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The sanctuary of Shaykh ʿAdī at Lalish: Centre of pilgrimage of the Yezidis1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

Birgül Açıkyıldız
Birgül Açıkyıldız*
Affiliation:
The Oriental Institute, University of Oxford
*
birgul.acikyildiz@orinst.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

The sanctuary of Shaykh ʿAdī, the only monumental complex of the Yezidis, lies at Lalish, 35 kilometres north of Mosul, in Iraqi Kurdistan. It is dedicated to its founder, Shaykh ʿAdī (d. 1162). Although it has been suggested that it was converted from a Christian monastery, Arabic sources and architectural analysis indicate that it may originally have been the zāwiya where Shaykh ʿAdī and his disciples retired to meditate. After his death, the sanctuary grew up around his tomb and became a centre of pilgrimage. It is a large complex containing buildings of different sizes and functions. It was not conceived as a centrally planned structure and its different parts were added progressively as and when circumstances dictated. The dominant architectural style is derived from that which characterizes the twelfth–thirteenth-century Shiite buildings of Mosul, and was continued by the Yezidis until the present day.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 301 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2009

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Footnotes

1

This article originated in a somewhat different form as part of my doctoral dissertation: Patrimoine des Yézidis: Architecture et “Sculptures Funéraires” au Kurdistan irakien, en Turquie et en Arménie (Paris: Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2006). I wish to thank Jeremy Johns for his valuable comments on this article.

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