THE DEVIL WORSHIPPERS.

Putaruru Press, Volume III, Issue 114, 24 December 1925, Page 3

THE DEVIL WORSHIPPERS.

PECULIAR SECT IN MOSUL. The dispute between Great Britain and Turkey with regard to the province of Mosul gives added interest to Mr Harry Charles Luke’s book, “Mosul and Its Minorites,” which has just been published. Mosul is a province of Mesopotamia, over which Great Britain obtained a mandate under the Treaty of Versailles. Turkey, whiedi, after her victorious war with Greece in 1822, recovering some of the territories she lost in the Great War, is endeavouring to regain more , of her lost possessions, and has put forward a t .'aim to Mosul. The dispute has been referred to the League of Nations which in turn has referred certain juridicial points to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Although Turkey has be’en in possession of Mosul for generations before the Great War the Turks form only a small minority of the population. Mr Amery, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, recently stated that in one district of Mosul with 80,000 inhabitants there are only two Turks. Mr Luke who for a time was assistant governor of Jerusalem after its capture by Lord Allenby, visited Mosul last year, and writing of the mixed races which inhabit the province he .states: “Not only do there dwell within the limits of the province multitudinous sects as little known in many cases as they are ancient, but it is rare to find, as one ranges the great Mosul, plain, two consecutive villages peopled by the same race, speaking the same tongue, worshipping the same God. In Mosul town and in the plain there is a preponderance- of Arabs, in the mountains to the north east, of Kurds. Both in city, plain, and mountains are scattered remnants of other peoples, some of v/hom have known periods ©f great glory, in singular contrast to their precarious present; while others have had so obscure a history that it is difficult even now to unravel their origins and the genesis of their beliefs.” Of the city of Mosul, which the late Sir Mark Sykes described as “a town of mud and horror, a foul nest of corruption., vice and disorduj/J’ Mr Lukesays; “The majority of the population is Moslem,, and is composed of Arabs and some Kurds, but includes no Turks; the minority comprises Jews, an occasional Mandaen ana Vezidi, and above all a great variety of Christian sects.”

To the outside world the most interesting of the people of the province- of Mosul are the Yezidis, who are known as Devil-worshippers. In explanation of their peculiar religion, Mr Luke writes: “Among the Yezidis the l Almighty enjoys a remote and abstract supremacy, although it is in trutn little more than a success d’estine. Their more serious attention is bestowed upon him whom we dominate, when we wish to be polite, the Fallen Angel, but whom they regard as invested by the Lord of Ali with full authority over this, world below .Hence although it may be difficult to love him, the devil is the power to be propitiated, to be treated with all respect; hence their terror lest anyone should pronounce in their hearing the accursed word Sheitan (Satan). For this is the- opprobrious name bestowed on the subject of their devotions by those who, in their ignorance, regard him as the spirit of evil, working in opposition to the Almighty; whereas all Yezidis know him for a supernatural potentiate- of the first magnitude, who has received for his activities a Divine carte blanche.”

The Yezidis devil is not a figure with horns, cloven hoofs and a forked tail. He is represented as N a peacock, which they call Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel or King. “Nothing if not broadminded, the Yezidis regard as inspired the Old and New Testaments and the Koran,” states Mr Luke. “They accept the divinity of Christ, but believe that His reign will not come until that o? the devil is over, and the latter has another 4000 years to run. They circumcise with the Moslems, they baptise with the Christians, they abstain with the- Jews from unlawful foods, they abhor with the Mandaens the colour blue. That no teacher has come forward to blend their medley of undigested and half-understood tenets into a more congruous whole is probably due to the ignorance which is almost an article of faith amongst them. Before the war the arts of reading and writing were confined by an old tradition to a single* family; and when, after the Armistice, the British Administration determined to open a school, many obstacles were encountered. The school opened in the face of much opposition, did not survive long. After a few weeks four pupils were drowned whi’e fording a river swollen by rains, where-upon tfrh Yezidis regarded their aversion from’ learning us divinely (or infernally) vindicated.”