Published Yarsani accounts describe souls passing through bodily forms. The garment metaphor, the number 1,001 and divine manifestation need their particular sources and contexts.

Three differently coloured garment shapes, each containing the same gold circle and joined by a dotted line, illustrating the metaphor of changing bodily forms
Modern editorial diagram of the garment metaphor discussed by Halm and Kaczorowski. Panels 1–3 show different bodily forms with a repeated circle; three panels are an illustration, not a prescribed number of lives. The drawing is not a traditional sacred image. [1] [2] Original diagram: Kurdish History Editorial Team, 2026. SVG source. Modern explanatory illustration; not traditional sacred iconography.

The meaning of changing garments

Dunadun, also written dunaduni or don-ba-don in studies of Yarsan religion, concerns the passage of the soul through successive bodily forms. Heinz Halm describes the body as clothing that changes while the soul undergoes purification. His account gives 1,001 rebirths. [1] The metaphor explains continuity through bodily change: the garment changes, while the soul’s journey continues. It should be presented as a religious teaching, not a historical event demonstrated by a photograph.

What the number 1,001 describes

Halm’s summary places purification through 1,001 rebirths alongside a separate account of seven divine manifestations. [1] These are different sequences. A count attached to human souls should not automatically become a list of manifestations or sacred companions. Readers should also distinguish a scholar’s numerical summary from a statement attributed to a particular community.

Conduct, reward and regional accounts

Karol Kaczorowski’s survey describes an account in which 1,001 changes culminate in union with God. It also reports different terminology and understandings among the Guran communities studied by Martin van Bruinessen: some used tanasukh, and explanations emphasised consequences of earthly conduct rather than an elaborate account of the afterlife. These communities did not describe reincarnation simply as escape from bodily existence. [2] This evidence supports explaining a recorded belief while leaving room for differences in how people discuss it.

Reincarnation and divine manifestation

Ziba Mir-Hosseini distinguishes the transmigration of souls, dunadun, from mazhariyyat, the Divine Essence appearing in human form. Her fieldwork study connects sacred narratives with kalam poetry, religious gatherings and the authority of hereditary guides. [3] Both doctrines use language about forms and continuity, but the subjects differ: an ordinary soul’s succession of lives is not itself a definition of divine manifestation. A figure’s place in sacred history also differs from a documented biographical date.

How these teachings reach readers

Mir-Hosseini’s 1994 study records both oral transmission and collections of kalam, as well as disputes over modern reformulations. [3] A published exposition therefore has an author, period and audience. The sources below identify which explanation is being summarised; they do not establish one uniform statement for every Yarsani lineage. For related subjects, the separate articles on manifestation, sacred lineages and the jam address their own evidence and terminology.

Sources and further reading

  1. Heinz Halm, Ahl-e Ḥaqq, Encyclopaedia Iranica I/6 (1984), 635–637, updated 6 June 2018; metempsychosis and divine manifestations.
  2. Karol Kaczorowski, Ahl-e Haqq (Yarsanism), Alevi Encyclopedia, 5 October 2025, DOI 10.68413/aleviansiklopedisi.v48ng; Anthropology among the Ahl-e Haqq.
  3. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Redefining the Truth: Ahl-i Haqq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 21/2 (1994), 211–228, especially 213 and 218–223.