In 2014, the Yazidis were briefly the focus of world attention, as ISIL forces trapped at least 40,000 Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in Iraq, with no food or water, killing or making slaves of them if they came down. It was the first time I and many others had even heard of this ethnic group. Who are they, and what happened to them?
Although Yazidis are often associated with Kurds, and most speak Kurmanji (Western Kurdish dialect), there is a disagreement on whether Yazidis are a religious sub-group of Kurds or a distinct ethnoreligious group, among scholars and Kurds and Yazidis themselves. Yazidis in Bashiqa and Bahzani speak Arabic as their mother language
Genetics
Wikipedia says: Yazidis from Northern Iraq may have a stronger genetic continuity with the original Mesopotamian people. The northern Iraqi Yazidi population were found in the middle of a genetic continuum between the Near East and Southeastern Europe. Source:
There is a large Yazidi community in Germany, estimated to be numbering around 200,000 people. This makes the German Yazidi community one of the largest Yazidi communities in the Yazidi diaspora. Many Yazidis fled to Germany during the 1990s fearing religious persecution in Turkey. The Yazidi population of Germany was around 20,000 in 1998.[2] Many Yazidi intellectuals also fled during this time and now play a prominent role in Yazidi diaspora affairs and maintain connections with Yazidis in Iraq.[1]
Folkdance Footnotes 