The Kaka’i are a religious minority in Iraq with close connections to Yarsan and Ahl-e Haqq traditions across the Iranian border. Sacred poetry, community gatherings and local heritage belong to their history alongside displacement and struggles over identity.

Two green conical roofs above the white-walled shrine of Sultan Sahak, with visitors in the courtyard and rocky mountains behind
Sultan Sahak’s shrine at Perdivar in Iran, photographed by K1ravan in November 2018. This sacred place provides context for the cross-border Yarsani tradition discussed here; it is not an Iraqi village. K1ravan · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0.

Names, places and identity

Kaka’i is the usual Iraqi name for communities closely related to the Yarsan or Ahl-e Haqq of Iran. Majid Hassan Ali’s historical study notes both connections and differences between them, and warns that academic descriptions are not uniform. [1] A 2024 St Andrews workshop essay locates Iraqi communities in the Kurdistan Region and parts of Kirkuk, Diyala and the Mosul area, and relates the name to the Kurdish kaka, brother. [2] Geographic location and shared traditions help identify the community without implying that every household has an identical religious or political outlook.

Sultan Sahak and religious teachings

Heinz Halm’s account in Encyclopaedia Iranica places Sultan Sahak’s formative role broadly in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It describes divine manifestations, the soul’s passage through successive bodily lives, spiritual masters and initiation. Sultan Sahak’s shrine at Perdivar is among the tradition’s principal sanctuaries. [3] These are accounts of religious belief and sacred authority. The uncertainty of his early chronology should remain visible, and claims of an unbroken, precisely dated religion reaching back to ancient Mesopotamia go beyond this evidence.

Sacred poetry and communal practice

Halm identifies Gorani as the main language of the religious literature and describes collections of kalam, sacred poems, alongside accounts of the Saranjam. [3] Rahman Veisi Hasar’s 2024 study, in its published abstract, distinguishes narrative, testimony and ritual texts. It emphasizes diverse oral traditions, continuing sacred-text production and parallel processes of canonization, rather than one final canon shared uniformly. [4] The St Andrews essay identifies the jam khaneh as a place of worship. [2] Textual transmission and communal spaces therefore both matter when describing religious life.

Community members documenting living heritage

Zubeida Salih Abdulkhaliq’s chapter in The Handbook of Iraqi People’s Heritage describes research by four Kaka’i student heritage gatherers. Between August and December 2023 they conducted 42 interviews in Hawar, Wardak, Tel Lebin, Gezneka and Khebat district. Their subjects included ceremonies, foods for special occasions, gum preparation, tattoos and wedding clothes. [5] This evidence shifts attention from a community described only through persecution to the knowledge people preserve and transmit. It is a situated record of particular places and interviewees, rather than a catalogue of practices obligatory for every Kaka’i family.

Violence and the experience of displacement

KirkukNow’s July 2020 interviews describe the attack on Dara near Khanaqin on 13 June, relatives rescuing wounded family members, hospital journeys to Erbil and families unable to return home. Interviewed villagers were uncertain whether the attackers were Islamic State militants or other gunmen. Local commissioners reported displacement from the Mekhas area. [6] The account documents civilian experiences without making the witnesses’ uncertainty disappear. Violence affected homes, farming, movement and family care, as well as religious security.

Women, discrimination and community voices

Solaf Muhammed Amin Kakai’s 2022 Identity Struggle study was based on five focus groups held in Safiya between 6 November and 12 December 2021. Its summary explains the investigation of gender, religious identity, neighbourhood relations, education, employment and institutional discrimination. [7] Research conducted with community members adds questions that broad labels miss. A history of the Kaka’i needs room for women’s experiences, local differences and people’s own descriptions of their faith, alongside the sacred traditions and political pressures that shape their lives.

Sources and further reading

  1. Majid Hassan Ali, Religious Minorities in Republican Iraq Between Granting Rights and Discrimination, Bamberg dissertation, examination 2018: Kaka’i background.
  2. Muhtadi Al-Abyadh, Kakaism Between its Mesopotamian Origins and Islamization, St Andrews MECACS workshop essay, 2 May 2024.
  3. Heinz Halm, Ahl-e Ḥaqq, Encyclopaedia Iranica I/6, 1984, pp.635–637.
  4. Rahman Veisi Hasar, Canonization and sacred text in the Yārsān religion, Iranian Studies 57/1, 2024, pp.47–72: published abstract consulted.
  5. Zubeida Salih Abdulkhaliq, Religion and Traditions of the Kakeyîs in Iraq, Chapter5 in The Handbook of Iraqi People’s Heritage, IDS, 2025, pp.123–144: research methods and community documentation.
  6. Ameer Khanaqini, Witness accounts of the armed attack on the Kaka’i village Dara, KirkukNow, 31 July 2020.
  7. Solaf Muhammed Amin Kakai, The Identity Struggle of the Kakai Minority in Iraq, IDS/CREID, 2022: study summary and focus-group design.