Devil Worship (Joseph)/Part 1/Preface

by Isya Joseph

PREFACE

In the Name of the Most Compassionate God!

With the help of the Most High God, and under his direction, we write the history of the Yezidis, their doctrines, and the mysteries of their religion, as contained in their books, which reached our hand with their own knowledge and consent.

In the time of Al-Muktadir Billah, A. H. 295, there lived Mansûr-al-Hallâj,^[1] the woll-carder, and Seiḫ 'Abd-al-Kâdir of Jilân.^[2] At that time, too, there appeared a man by the name of Seih 'Adî, from the mountain of Hakkari,^[3] originally from the region of Aleppo or Baalbek. He came and dwelt in Mount Lališ,^[4] near the city of Mosul, about nine hours distant from it. Some say he was of the people of Harrân, and related to Marwân ibn-al-Hakam. His full name is Šaraf ad-Dîn Abû-l-Fadâîl, 'Adî bn Musâfir bn Ismael bn Mousa bn Marwân bn Al-Hasan bn Marwân. He died A. H. 558 (A. D. 1162-63). His tomb is still visited; it is near Ba'adrei, one of the villages of Mosul, distant eleven hours. The Yezidis are the progeny of those who were the murids (disciples) of Seih 'Adî. Some trace their origin to Yezid,^[5] others to Hasan-Al-Basri.

1. The life of Manṣûr-al-Hallaj is given in Fihrist (ed. Flügel), p. 190.
2. The life of 'Abd-al-Ḳâdir of Jîlân is given in Jami's Nafahat (ed. Lee), p. 584.
3. The Hakkari country is a dependency of Mosul, and inhabited by Kurds and Nestorians; cf. p. 104. Ibn Ḫauḳal, Kîtab al-Masâlik wal-Mamâlik (ed. M. J. De Goeje), pp. 143 f.
4. Yakut, IV, 373, calls it Lailes and says that §eih 'Adî lived there.
5. Presumably Yezid bn Mu'awiya, the second caliph in the Omayyid dynasty, who reigned, A. D. 680-83; cf. W. Muir, The Caliphate, p. 327.