The Yazidi Feqîr: Ascetic Orders, Families and Service

Feqîr names a Yazidi ascetic tradition, but also has a wider family and community meaning in Sinjar. Initiation, sacred dress, religious knowledge and service at Lalish need to be understood alongside these regional differences.

An order with initiation and family connections

Christine Allison’s account distinguishes the faqir order from the major hereditary groups of sheikhs, pîrs and murîds. Entry involves initiation. She explains that an order once more broadly accessible became effectively hereditary, with initiation undertaken mainly within faqir families. [1] Calling it simply a freely chosen vocation therefore misses an important qualification. Religious order, family background and inherited social grouping describe related aspects of membership, rather than three interchangeable categories.

The xirqe: sacred dress and religious discipline

Allison describes the black woollen xirqe, also written khirqa, as sacred clothing recalling Sheikh Adi’s garment. The order’s ascetic ideal includes fasting, abstention from alcohol and tobacco, and avoidance of violence. [1] These are descriptions of religious expectations. They should not become claims that every person bearing a feqîr family identity follows an identical lifestyle. The garment has a particular devotional significance; an ordinary black item of clothing does not by itself identify its wearer as a feqîr.

Sinjar: a community beyond practising ascetics

Eszter Spät’s 2016 fieldwork article describes feqîrs in Sinjar as a community that had developed along family and tribal lines. Only some members chose to wear the xirqe and live as ascetics. In the spring of 2015, displaced feqîr families observed New Year a week before local Yazidis in the Kurdistan Region, making their differing calendars visible to their neighbours. [2] This dated observation illustrates regional variation. It does not justify treating every feqîr as a resident religious specialist at Lalish or applying one local calendar to all Yazidis.

Service and the winter forty-day observance

Kurdistan24’s report of 27 December 2025 records accounts from Prince Mahmoud Sido Beg and Lalish servant Jamal Feqir. Mahmoud described feqîr families providing service at the opening of the winter observance, after which participants could remain at Lalish or return home for their practices. Jamal described the later gathering of religious figures there. [3] The report distinguishes daylight fasting from an uninterrupted absence of food and drink. It documents one observance and named explanations, rather than establishing that every feqîr lives permanently at the sanctuary or that all Yazidis undertake the long fast.

Feqrayas and other sanctuary roles are distinct

The Yazidi Cultural Heritage project describes feqrayas as women living in service at Sheikh Adi’s sanctuary, with duties including cleaning, lighting oil lamps and preparing food for visiting clergy and dignitaries. Their white clothing is described separately from the male ascetic confraternity. The same account distinguishes qewwals, religious musicians and reciters, and kocheks, servants associated with visionary gifts. [4] These terms should retain their particular meanings. Combining them into one undifferentiated category of holy men and women hides the different work and responsibilities recorded at Lalish.

Knowledge is carried through people and practice

Spät also records the place of qewlbêj, lay reciters who memorise hymns, among Sinjar’s feqîrs, and prayer knowledge held by men and women. She distinguishes these reciters from qewwals who play the sacred instruments. [2] This helps explain how a family community can remain important to religious transmission without every member becoming a robed ascetic. A useful description identifies the person’s role, locality and source date, and asks what they actually do: recite, teach, serve, observe a fast or wear the xirqe. That approach preserves the diversity visible in the records.

Sources and further reading

1. Christine Allison, Yazidis i. General, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2004, updated 2017: religious orders, initiation and sacred clothing.
2. Eszter Spät, Persecution and the Development of Yezidi Ritual Life, Kurdish Studies 4(2), 2016, pp. 155–175, especially p. 173.
3. Kurdistan24, Yazidi Spiritual Leadership Convenes at Lalish Temple to Observe Sacred Winter Forty Days Fasting, 27 December 2025.
4. Yazidi Cultural Heritage, Society: Religious Hierarchy and Social Organisation; distinctions among feqîrs, feqrayas, qewwals and kocheks.