Sheikh Fakhradin: The Yazidi Saint of the Moon
- Dala Sarkis
- 10 hours ago
- 13 min read
Introduction
Among the holiest figures of the Yazidi faith stands Sheikh Fakhradin, in Kurdish Sex Fexredin, the saint of the Moon and the poet of the sacred word. He is counted among the Seven Divine Beings, the great angelic emanations to whom, in Yazidi belief, the one God entrusted the care of the world, and he is honoured as one of the most fundamental figures of the religion. But he is beloved above all for a gift that touches the daily life of every Yazidi: he is remembered as the philosopher and poet who composed the qewls, the sacred hymns through which the faith is sung and preserved.
Sheikh Fakhradin belongs to the radiant world of twelfth-century Yazidism, the age when the faith took its classical shape around the figure of Sheikh Adi and the holy families of his circle. In that world Fakhradin was a luminous presence: the personification of the Moon, the brother of the saint of the Sun, the son of a prince and the grandson of the greatest of saints, the father of holy children, and the author of a body of sacred poetry so vast that its loss and its survival are together part of the Yazidi story. He stands near the very heart of the faith, where its theology, its poetry and its holy lineages all meet.
To learn of Sheikh Fakhradin is to glimpse the depth and beauty of the Yazidi religion: a monotheistic faith of great antiquity, with a rich angelology, a profound cosmic vision, and a tradition of sacred poetry that has carried its teachings across the centuries by the power of the human voice alone. In him, the divine and the poetic are one.
Contents
Who Was Sheikh Fakhradin?
Sheikh Fakhradin, in Kurdish Sex Fexredin and also called Melik Fexredin, was a Yazidi saint, poet and philosopher of the twelfth century, venerated as one of the Seven Divine Beings of the faith and as the personification of the Moon. The son of the prince Ezdina Mir and one of the four sons who became the patriarchs of the Shemsani sheikh lineages, he is honoured as the author of much of the sacred poetry, the qewls, still recited by Yazidis today. He stands among the most important and best-loved figures of the Yazidi religion.
One of the Seven
At the heart of Yazidi belief stands the Heptad, the Seven Divine Beings, also called the Heft Sirr, the Seven Mysteries. In Yazidi teaching, the one God created these seven holy beings from his own light before the making of the world, and entrusted to them the care of all the world's affairs. Pre-eminent among them is the Peacock Angel, their leader. The Seven are not rival gods but emanations of the single God, each carrying within itself a portion of the divine mystery.
Sheikh Fakhradin is one of these Seven. In Yazidi understanding, the great angelic beings take earthly form, becoming incarnate in holy persons, and Fakhradin is the earthly manifestation of one of the Seven, as are his brothers Sheikh Shems, Nasirdin and Sicadin. To be one of the Seven is to stand at the very summit of the Yazidi sacred order, among those to whom God himself gave charge of the world. That Sheikh Fakhradin is reckoned among them shows the height of his holiness in the eyes of the faithful, and places him among the foundational figures upon whom the whole structure of the religion rests.
Key Takeaways
Sheikh Fakhradin is one of the Seven Divine Beings of the Yazidi faith.
He is venerated as the personification of the Moon.
His brother Sheikh Shems is the personification of the Sun.
He was a 12th-century poet, philosopher and scholar.
He composed many of the qewls, the sacred hymns of Yazidism.
He was the son of Ezdina Mir and the father of Sheikh Mend and Khatuna Fexra.
Quick Facts
Name: Sheikh Fakhradin (Kurdish: Sex Fexredin); also Melik Fexredin
Lived: The 12th century
Type: A Yazidi saint, one of the Seven Divine Beings
Symbol: The Moon, counterpart to his brother Sheikh Shems, the Sun
Roles: Poet, philosopher and scholar of the Yazidi faith
Famous for: Composing many of the sacred hymns, the qewls
Father: Ezdina Mir, a prince and forefather of the Shemsani sheikhs
Mother: Sitiya Zin, a saint and daughter of Sheikh Adi
Children: Sheikh Mend, Khatuna Fexra, Sheikh Bedir and Sheikh Aqub
Lineage: Ancestor of the Fexredin branch of the Shemsani sheikhs
The Moon to His Brother's Sun
One of the most beautiful aspects of Sheikh Fakhradin's sacred identity is his association with the Moon. In the symbolism of the Yazidi faith, Fakhradin is the personification of the Moon, while his brother Sheikh Shems, whose very name means the Sun, is the personification of that greater light. Together the two brother-saints embody the two great lights of the heavens, the sun and the moon, the rulers of day and night, in a pairing of striking elegance and depth.
This celestial symbolism runs deep in Yazidism, a faith in which light holds a central and sacred place, and in which the faithful turn toward the sun in prayer. If Sheikh Shems is the blazing light of day, the source of warmth and life, then Sheikh Fakhradin is the gentler radiance of the night, the moon that lights the darkness with a softer, reflective glow. The pairing of the two brothers as sun and moon expresses a sense of cosmic balance and completeness, and it sets Sheikh Fakhradin among the great luminous symbols at the heart of the Yazidi vision of the world.
The Holy Family
Sheikh Fakhradin was born into the most exalted family of Yazidi sacred history. His father was the prince Ezdina Mir, a prominent ruler of the Yazidis in the twelfth century, who is honoured as the forefather of all the Shemsani sheikhs. His mother was the revered Sitiya Zin, herself an important female saint, and, by Yazidi tradition, the daughter of the supreme saint Sheikh Adi, which makes Fakhradin the grandson of the greatest of all the Yazidi holy figures.
Fakhradin was one of the four sons of Ezdina Mir, together with Sheikh Shems, Sheikh Nasirdin and Sheikh Sicadin, and these four became the ancestors and patriarchs of the four Shemsani sheikh lineages, the great priestly families of Yazidism. To be born among them was to stand at the fountainhead of the sacred order, in the family from which so much of the religious leadership of the Yazidis would descend. From Sheikh Fakhradin in particular springs the Fexredin branch of the Shemsani sheikhs, a lineage that endures to this day.
The Philosopher of the Faith
Beyond his place among the Seven, Sheikh Fakhradin is remembered as the great mind of the Yazidi tradition, a poet, philosopher and scholar who lived in the twelfth century and gave the faith much of its intellectual and poetic substance. Where his brother Sheikh Shems embodies the blazing light of the sun, Fakhradin embodies a different kind of illumination: the light of wisdom, learning and the contemplative word. He is, in the fullest sense, the philosopher of the faith.
A modern work devoted to him calls him, in Kurdish, the philosopher and the holy one of the Yazidi religion, a description that captures his double standing as both a saint and a thinker. In a tradition that has preserved its teachings not in systematic treatises but in sacred poetry and oral wisdom, the role of such a figure is immense, for it is through his words that much of the deepest meaning of the faith has been carried. To the Yazidis, Fakhradin is not only a holy being to be venerated but a teacher whose poetry instructs and whose wisdom illuminates.
The Poet of the Qewls
Sheikh Fakhradin's most enduring gift to his people is the body of sacred poetry he is believed to have composed. The central religious literature of Yazidism consists of the qewls, the sacred hymns that contain the theology, the cosmology and the spiritual teaching of the faith, and that are sung and recited by trained reciters known as the Qewals. A great part of this sacred poetry, still recited among the Yazidis today, is attributed to Sheikh Fakhradin. He is, in the tradition, the supreme poet of the qewls.
The scale of his attributed output is staggering. According to Yazidi religious authorities, Sheikh Fakhradin is said to have composed some eleven thousand qewls, beyts and qesides, the various forms of the sacred poetry, an outpouring of devotion and wisdom almost beyond imagining. That so vast a body of holy verse should be ascribed to a single saint speaks to the central place he holds as the voice of the faith, the one through whom the divine word was given poetic form. In composing the qewls, Fakhradin did not merely write poems; he gave the Yazidis the very scripture they live by, the hymns in which their faith is preserved and renewed in every generation.
A Heritage Lost and Preserved
There is a profound sorrow woven into the story of Sheikh Fakhradin's poetry, for of the eleven thousand sacred compositions attributed to him, only around two hundred are said to survive today. The rest have been lost across the centuries, casualties of the long history of oppression, displacement and violence that the Yazidi people have endured. Each lost qewl is a fragment of sacred wisdom gone from the world, and the gap between the vast tradition remembered and the small portion preserved is a quiet measure of all that the Yazidis have suffered.
Yet what survives is precious beyond measure, and its survival is itself a kind of miracle. Because Yazidism preserved its scripture not in books but in the memories and voices of its reciters, the qewls of Sheikh Fakhradin were carried down the generations by the living tradition of the Qewals, sung from heart to heart through ages of persecution. That any of this sacred poetry remains is a testament to the devotion of those who kept it alive, and the surviving hymns of Fakhradin are treasured as one of the great inheritances of the faith, the words of the creation and the cosmos preserved against all odds.
Father of Saints
Sheikh Fakhradin was not only a saint and poet but the father of saints. His eldest son was Sheikh Mend, the holy lord of serpents and founder of the Kurdish Emirate of Kilis, one of the most distinctive figures of Yazidism. His daughter was Khatuna Fexra, revered as one of the most important female saints of the faith, the guardian of childbirth, of pregnant women and of fertility, in whose honour Yazidi women fast each year. His other sons were Sheikh Bedir and Sheikh Aqub.
Through these holy children, the line of Sheikh Fakhradin spread its sacred influence across the Yazidi world, in the protective power of Sheikh Mend and his snake-healing descendants, in the tender guardianship of Khatuna Fexra over mothers and children, and in the Fexredin lineage of sheikhs that carries his name. A whole family of saints descends from him, each watching over a sphere of life and faith, so that the household of Fakhradin became one of the great wellsprings of the Yazidi sacred order. In him, sanctity was not a solitary gift but a heritage passed to his children and their descendants.
The Cosmic Vision
The qewls that Sheikh Fakhradin is believed to have composed express one of the most remarkable cosmic visions of any faith of the region. In the Yazidi creation tradition, the universe begins with a luminous white pearl in which all things are contained in pre-eternity; God brings forth the Seven Divine Beings from his own light; and from the bursting of the pearl the material cosmos comes into being, with love as its foundation. It is a vision of great beauty and depth, distinct from the cosmologies of the Abrahamic faiths and reaching back, many scholars believe, to the ancient religious world of Mesopotamia and the Iranian lands.
Sheikh Fakhradin stands in a singular relation to this vision, for he is at once a character within it and its poet. As one of the Seven brought forth from the divine light, he belongs to the very drama of creation that the qewls describe; and as the composer of those same qewls, he is the voice that sings the drama and hands it on. In him the cosmic and the poetic meet: the saint who was present at the foundation of the world is also the poet who tells of it. Few figures in any tradition unite these roles so completely, and it is part of what makes Sheikh Fakhradin so central to the Yazidi imagination.
Symbolism and Meaning
The figure of Sheikh Fakhradin gathers several rich strands of meaning. As the Moon, he embodies the gentler, reflective light, the wisdom that illuminates the darkness, the contemplative balance to the blazing vitality of the sun; and his pairing with his brother Sheikh Shems expresses the harmony and completeness of the cosmos in the two great lights of heaven. As the philosopher and poet of the qewls, he embodies the power of the sacred word, the truth that lives in poetry and is carried by the voice, and the central Yazidi conviction that the deepest things are best expressed in hymn and verse.
And as one of the Seven who was also a man of flesh, a saint who was also a scholar, a divine being who was also a father, Sheikh Fakhradin embodies the characteristic Yazidi sense that the sacred is woven through the human, that the great angelic mysteries take form in real persons and real families, and that the divine word is given through human poets. To contemplate Sheikh Fakhradin is to enter a vision of the world in which heaven and earth, the cosmic and the intimate, the eternal and the historical, are bound together in a single luminous whole.
Sheikh Fakhradin and the Kurds
Sheikh Fakhradin holds a place of deep reverence among the Yazidis, the followers of one of the most ancient faiths of the Kurdish world, and through them he belongs to the wider heritage of the Kurds. As one of the Seven Divine Beings, he stands at the foundation of Yazidi belief; as the poet of the qewls, he is present in the religious life of the community every time the sacred hymns are sung; and as the ancestor of a great sheikh lineage, he is woven into the social and spiritual structure of the Yazidi people.
For a community that has suffered grievous persecution and that has preserved its faith chiefly through the spoken and sung word, a figure such as Sheikh Fakhradin is of immeasurable importance, for he is the very source of so much of that sustaining poetry. To honour him is to honour the living heart of the Yazidi tradition, and to recognise the depth and sophistication of a faith that has too often been misunderstood and maligned by outsiders. In the saint of the Moon and poet of the qewls, the Yazidis possess one of the great spiritual treasures of the Kurdish world.
Debates and Misconceptions
Are the Seven Divine Beings separate gods? No, and this is essential to understanding Yazidism rightly. Yazidism is a monotheistic faith, founded on belief in one God who created the world and entrusted its care to the Seven Holy Beings, who are his emanations, brought forth from his own light, and not independent deities. Sheikh Fakhradin, as one of the Seven, is a manifestation of the one God's care for the world, alongside the Peacock Angel and the others. The faith must be understood in its own monotheistic terms, not through the distortions that have so often been imposed upon it.
Was Sheikh Fakhradin a saint, an angel, or a historical poet? In the Yazidi understanding he is all of these at once, and the layers are not felt as contradictions. He is one of the eternal Seven; he is the personification of the Moon; and he is a historical figure of the twelfth century, a real poet, philosopher and scholar who composed sacred verse. The sacred and the historical are interwoven in him, as so often in the Yazidi holy family, and the full picture holds both together.
How certain are the details, and the scale of his poetry? The traditions surrounding Sheikh Fakhradin are held as sacred religious tradition rather than as documentary history, and figures such as the eleven thousand compositions attributed to him are best understood as expressions of his central importance as the poet of the faith rather than as exact counts. Given the great losses the Yazidi tradition has suffered through centuries of persecution, much is known only through oral tradition and is approximate. It is most honest to receive these as the cherished beliefs of a living faith, while recognising the firm historical core of a twelfth-century saint and poet whose hymns the Yazidis still sing.
Related Topics
The Seven Angels: the Heft Sirr, the Seven Divine Beings among whom is Sheikh Fakhradin
Sheikh Shems: the saint of the Sun, Fakhradin's brother and his celestial counterpart
Sheikh Mend: the Lord of Snakes, the saintly son of Sheikh Fakhradin
Sheikh Adi: the supreme Yazidi saint, Fakhradin's grandfather by tradition
Tawuse Melek: the Peacock Angel, the leader of the Seven Divine Beings
The Qewls: the sacred Yazidi hymns that Sheikh Fakhradin is believed to have composed
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Sheikh Fakhradin?
Sheikh Fakhradin, in Kurdish Sex Fexredin, was a Yazidi saint, poet and philosopher of the twelfth century, venerated as one of the Seven Divine Beings of the faith and as the personification of the Moon. The son of the prince Ezdina Mir, he is honoured above all as the author of much of the sacred poetry, the qewls, that the Yazidis still recite today, and he stands among the most important figures of the religion.
Why is Sheikh Fakhradin associated with the Moon?
In Yazidi symbolism, Sheikh Fakhradin is the personification of the Moon, while his brother Sheikh Shems, whose name means the Sun, personifies that greater light. The two brother-saints together embody the two great lights of the heavens, day and night, in a pairing that expresses cosmic balance. Fakhradin represents the gentler, reflective radiance of the moon, associated with wisdom and the contemplative word.
What are the qewls, and what is Sheikh Fakhradin's connection to them?
The qewls are the sacred hymns of Yazidism, the central religious poetry that contains the theology and cosmology of the faith and is recited by trained reciters called Qewals. A great part of this sacred poetry is attributed to Sheikh Fakhradin, who is remembered as the supreme poet of the qewls. Tradition holds that he composed many thousands of these sacred compositions, of which only a portion survive today.
Is Yazidism polytheistic because of the Seven Divine Beings?
No. Yazidism is a monotheistic faith based on belief in one God, who created the world and entrusted its care to a Heptad of seven Holy Beings, led by the Peacock Angel. The Seven are not separate gods but emanations of the one God, brought forth from his own light. Sheikh Fakhradin, as one of the Seven, is a manifestation of the one God's care for the world, and the faith must be understood in its own monotheistic terms.
Who were Sheikh Fakhradin's family?
Sheikh Fakhradin was the son of the prince Ezdina Mir and the saint Sitiya Zin, who by tradition was a daughter of Sheikh Adi, making Fakhradin his grandson. His brothers were Sheikh Shems, Nasirdin and Sicadin. His own children included Sheikh Mend, the Lord of Snakes, and Khatuna Fexra, the guardian of childbirth, as well as Sheikh Bedir and Sheikh Aqub, a whole family of saints descending from him.
Why is Sheikh Fakhradin important to the Yazidis?
He is important as one of the foundational figures of the faith: a member of the Seven Divine Beings, the saint of the Moon, and above all the poet who gave the Yazidis much of their sacred scripture in the form of the qewls. Every time the sacred hymns are sung, his presence is felt in the religious life of the community, and as the ancestor of a great sheikh lineage he is woven into the very structure of the Yazidi people.
References and Further Reading
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