Sitîya Zîn is a revered female figure in Yazidi tradition, remembered through the genealogy of Sheikh Shems and Fexredîn and through a light dedicated to her at Lalish. Recorded accounts preserve both this relationship and differences in names and chronology.

Coloured cloths beside two hanging oil lamps and whitewashed arches inside Sheikh Shems’s shrine at Lalish
Inside Sheikh Shems’s shrine at Lalish, photographed by Levi Clancy on 10 August 2018. The image illustrates a related devotional setting where oil lamps are used. Levi Clancy · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons.

The lady named in a sacred family

Sitîya Zîn, often written Sitiya Zin, combines an honorific for a lady with the personal name Zîn. Dîar Khalaf’s community account identifies her as the wife of Êzdîna Mîr and mother of Sheikh Shems and Fexredîn. It distinguishes Sitiya Ereb, named as mother of Nasirdîn and Sicadîn. These relationships place the two women within narratives explaining the ancestry of the Shemsani religious families. [1]

An early Kurmanji record

Osman Sebrî’s account Ezdî û ola wan, first published in Ronahî in 1943 and reprinted in Stig Wikander’s 1959 anthology, names Zîn and Ereb and assigns the two pairs of sons to them. On the same page, Sebrî describes asking Sheikh Xidir about his genealogy and receiving answers that did not always agree with another informant’s account. The passage preserves names alongside the circumstances of their recording. It offers a concrete example of genealogical knowledge being explained in conversation. [2]

Which Sheikh Adi?

Khalaf attributes Zîn’s parentage specifically to Sheikh Adi II, son of Abu Barakat, citing Yazidi researchers Khalil Jindy Rashow, Bavî Azad and Kheri Bozanî. Adi II belongs to a later generation than Adi ibn Musafir. [1] This distinction corrects a consequential confusion in earlier versions of this article. In A Pilgrimage to Lalish, C. J. Edmonds explicitly states that the first Sheikh Adi was childless. His list of remembered mothers gives Habib, or Zin, as the mother of Shems and Farkhadin. [3] A sacred genealogy therefore needs its named version and generation identified before it can be turned into a historical family tree.

The light dedicated to her

The 2008 album Lalişa Nûranî / Holy Lalish includes an inventory of lights and wicks for holy figures. Page 202 lists both Qendîla Sitîya Zîn and Çira Sitîya Zîn li jor. Her name appears within a larger devotional landscape that also includes Sheikh Shems, Fexredîn, Xatûna Fexra and other figures. [4] The dedicated light is a specific form of remembrance attached to place and ritual. The accompanying photograph shows lamps in Sheikh Shems’s shrine, allowing the reader to see the material setting of such devotion.

What these accounts preserve

Together, the records offer a focused portrait: an honoured name, a maternal relationship in the Shemsani tradition and a dedicated light at Lalish. Edmonds explains that his book mainly draws on observations and conversations recorded between 1930 and 1945, and does not claim that every Yazidi would agree with each account. [3] Reading these voices together retains the variation in the tradition. Exact birth dates, a documented political marriage and a detailed personal biography remain beyond what the cited passages establish.

Sources and further reading

  1. Dîar Khalaf, Sitîya Zîn, Ezipedia, 15 September 2013: community account of the name, maternal genealogy and attribution to Sheikh Adi II.
  2. Osman Sebrî, Ezdî û ola wan, Ronahî 19–21, 1943; reprinted in Stig Wikander, Recueil de textes kourmandji, Uppsala, 1959, especially p. 65. Digitised by the Kurdish Institute of Paris.
  3. C. J. Edmonds, A Pilgrimage to Lalish, Royal Asiatic Society, 1967, preface pp. xi–xii and p. 31: fieldwork context, remembered mothers and Adi’s childlessness.
  4. Dimitri Pirbari (Pîr Dîma), Stanislav Grigoriev and L. I. Ivasko, Lalişa Nûranî / Holy Lalish, Basko, 2008, p. 202: inventory of lights and wicks at Lalish.