Yazidis

Yazidis, also spelled Yezidis (; ), are a Kurdish-speaking endogamous religious group indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, with small numbers living in Armenia and Georgia. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok.

There is a disagreement among scholars and in Yazidi circles on whether the Yazidi people are a distinct ethnoreligious group or a religious sub-group of the Kurds, an Iranic ethnic group. Yazidism is the ethnic religion of the Yazidi people. It developed through a complex historical process involving a pre-Islamic Kurdish religious substratum and the teachings of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir. Scholars generally regard it as an independent religious tradition with deep roots in ancient Iranian beliefs, shaped by later Sufi influences. Although it shares certain parallels with Zoroastrianism, it is not considered to have developed out of it, and scholars note the presence of some pre-Zoroastrian elements.