals: bearers of the tradition

Origin and task

The Qewwals (also Qewals; literally “reciters, singers”, from the word qewl) are a distinct group of religious specialists among the Êzîdî. They traditionally come from the twin villages of Başîqa and Bahzanê in the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq. Scholarship describes them as “guardians and transmitters of the religious texts, myths and songs”: they travel to the Êzîdî communities, conduct ceremonies and instruct the local population in the faith (Açıkyıldız 2014).

Their best-known task is the Tawûsgeran: the solemn procession of the standards of Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock Angel and highest of the angels, through the Êzîdî settlement areas. (In Êzîdî theology, Tawûsî Melek is emphatically not a “devil” and not a fallen angel, that slander comes from outsiders; see in detail the article Tawûsî Melek.) During these processions and ceremonies, the Qewwals perform the hymns to the sound of Def and Şibab, thus connecting the scattered communities with the religious centre.

The training

One does not become a Qewwal merely by being born into the right family, the training is long and demanding. According to the account in the Encyclopædia Iranica (article “Qawl”) and the ETH study on Êzîdî society in Iraq, three basic requirements apply to aspiring Qewwals:

1. knowledge of the doctrine of the faith,
2. eloquence and a sonorous voice,
3. mastery of the sacred instruments Def and Şibab.

The order is remarkable: first the music, then the texts. After the musical training comes the introduction to the corpus of texts, and in a fixed sequence, first the prayers, then the funerary texts, after that the Beyts on the religious duties, the texts for the ceremonies in Laliş, the song texts, and finally the interpretation of the religious texts (Encyclopædia Iranica “Qawl”; Dulz et al.).

Religious textual knowledge is also transmitted outside the Qewwal group, for instance in Şêx and Pîr families, that is, the hereditary religious classes of the Êzîdî. The way of learning is the same everywhere: purely oral, with no written notes during performance. Text and melody are learned either together or one after the other, first the text, then the melody months later. Specialized reciters are also called qewlbêj (“Qewl-speaker”) (Amy de la Bretèque & Omarkhali).

The situation today

The number of Qewwals from Bahzanê and Başîqa is declining rapidly. The reasons: the advanced age of the active Qewwals, the young generation’s lack of interest in the long, austere training, and, since 2014, displacement: Başîqa and Bahzanê were occupied by the so-called “Islamic State” in the summer of 2014, and the population had to flee (Dulz et al.; The Dial). Whether and how a new Qewwal training can establish itself in the diaspora, for instance in Germany, is currently an open development; reliable reports of active training structures in exile are not yet available.

5. Why oral? The religion without a book

The taboo on writing

That the Êzîdî did not write down their sacred texts was not a deficiency but, for centuries, a religious principle. Within the community, reading and writing was religiously reserved largely for a single lineage, for everyone else, a de facto taboo on writing applied. That is why, in the transmission of religious knowledge, the Qewls occupy the central place that the holy books hold in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Kreyenbroek & Rashow 2005).

Added to this was secrecy: the texts were hidden from outsiders. A religion that was persecuted for centuries, Êzîdî memory counts numerous Fermans (edicts of persecution and massacres; see Genocides against the Êzîdî), had good reasons not to reveal its innermost core. The consequence: until the late 20th century, Western scholarship did not suspect that behind the apparently “scriptless” religion stood a vast, precisely transmitted corpus of texts.

Excursus: Mishefa Reş and Kitêba Cilwe: the “holy books” that were not

Anyone who searched in the West, in the 19th and early 20th century, for the holy scriptures of the Êzîdî came across two manuscripts: the Mishefa Reş (“Black Book”) and the Kitêba Cilwe (“Book of Revelation”). Both circulated among manuscript dealers and missionaries and were long held to be the authentic sacred treasures of the religion.

Scholarship judges this differently today: the manuscripts are regarded as forgeries by non-Êzîdî: among the suspects is the manuscript dealer Jeremiah Shamir in Mosul. Philip Kreyenbroek points to anachronistic language (Southern Kurdish dialect features instead of the Kurmancî of the genuine tradition), to Arabic and Turkish loanwords, and to the lack of interconnection with the core oral tradition: a late compilation that mixes genuine motifs with fabricated content (Cheung; Wikipedia “Yazidi Black Book”). A vivid example of the inconsistencies: the “Black Book” names Sunday as the first day of creation, the oral tradition names Saturday.

A respectful assessment is important here: not everything in these texts is forged. The contents, cosmogony, holy figures, partly reflect genuine Êzîdî tradition that was conveyed to the compilers. What is forged is the status: the claim that here lay the authentic written sanctuary of the Êzîdî. The true “holy book” of the Êzîdî never existed on paper, it is the sung word of the Qewls. These questions are treated in detail in the articles Sacred Texts and Forgeries & Slanders.

6. From voice to script: scripturalization and research

The pioneers of the 1970s

Only in the 1970s did Êzîdî intellectuals begin to write down the sacred texts themselves, at first only the most prestigious genres. The milestone of this movement is the collection “Êzdiyatî” (1979) by Xelîl Cindî Reşo (Khalil Jindy Rashow) and Pîr Xidir Silêman (Sileman). This volume contained, among other things, the most complete version of the Qewlê Tawûsî Melek; Philip Kreyenbroek published it again in 1995 (Kreyenbroek & Rashow 2005; Asatrian & Arakelova).

Within the community, this step was anything but self-evident, it meant breaking with the centuries-old taboo on writing. That it was carried out by Êzîdî from the religious classes themselves gave the scripturalization its legitimacy.

The main scholarly collections

International research builds on the preparatory work of the Êzîdî collectors. Four works form the foundation today:

• Kreyenbroek & Rashow, God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect (Harrassowitz 2005), the representative selection of the main genres, with translation and commentary. The translations are by Kreyenbroek; the basis was largely Rashow’s transcriptions of audio recordings, so to this day, the writing follows the voice.
• Khanna Omarkhali, The Yezidi Religious Textual Tradition: From Oral to Written (Harrassowitz 2017), the comprehensive account of categories, transmission, scripturalization and incipient canonization. Omarkhali herself comes from a Pîr family and combines the insider’s and the researcher’s perspective.
• Christine Allison, The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan (2001), the standard study of the secular, profane oral tradition, against which the sacred one stands out.
• Eszter Spät, Late Antique Motifs in Yezidi Oral Tradition (Gorgias 2010), demonstrates late antique (gnostic) motifs in the oral texts; Spät’s fieldwork in Şingal (2011/12) is also the basis of her documentary film “Following the Peacock”.

In addition, there are text editions of individual hymns, such as Artur Rodziewicz’s edition of the cosmogony hymns Qewlê Zebûnî Meksûr and Qewlê Bê û Elîf (Kurmancî text with translation and commentary).

7. Important Qewls in detail

From the corpus of around 100 Qewls regarded as authentic, the best-documented ones are presented here.

Qewlê Zebûnî Meksûr: the Hymn of the Weak Broken One

The central creation hymn of the Êzîdî. In it, Melik Fexredîn, one of the holy angels, is asked to recount the creation: God emerges from the primordial pearl (dur); through love (mihbet) the divine beings become manifest, among them Siltan Êzîd; God prepares and consecrates the Xerqe, the sacred garment (Cheung; Kreyenbroek & Rashow 2005). The hymn counts among the highest-ranking texts of all, the Qewlên Beran, and is attributed to Şêx Fexir. It was scholarly edited and translated by Kreyenbroek & Rashow (2005); a Polish edition was presented by Rodziewicz.

Qewlê Afirîna Dinyayê: the Hymn of the Creation of the World

The second great cosmogony hymn. It tells a similar course of creation, the pearl, the “pen of power/of destiny”, the leaven in the primordial ocean, the Çar Yar (“Four Friends”), and additionally includes the figure of Noah (Nûh) (Cheung). Together with the Zebûnî Meksûr it shows that the Êzîdî doctrine of creation is not fixed in a single binding text but lives in several mutually complementary hymns.

Qewlê Tawûsî Melek: the Hymn to the Peacock Angel

A praise of the virtues of Tawûsî Melek: his strength, his goodness, his boundless power. The hymn contains invocations such as: “O my Lord, you are the angel-ruler of the world … you have been eternally pre-existent from time immemorial.” The most complete version was published by Sileman & Jindy in 1979 in “Êzdiyatî”; Kreyenbroek published it again in 1995. Remarkably: according to the current state of research, this Qewl is not a fixed part of ritual practice, but rather a free form of prayer (Asatrian & Arakelova). On the theology of the Peacock Angel, see the article Tawûsî Melek.

Beyta Cindî and Qewlê Kofa: the wake-up call

The Beyta Cindî (“Beyt of the common believer”) is one of the Beyts best known among the Êzîdî. It calls on the faithful to “awake from sleep” and face the harsh world, a topos that Eszter Spät has interpreted as a gnostic “call to awakening”: a motif that links Êzîdî tradition with late antique religious currents (Spät). The Beyta Cindî is often recited together with the Qewlê Kofa (“Hymn of the Headdress”), the literary expression of the promise of heavenly reward; here too, Def and Şibab are played.

Further hymns

Also attested several times and scholarly edited is the cosmogonic Qewlê Bê û Elîf (“Hymn of B and A”; edition by Rodziewicz). Beyond that, there are numerous further Qewls and Beyts that so far have been documented only as titles or audio recordings, an indication of how much work of recovery still lies ahead.

8. After the Ferman of 2014: endangerment and rescue

The genocide as a catastrophe of knowledge

The attack of the so-called “Islamic State” on Şingal (Sinjar) in August 2014, in Êzîdî counting the most recent Ferman, was not only a crime against human beings, but also a catastrophe for collective memory. Up to 5,000 Êzîdî were murdered, at least 6,800 abducted (around 2,700 are still missing), and about 500,000 people were displaced (UNHCR figures after The Dial; in detail: Genocides against the Êzîdî).

For the oral tradition this means: many bearers of the narrative tradition were killed. Survivors are traumatized, which impairs remembering itself; narrators and audience, the two poles between which oral tradition lives, are scattered across the whole world. Very old bearers of knowledge die before their knowledge can be recorded: thus Mîrza Xetarî, regarded as “one of the most important preservers of oral history”, passed away in his nineties (The Dial).

The genocide acts as an accelerator of an erosion that began earlier: the Arabization policy of the 1970s and 1980s, the competition of television and smartphones for the evenings on which people used to tell stories and sing, and the creeping loss of the Kurmancî language, especially in the diaspora (The Dial). The large diaspora communities in Germany as well as in Russia and Armenia also face the problem that traditional transmission is more difficult in exile (Amy de la Bretèque & Omarkhali).

The rescue projects

Against this loss, several remarkable initiatives have been working since 2014:

• TewTew Archive. Founded by the Êzîdî poets Zêdan Xelef and Emad Bashar, who met at the University of Duhok. The project records songs and narratives in Kurmancî and puts them online; according to the reporting, the archive comprised 84 audio and video recordings, and the public launch took place via the University of Exeter (The Dial).
• AMAR Foundation. The British foundation records Êzîdî (sacred) music and teaches it onward, among other things with a women’s choir in a camp for internally displaced persons. The work is funded by the British Council Cultural Protection Fund (AMAR Foundation).
• Yazidi Cultural Archives (Jameel Arts & Health Lab). A multimedia digital archive of endangered Êzîdî cultural heritage, combined with art workshops for surviving women, preservation and healing in one project (Jameel Arts & Health Lab).

Thus a twofold movement arises: the tradition that survived for centuries precisely through its orality and secrecy is now being rescued through recording, writing and digitization, by Êzîdî themselves, in cooperation with international research. The voice remains the original; script and file are its echo and its insurance.

9. Terms at a glance

Sources

All sources were retrieved and verified for the underlying research dossier on 11 June 2026.

1. FU Berlin, Institute of Iranian Studies: publisher’s page for Kreyenbroek & Rashow, God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect (Iranica 9, Harrassowitz 2005), https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/iranistik/publikationen/iranica/iranica09/index.html
2. Estelle Amy de la Bretèque & Khanna Omarkhali: “The Yezidi Religious Music”, Oral Tradition Journal, https://oraltradition.org/the-yezidi-religious-music/
3. Wikipedia (en): “Yazidi literature” (with references from Kreyenbroek/Rashow 2005, Omarkhali 2017, Allison 2001), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi_literature
4. Khanna Omarkhali: The Yezidi Religious Textual Tradition: From Oral to Written (Harrassowitz 2017), full-text PDF from the University of Göttingen, https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/document/download/7aa23de7edf74949749e706f404d2d4e.pdf/Omarkhali_Yezidi_Religious_Textual_Tradition_2017.pdf
5. Harrassowitz publisher’s page for Omarkhali 2017, https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_1833.ahtml
6. Birgül Açıkyıldız: The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion (I.B. Tauris 2010/2014), review in the LSE Review of Books, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/11/26/book-review-the-yezidis-the-history-of-a-community-culture-and-religion-by-birgul-acikyildiz/
7. Encyclopædia Iranica: “QAWL”, https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/qawl/
8. Eszter Spät: “The Song of the Commoner: The Gnostic Call in Yezidi Oral Tradition”, https://www.academia.edu/33663927/THE_SONG_OF_THE_COMMONER_THE_GNOSTIC_CALL_IN_YEZIDI_ORAL_TRADITION · Dissertation (CEU Budapest 2009): https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/mphspe02.pdf
9. Johnny Cheung: “On the Tales of Creation recounted by the Yezidi singers”, research blog Yezidi Stories (hypotheses.org/OpenEdition), https://yes.hypotheses.org/36
10. The Dial (Issue 22): “Saving Yazidi Song” (TewTew Archive, consequences of the genocide), https://www.thedial.world/articles/news/issue-22/yazidi-oral-tradition-kurmanji
11. Wikipedia (en): “Yazidi Black Book”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi_Black_Book · “Yazidi Book of Revelation”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi_Book_of_Revelation
12. Garnik Asatrian & Victoria Arakelova: “Malak-Tawus: the Peacock Angel of the Yezidis” (on the publication history of the Qewlê Tawûsî Melek), https://www.academia.edu/3172037/Malak_Tawus_the_Peacock_Angel_of_the_Yezidis
13. Irene Dulz et al.: Social Change Amidst Terror and Discrimination: Yezidis in the New Iraq (ETH Zurich / MEI), https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/90905/No_18_Social_Change_Amidst_Terror.pdf
14. Wikipedia (en): “Eszter Spät”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eszter_Spät · Gorgias Press: Late Antique Motifs in Yezidi Oral Tradition (2010), https://dokumen.pub/late-antique-motifs-in-yezidi-oral-tradition-9781463222024.html
15. AMAR Foundation: Yazidi music project / genocide remembrance, https://www.amarfoundation.org/uk-news/remembering-the-yazidi-genocide/
16. Jameel Arts & Health Lab: “Yazidi Cultural Archives” (case study), https://www.jameelartshealthlab.org/case-studies/yazidi-cultural-archives
17. Artur Rodziewicz: Jezydzkie hymny kosmogoniczne: Qewlê Zebûnî Meksûr i Qewlê Bê û Elîf (Kurmancî edition, translation, commentary), https://www.academia.edu/38199521/

Note: statements that could be verified only to a limited extent in the sources (training details according to the Encyclopædia Iranica; number of TewTew recordings) are worded with appropriate caution in the text.

This article is part of the multilingual Êzdîxan Wiki.