Ezdina Mir: The Yazidi Prince and Father of Saints
- Sherko Sabir
- 8 hours ago
- 13 min read
Introduction
At the root of the great holy family of Yazidism stands a prince. Ezdina Mir, in Kurdish Ezdine Mir, was the ruler of the Yazidis in the twelfth century, in the age before the coming of the great saint Sheikh Adi, and he is honoured as the father of the four saints from whom the Shemsani sheikhs, one of the great priestly lineages of the faith, are descended. From his house came the holy brothers of the Sun and the Moon, and from his line comes the spiritual leadership of the Yazidis to this day.
Ezdina Mir belongs to a pivotal moment in Yazidi sacred history: the meeting of the ancient faith of the Kurds with the figure of Sheikh Adi, whose arrival at the holy valley of Lalish reshaped and refounded the religion. As the prince who ruled before that coming, and as the man who married Sheikh Adi's own daughter, Ezdina Mir is the hinge between two ages, the bridge that joins the old Yazidi tradition to the new sanctity that Sheikh Adi brought. In him, the ancient and the renewed are bound together.
His is not the story of a single dramatic deed but of a foundation: the quiet, immense importance of an ancestor from whom whole lineages of saints and sheikhs flow. To understand Ezdina Mir is to understand the very structure of the Yazidi holy families, and to glimpse the antiquity of a faith whose roots reach back beyond its great refounder into a still older world.
Contents
Who Was Ezdina Mir?
Ezdina Mir, in Kurdish Ezdine Mir, where Mir means prince, was a Yazidi ruler and holy figure of the twelfth century, remembered as the prince who governed the Yazidis before the arrival of Sheikh Adi at Lalish. He was the father of the four saints, Sheikh Shems, Sheikh Fakhradin, Sheikh Nasirdin and Sheikh Sicadin, who became the patriarchs of the Shemsani sheikh lineages, making Ezdina Mir the forefather of all the Shemsani sheikhs. By tradition he married Sitiya Zin, the daughter of Sheikh Adi, and his mausoleum stands among the holiest shrines of Lalish.
The Last Prince Before Sheikh Adi
Ezdina Mir lived in the twelfth century, in the late Abbasid age, and he is remembered as a prominent prince who ruled over the Yazidis. In the sacred history of the faith, he holds a particular and significant place: he is the ruler who reigned in the time just before the coming of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, the great mystic and saint whose settlement at Lalish would reshape the Yazidi religion and give it much of its classical form. Ezdina Mir, in other words, is the prince of the old order, the leader of the Yazidis as they were before that great refounding.
According to Yazidi oral tradition, when Sheikh Adi first came to the holy valley of Lalish, he met Ezdina Mir, the reigning prince of the community. This meeting of the incoming saint and the established ruler is a moment of deep significance in the Yazidi story, for it marks the point where the ancient tradition and the new sanctity came face to face. What followed was not conflict but union, as the two lines, the princely and the holy, were joined together, and from that joining flowed much of the sacred order of the faith as it exists today.
Key Takeaways
Ezdina Mir was the Yazidi prince who ruled before the arrival of Sheikh Adi.
He was the father of the four saints of the Shemsani lineage.
His sons included Sheikh Shems, the Sun, and Sheikh Fakhradin, the Moon.
He married Sitiya Zin, the daughter of Sheikh Adi.
He is the forefather of all the Shemsani sheikhs of Yazidism.
His mausoleum stands among the holiest shrines at Lalish.
Quick Facts
Name: Ezdina Mir (Kurdish: Ezdine Mir); Mir means prince
Lived: The 12th century, the late Abbasid era
Type: A Yazidi prince and holy figure
Role: The Yazidi ruler before the arrival of Sheikh Adi
Children: The four Shemsani saints: Sheikh Shems, Fakhradin, Nasirdin, Sicadin
Wives: Sitiya Zin, daughter of Sheikh Adi, and Sitiya Ereb
Significance: Forefather of all the Shemsani sheikhs
His line: From the Shemsani comes the Baba Sheikh, the spiritual leader
Shrine: His mausoleum stands at Lalish, beside Sheikh Adi's
Tradition: Said to have met Sheikh Adi when he came to Lalish
Father of the Four Saints
The enduring importance of Ezdina Mir lies above all in his children. He was the father of four sons who became among the most venerated saints of Yazidism: Sheikh Shems, the personification of the Sun; Sheikh Fakhradin, the personification of the Moon and the poet of the sacred hymns; Sheikh Nasirdin; and Sheikh Sicadin. These four are the ancestors and patriarchs of the four branches of the Shemsani sheikh lineage, and they are held in Yazidi belief to be earthly incarnations of the angelic beings.
That a single father should be the source of so many of the great saints of the faith is the heart of Ezdina Mir's significance. Through his sons, his house became the fountainhead of one of the three great priestly lineages of Yazidism, and the holy qualities associated with the Sun and the Moon, with sacred poetry and with divine guardianship, all flow from his line. He is, in the most literal sense, the father of saints, and the family tree of the Shemsani sheikhs has its root in him.
The Marriage to Sitiya Zin
One of the most significant facts about Ezdina Mir is the marriage that bound him to the holiest of all Yazidi figures. He married twice, and his first wife was Sitiya Zin, whose name means the noble lady Zin and who is herself revered as an important female saint of the Yazidis. Sitiya Zin was, by Yazidi tradition, the daughter of Sheikh Adi himself. His second wife was Sitiya Ereb.
This marriage carries profound meaning, for it means that the two greatest of Ezdina Mir's sons, Sheikh Shems and Sheikh Fakhradin, who were the children of Sitiya Zin, were the grandsons of Sheikh Adi through their mother. The princely line of Ezdina Mir and the holy line of Sheikh Adi were thus united in a single family, and the saints of the Sun and the Moon carried in their blood both the ancient royalty of the Yazidis and the sanctity of their faith's great refounder. The alliance of marriage became the alliance of the sacred order itself.
The Meeting of Two Worlds
The encounter between Ezdina Mir and Sheikh Adi is, in a sense, the meeting of two worlds, and it lies at the heart of how the Yazidi tradition understands its own history. On one side stood Ezdina Mir, the prince of the existing Yazidi community, heir to an ancient faith whose roots reach far back into the religious world of the region. On the other stood Sheikh Adi, the great mystic and reformer who came to Lalish and around whom the religion took its classical shape. In the figure of Ezdina Mir and his marriage alliance, these two are brought together.
This union is why Ezdina Mir is so important to the structure of the faith. He represents the continuity of the older Yazidi tradition into the world remade by Sheikh Adi, and the joining of his princely house with Sheikh Adi's holy family ensured that the ancient and the renewed were not rivals but one. The Yazidi religion that emerged was thus a marriage, quite literally, of old roots and new flowering, and Ezdina Mir stands at the very point where the two were wed. He is the ancestor in whom the depth of the tradition's antiquity is preserved.
Forefather of the Shemsani
Yazidi religious society is organised, by long tradition, into a structure of castes, established to bind the community together and to preserve its order. Among these, the priestly sheikhs are divided into three great groups, each tracing its descent to a different holy ancestor: the Shemsani, who descend from Ezdina Mir; the Adani, who descend from Sheikh Hasan; and the Qatani, who descend from the line of Sheikh Adi. Each of these groups carries particular responsibilities in the religious life of the community.
Ezdina Mir is the forefather of the Shemsani, and this gives him a living and central place in the faith. For from the Shemsani lineage comes the Baba Sheikh, the spiritual leader of all the Yazidis, the highest religious authority of the community. The line that began with Ezdina Mir thus continues to provide the faith with its spiritual head, so that his significance is not merely a matter of ancient genealogy but of the present-day leadership of the religion. To trace the Shemsani back to their root is to arrive at Ezdina Mir, the prince from whom they all descend.
The Lineage of the Sun
The name of the Shemsani lineage, descended from Ezdina Mir, is itself revealing, for it is connected to the Sun, embodied in his son Sheikh Shems, whose name means the Sun. Many scholars understand the Shemsani to represent a particularly ancient layer of the Yazidi tradition, associated with the veneration of the sun and light that is so central to the faith, a stratum that may reach back to the older religious world of the region before the time of Sheikh Adi.
If this understanding is right, then Ezdina Mir and his line preserve something very old indeed: the ancient solar and luminous heart of the Yazidi tradition, the reverence for the Sun toward which the faithful still turn in prayer, and which is honoured among the Seven Divine Beings and at the great shrines of Lalish. In this light, Ezdina Mir is not only the father of particular saints but the ancestral guardian of one of the deepest and most ancient currents of the faith, the lineage of the Sun, carried down from a world of great antiquity into the living religion of today.
His Shrine at Lalish
The honour in which Ezdina Mir is held is written into the sacred geography of Lalish itself, the holy valley that is the spiritual centre of the Yazidi world. His mausoleum stands among the most sacred monuments of the sanctuary, close to the tomb of Sheikh Adi, the focal point of all Yazidi pilgrimage. The sanctuary of Sheikh Adi is flanked to the west by the sacred White Spring and by the mausoleums of Ezdina Mir and of his son Sheikh Shems, so that the prince rests in the very heart of the holiest place of his faith.
Nearby, on a hill, stands the mausoleum of Sheikh Shems, where the Yazidis worship the divine Sun and where, they believe, the first rays of the rising sun fall upon the conical dome. That the tombs of Ezdina Mir and his luminous son should stand together near the sanctuary of Sheikh Adi places this whole holy family at the centre of Lalish, and makes the prince's shrine a station on the path of every pilgrim. In the architecture of the holy valley, the foundational place of Ezdina Mir is made visible in stone.
A Living Lineage
The line of Ezdina Mir did not end in the distant past but continues, vigorous and central, into the present. His grandchildren included some of the most beloved saints of the faith, among them Sheikh Mend, the holy lord of serpents, and Khatuna Fexra, the guardian of childbirth, both children of his son Sheikh Fakhradin. Through such descendants the influence of his house spread across the whole Yazidi world, watching over many spheres of life and faith.
And the Shemsani sheikhs who descend from him remain, to this day, one of the pillars of Yazidi religious society, providing the community with its spiritual leadership in the person of the Baba Sheikh. In this way Ezdina Mir is among the most living of ancestors: not a figure consigned to legend but the root of families and offices that endure and function in the religious life of the Yazidis now. The prince who ruled in the twelfth century is present still, in the lineages that bear his descent and in the leadership that springs from his line.
Symbolism and Meaning
The figure of Ezdina Mir gathers several layers of meaning. He is the bridge-figure of Yazidi sacred history, the prince in whom the ancient tradition and the refounding work of Sheikh Adi are joined, and so he embodies the continuity of the faith across one of its great turning points. He is the father of saints, the ancestor from whom flows a whole lineage of holy figures, and so he embodies the Yazidi sense that sanctity runs in sacred families and is handed down through the generations.
Above all, as the forefather of the Shemsani, the lineage of the Sun, Ezdina Mir embodies the antiquity and the rootedness of the Yazidi religion, its reach back into a world older than its great refounder, and its preservation of an ancient reverence for light. He is the quiet foundation beneath the more famous saints, the root that is less celebrated than the flower but without which the flower could not be. To honour Ezdina Mir is to honour the deep roots of the faith and the principle of sacred continuity itself.
Ezdina Mir and the Kurds
Ezdina Mir holds an honoured place in the heritage of the Kurds, and above all among the Yazidis, the followers of one of the most ancient faiths of the Kurdish world. As the prince who ruled before Sheikh Adi, the father of the four Shemsani saints, and the forefather of the lineage from which the spiritual leadership of the Yazidis descends, he is woven into the very foundations of the faith and its sacred order.
For a community that has preserved its identity and its faith through long centuries of hardship, the foundational ancestors of the holy families are figures of great importance, anchoring the present in a dignified and ancient past. Ezdina Mir links the Yazidis of today to the deep roots of their tradition, to the world before and around the coming of Sheikh Adi, and to the antiquity of a religion that reaches back into the oldest layers of the region's spiritual life. To remember him is to remember how old, and how rooted, the Yazidi heritage truly is.
Debates and Misconceptions
Was Ezdina Mir a saint, a prince, or a historical figure? In the Yazidi understanding he is both a prince and a holy ancestor, and the two are not in tension. The sacred tradition presents him as the ruler of the Yazidis and the father of the Shemsani saints, while the figure of Sheikh Adi, whom he is said to have met, is a documented historical mystic of the twelfth century. As so often in Yazidi sacred history, traditional memory and historical fact are interwoven, and Ezdina Mir is best understood as a foundational ancestor of the faith remembered through its sacred tradition.
What does his place at the head of the Shemsani tell us? Many scholars see the Shemsani lineage that descends from him as representing an especially ancient layer of the Yazidi tradition, bound up with the veneration of the Sun and reaching back before the refounding work of Sheikh Adi. On this understanding, the union of Ezdina Mir's princely line with Sheikh Adi's holy family represents the joining of an older stratum of the faith with the new form that Sheikh Adi gave it. This is a matter of scholarly interpretation alongside Yazidi tradition, and it is offered as such, but it illuminates why Ezdina Mir is so significant.
How certain are the details of his life? As with most figures of that distant age, and given that the Yazidi tradition was long preserved orally and suffered great losses through centuries of persecution, much is known only through sacred tradition and is approximate. The dates fall in the twelfth century, and the genealogy is held as religious tradition rather than documentary proof. It is most honest to receive these as the cherished traditions of a living faith, while recognising the firm historical anchor of the age of Sheikh Adi in which the tradition places him.
Related Topics
Sheikh Adi: the great saint who came to Lalish and whose daughter Ezdina Mir married
Sheikh Shems: the saint of the Sun, son of Ezdina Mir and Sitiya Zin
Sheikh Fakhradin: the saint of the Moon and poet of the qewls, son of Ezdina Mir
Sheikh Mend: the Lord of Snakes, grandson of Ezdina Mir through Fakhradin
Lalish: the holy valley where the mausoleum of Ezdina Mir stands
The Seven Angels: the Seven Divine Beings incarnate in the saints of Ezdina Mir's line
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Ezdina Mir?
Ezdina Mir, in Kurdish Ezdine Mir, was a Yazidi prince and holy figure of the twelfth century, remembered as the ruler who governed the Yazidis before the arrival of Sheikh Adi at Lalish. He was the father of the four saints of the Shemsani lineage, the husband of Sitiya Zin who was Sheikh Adi's daughter, and the forefather of all the Shemsani sheikhs.
Why is Ezdina Mir important in Yazidism?
He is important as a foundational ancestor of the faith. He was the father of the four Shemsani saints, including Sheikh Shems and Sheikh Fakhradin, and is the forefather of the Shemsani sheikh lineage, from which comes the Baba Sheikh, the spiritual leader of all Yazidis. He also represents the link between the ancient Yazidi tradition and the refounding work of Sheikh Adi.
Who were Ezdina Mir's children?
Ezdina Mir was the father of four sons who became great saints: Sheikh Shems, the personification of the Sun; Sheikh Fakhradin, the personification of the Moon and poet of the sacred hymns; Sheikh Nasirdin; and Sheikh Sicadin. These four are the patriarchs of the four branches of the Shemsani sheikh lineage, and Sheikh Shems and Sheikh Fakhradin were the children of his wife Sitiya Zin.
What was Ezdina Mir's connection to Sheikh Adi?
By Yazidi tradition, Ezdina Mir married Sitiya Zin, the daughter of Sheikh Adi, so that his two greatest sons were Sheikh Adi's grandsons. He is also said to have met Sheikh Adi when the saint first came to Lalish. The marriage united the ancient princely line of the Yazidis with the holy line of Sheikh Adi, binding the old tradition to the faith's great refounder.
What is the Shemsani lineage?
The Shemsani are one of the three priestly sheikh lineages of Yazidism, descended from the four sons of Ezdina Mir; the other two are the Adani and the Qatani. The name is connected to the Sun, embodied in Sheikh Shems, and scholars often see the Shemsani as representing a particularly ancient layer of the faith. From the Shemsani comes the Baba Sheikh, the spiritual leader of the Yazidis.
Where is Ezdina Mir buried?
His mausoleum stands at Lalish, the holy valley that is the spiritual centre of Yazidism, among its most sacred monuments. The sanctuary of Sheikh Adi is flanked to the west by the sacred White Spring and by the mausoleums of Ezdina Mir and his son Sheikh Shems, placing the prince's shrine at the very heart of the holiest place of his faith, on the path of every pilgrim.
References and Further Reading
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