The Qewwals: Sacred Reciters of the Yazidi Faith
- Sherko Sabir
- 4 hours ago
- 12 min read
Introduction
In a faith that for most of its history committed nothing to writing, everything depended on memory and the human voice. Among the Yazidis, the keepers of that sacred sound are the Qewwals, the hereditary reciter-musicians who chant the holy hymns of the faith, the qewls, upon their sacred instruments. They have been called the professionals of the word, and through their voices the divine poetry of the Yazidis has been carried down the centuries from one generation to the next.
The Qewwals are far more than performers. They are the bearers of a vast oral tradition, the living memory of the faith, and the custodians of the seven sacred peacock standards, the Sinjaq, which they carry in solemn procession to the Yazidi villages as images of Tawuse Melek, the Peacock Angel. For many ordinary Yazidis, the coming of the Qewwals with their drums and their hymns has been one of the few occasions to hear the sacred music of their religion.
Yet this ancient tradition is today gravely endangered, its bearers few and its heartland scarred by recent catastrophe. To understand the Qewwals is to understand how the Yazidi faith has preserved itself across the ages, not in books but in the trained memory and the chanting voice of a dedicated sacred class, and to grasp both the beauty and the fragility of one of the most remarkable oral traditions of the Kurdish world.
Contents
Who Are the Qewwals?
The Qewwals are the hereditary class of sacred reciter-musicians of the Yazidi faith, whose duty is to perform the holy hymns, the qewls, upon the sacred instruments, the daf or frame-drum and the shibab or flute. Drawn from two clans settled in the twin towns of Bashiqa and Bahzane in the Sheikhan region, they specialise in the religious music of the faith and in the recitation of its sacred poetry. They also carry out the Tawusgeran, the procession of the seven peacock standards through the Yazidi villages. As the keepers of a faith long preserved by memory rather than by writing, the Qewwals are among the most important custodians of the Yazidi religious tradition.
Professionals of the Word
The Qewwals have been aptly described as the professionals of the word, for their entire vocation is built around the sacred speech of the faith. The very name derives from the word qewl, meaning word or speech, the same root that names the holy hymns they perform. In a religion whose teachings were for most of its history never written down, the spoken and chanted word carried everything: the myths, the prayers, the doctrines, the history. The Qewwals were the trained specialists who held this word in their memory and gave it voice.
This made them, in effect, the living libraries of the Yazidi faith, a veritable source of ancient Yazidi lore. Until relatively recent times, the Qewwals largely monopolised the public performance of the hymns, though learned members of the sheikh and pir castes might also know many of them. Through the Qewwals, the sacred poetry that forms the doctrinal canon of the religion, a treasury of historical and mythical anecdote rather than abstract teaching, was preserved and transmitted. Their voices were the channel through which the faith spoke to itself across the generations.
Key Takeaways
The Qewwals are the hereditary sacred reciter-musicians of the Yazidis.
They perform the holy hymns, the qewls, on the daf and the shibab.
They come from two clans settled in Bashiqa and Bahzane in Sheikhan.
They carry the seven peacock standards in procession to the villages.
They are the chief keepers of the Yazidi oral tradition.
The tradition is gravely endangered, with very few Qewwals remaining.
Quick Facts
Name: Qewwals (reciters); from qewl, meaning word or speech
Role: Sacred reciter-musicians of the Yazidi faith
Repertoire: The qewls, the holy hymns, and related sacred texts
Instruments: The daf (frame-drum) and the shibab (flute)
Origin: Two clans, the Dimli and the Tazhi, of Bashiqa and Bahzane
Region: The Sheikhan area of northern Iraq
Special duty: The Tawusgeran, the procession of the peacock standards
Transmission: Oral; memorised and passed down through family lines
Status: A distinct hereditary class within Yazidi society
Today: Gravely endangered; very few Qewwals remain
A Hereditary Class
The Qewwals form a distinct and hereditary class within Yazidi society, with their own particular origins. According to the tradition, they are drawn from two clans, the Kurmanji-speaking Dimli and the Arabic-speaking Tazhi, who are settled in the twin towns of Bashiqa and Bahzane, lying in the Sheikhan area east of Mosul. These towns have been the tribal home and heartland of the Qewwals, the place from which the bearers of the sacred music have come for generations. The office passes within these families, so that the vocation of the Qewwal is inherited, handed down from father to son.
Becoming a Qewwal was a demanding path. A candidate had to meet certain conditions: a knowledge of the doctrine, a clear and sonorous voice, and the mastery of the sacred instruments. Training began with the music, and only once the young Qewwal had mastered the playing was he led into the vast body of religious texts, learned in a careful order, beginning with the prayers and the texts concerning death, then the verses on religious duties, the texts for the ceremonies at Lalish, the words of the hymns, and at last the interpretation of the sacred poetry. It was a long apprenticeship of memory and devotion, fitting the Qewwal to carry the immense treasury of the faith.
The Sacred Instruments
Central to the vocation of the Qewwals are the two sacred instruments upon which they perform the hymns: the daf, a large frame-drum, and the shibab, a flute. These are not ordinary musical instruments but holy objects, reserved for the sacred music of the faith, and the playing of them is itself a part of the religious office of the Qewwal. The drum, large enough almost to hide the player, is beaten in shifting rhythms that slow and quicken, while the flute weaves its high, trilling accompaniment, and over this the sacred words are chanted. The result is a music quite unlike ordinary song, solemn, hypnotic and ancient, fitted to the sacred poetry it carries. It stands apart from the secular music of the dengbej bards of the wider Kurdish world, belonging wholly to the realm of worship.
The performance of the qewls upon these instruments is a sacred act, bound to the ceremonies and seasons of the faith. The hymns may be recited with their melody on solemn public occasions, such as funerals, feasts and great gatherings, while in more private settings they might be recited without the music. The marriage of word and sacred sound in the Qewwals' performance gives the Yazidi hymns their distinctive character, a chanted poetry in which meaning and music are inseparable, and through which the holiest texts of the faith are lifted into worship.
Carriers of the Peacock Standards
Beyond their music, the Qewwals bear a unique and sacred responsibility: the carrying of the Sinjaq, the holy peacock standards, in the procession known as the Tawusgeran, the parading of the peacock. The Sinjaq are bronze images of a peacock, symbolising Tawuse Melek, the Peacock Angel who leads the Seven Holy Beings of the faith, and they are among the most sacred objects of Yazidism. In times past, the Qewwals would carry these standards on circuits to the far-flung Yazidi communities, taking the holy images to the villages and the distant lands of the faith.
During the Tawusgeran, the Qewwals would visit the Yazidi villages bringing the sacred peacock standard, which the faithful would venerate. Sermons were preached, offerings gathered from the pious, and holy water and berat, small sacred stones from Lalish, distributed among the people. For ordinary Yazidis, especially those far from the holy centres, the coming of the Qewwals with the Sinjaq was one of the few occasions to behold the sacred images and to hear the holy hymns of their religion. The processions thus bound the scattered community together around its sacred centre, with the Qewwals as the travelling bearers of the faith. In the twentieth century these circuits were severely curtailed as the crossing of international frontiers became difficult, cutting off the more distant communities, such as those of the Caucasus, from the religious heartland.
Keepers of an Oral Tradition
The deepest significance of the Qewwals lies in their role as the keepers of an entirely oral tradition. For most of its history, the Yazidi faith committed nothing to writing; its sacred poetry, its myths and its teachings lived only in the trained memory and the chanting voice. The qewls and the other sacred texts, a vast body of material, were held in the minds of the memorisers and passed down orally from one generation to the next through the family lines of the Qewwals and other reciters.
This mode of transmission gave the tradition a living, fluid quality. Each hymn was the product of a unique line of transmission, learned from a particular teacher, so that the words might vary from region to region and from one generation to another, a single hymn existing in many versions across the Yazidi world. The hymns were often accompanied by prose narratives that illuminated their enigmatic verses or told the myths behind them. In this great chain of memory, stretching back across the centuries, the Qewwals were the central links, the trained guardians who held the sacred word and passed it onward, ensuring that the faith endured even without the written page.
A Tradition in Danger
In modern times the tradition of the Qewwals has come under grave threat, and its survival is now genuinely uncertain. Even before recent catastrophes, the number of true Qewwals had dwindled alarmingly: scholars estimated that only about a dozen full Qewwals remained. As Yazidi communities grew more educated and more dispersed, and as many emigrated from the Middle East, ever fewer of the young were willing to undertake the long and demanding apprenticeship of memory, and when an aged memoriser died, whatever he had not passed on died with him.
This crisis was savagely deepened by the catastrophe that befell the Yazidis in 2014, when the so-called Islamic State unleashed a campaign of genocide against the community. The tribal home of the Qewwals, the twin towns of Bashiqa and Bahzane, was laid waste, and the wider Yazidi world suffered killing, enslavement and mass displacement, with many shrines destroyed and communities scattered. In the face of this, urgent efforts have been made to preserve the sacred music before it is lost, with scholars and organisations recording the surviving hymns and Yazidi schools seeking to teach the tradition anew. The fate of the Qewwals' ancient art now hangs in the balance, a precious heritage fighting for survival.
Symbolism and Meaning
The Qewwals embody the living memory of the Yazidi faith. In a religion that preserved itself not in books but in the voice, they are the human vessels of the sacred word, the trained guardians in whom the holy poetry, the myths and the teachings of the faith have been kept alive across the centuries. They symbolise the triumph of memory and devotion over the absence of writing, the remarkable feat by which an entire religious tradition has been carried down the ages in the minds and voices of a dedicated class.
They symbolise, too, the unity and the sacredness of the Yazidi community. As the carriers of the peacock standards of Tawuse Melek to the scattered villages, the Qewwals have bound the faithful together around their holiest symbols, linking the distant communities to the sacred centre at Lalish. And in their endangerment today they have come to symbolise the fragility and the resilience of Yazidi culture itself, a precious and ancient heritage imperilled by persecution and change, yet fighting still to endure. To contemplate the Qewwals is to contemplate the very soul of the Yazidi oral tradition.
The Qewwals and the Kurds
The Qewwals hold an honoured place in the heritage of the Kurds, and above all among the Yazidis, whose ancient faith they have preserved through the centuries. As the keepers of the sacred oral tradition, the bearers of the holy music and the carriers of the peacock standards, they stand at the heart of Yazidi religious life. Their art belongs to the wider tapestry of Kurdish oral and musical tradition, the world of memorised poetry and the chanted word, while remaining wholly distinct in its sacred character.
Their music finds an echo, in the secular sphere, in the great tradition of the dengbej, the Kurdish bards who likewise carried history, story and emotion in the trained memory and the singing voice. For a people who have endured terrible persecution, the survival of the Qewwals and their sacred art is a matter of profound importance, a question of whether a precious thread of Kurdish and Yazidi heritage will endure. To honour the Qewwals is to honour the living memory of one of the most ancient faiths of the Kurdish world, and to recognise the urgent need to preserve a tradition that has carried the soul of a people across the centuries.
Debates and Misconceptions
Are the Qewwals priests? Not exactly. The Qewwals are a distinct hereditary class of sacred reciter-musicians, but they are not the priestly castes that administer the rites of birth, death and marriage; those are the sheikhs and the pirs. The Qewwals' special vocation is the performance of the sacred music and the carrying of the peacock standards. Other figures, such as the feqirs and learned members of the priestly castes, may also recite hymns, and all such reciters are sometimes known generically as qewlbej, tellers of hymns; but the Qewwals are the specialised musicians of the qewls upon the sacred instruments.
Is Yazidi sacred music connected to anything sinister? No, and the prejudice that has long surrounded the Yazidis is founded on misunderstanding. The Qewwals are the musicians of a monotheistic faith that worships one God and venerates the Seven Holy Beings led by Tawuse Melek, the Peacock Angel, as benevolent powers of the divine order. The peacock standards the Qewwals carry are holy images of this good angel, and their hymns are sacred poetry of devotion. The music of the Qewwals is among the most beautiful and venerable expressions of an honourable ancient faith.
Why was the tradition never written down? For most of its history the Yazidi faith maintained a tradition of not committing its sacred texts to writing, preserving them instead through memory and oral transmission, a practice bound up with the community's history of secrecy and persecution. It is worth noting, too, that certain works once presented to outsiders as Yazidi scriptures are now generally regarded by scholars as later forgeries rather than genuine sacred books. The authentic tradition lived in the qewls and the voices of the Qewwals, and only in modern times, as the tradition came under threat, have serious efforts been made to record and preserve the hymns in writing before they are lost.
Related Topics
The Qewls: the sacred hymns of the faith that the Qewwals perform
Tawuse Melek: the Peacock Angel whose standards the Qewwals carry
Lalish: the holy sanctuary and centre of the Yazidi faith
The Baba Sheikh: the spiritual head of the Yazidis
The Seven Holy Beings: the Seven of the Yazidi faith led by the Peacock Angel
The Dengbej: the secular Kurdish bardic tradition, a parallel art of memory
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the Qewwals?
The Qewwals are the hereditary class of sacred reciter-musicians of the Yazidi faith. Their duty is to perform the holy hymns, the qewls, upon the sacred instruments, the daf or frame-drum and the shibab or flute, and to carry the peacock standards in procession to the villages. Drawn from clans settled in the towns of Bashiqa and Bahzane, they are among the chief keepers of the Yazidi oral tradition.
What does the word Qewwal mean?
The name derives from qewl, an Arabic-rooted word meaning word or speech, the same root that names the sacred hymns the Qewwals perform. They have been described as the professionals of the word, because their whole vocation is built around the sacred speech of the faith, which they hold in memory and give voice to. In a religion preserved by the spoken and chanted word, the Qewwals are the trained specialists of that word.
What instruments do the Qewwals play?
The Qewwals play two sacred instruments: the daf, a large frame-drum, and the shibab, a flute. These are holy objects reserved for the religious music of the faith. The drum is beaten in shifting rhythms while the flute weaves a high trilling accompaniment, and over this the sacred hymns are chanted, producing a solemn, ancient music quite distinct from ordinary song.
What is the Tawusgeran?
The Tawusgeran, or parading of the peacock, is the procession in which the Qewwals carry the Sinjaq, the sacred bronze peacock standards symbolising Tawuse Melek, to the Yazidi villages. The faithful venerate the standards, offerings are gathered, and holy water and berat, small sacred stones from Lalish, are distributed. For many Yazidis it was a rare chance to behold the sacred images and hear the holy hymns.
Why are the Qewwals endangered?
The tradition has dwindled as Yazidi communities became more dispersed and educated and fewer of the young undertook the long apprenticeship of memory; scholars estimated only about a dozen true Qewwals remained even before 2014. The genocide of that year, which devastated the Qewwals' home towns of Bashiqa and Bahzane and scattered the community, deepened the crisis gravely. Urgent efforts are now underway to record and preserve the sacred music before it is lost.
How is the Qewwal tradition passed on?
It is transmitted orally, through the family lines of the Qewwals. A candidate must have knowledge of the doctrine, a sonorous voice, and mastery of the sacred instruments. Training begins with the music and then proceeds through the religious texts in a set order, from prayers and death-texts to the hymns and their interpretation. Each hymn is learned from a particular teacher, so versions vary across regions and generations in a centuries-long chain of memory.
References and Further Reading
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