Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/165

 

 

CHAPTER X.

 

Origin of the Yezeedees.—Yezd and Sheikh Adi designate the Supreme Being.— Yezeedee poem in honour of Sheikh Adi who is the Good Principle.—Emblems of the Deity: the sun, fire, and water, and how worshipped.—The Evil Principle.—Extract from Mrs. Badger's journal.—Sacred festivities.—Sheikh Nâsir and Husein Beg.—Procession of the Melek Taoos, or the symbol of the Evil Principle.—Description of this image.—Worship of the Evil Principle.—Magism in the religious system of the Yezeedees.—What the Yezeedees have borrowed from Christianity and Mohammedanism.—The five sacerdotal castes.—Their temporal chief.—Character of the Yezeedees.—Glimpse at their past history.—They are an unpromising field for missionary exertion.

 

During our stay at Mosul in 1842—44, we made several excursions among the Yezeedees, visiting all their principal villages in the neighbourhood, and holding frequent intercourse with the heads of their community. In 1850 we resided for two months at Ba-Sheaka, where we had an opportunity of witnessing many of their religious rites and ceremonies, and of gleaning a mass of information respecting them which I shall now proceed to lay before my readers.

The family name of the tribe is Dâseni, (pl. Duasen,) by which title they are frequently spoken of both by Christians and Mohammedans. They themselves also use the term, but can give no other account of its origin than that it is the ancient appellation of their race, which according to their account existed in these parts from time immemorial. Whence they sprung, from what source they derived their creed, what is meant by many of their religious observances, are subjects upon which the Yezeedees of the present day are thoroughly ignorant. In physiognomy they resemble the Coords, whose language is in general use among them, and I think it cannot be doubted that