Heft Sur – the Seven Angels of the Yezidi tradition and Harran

The chapter, based mainly on field research conducted by the author in Iraq, Turkey, and Georgia, is devoted to the Yezidi cult of the Seven Angels and their leader, called the Peacock Angel. Following an introduction to the Yezidi religion, it focuses on the relationship between the Yezidi concept of God’s essence (sur) and the Seven Angels, who, like the seven Yezidi saints and the seven planets, are its manifestations and objects of religious worship. Apart from an attempt to answer the question which of the heavenly bodies the Peacock Angel is connected with and to which angel it corresponds to in other religious traditions, another object representing him, the sanjak, is discussed. The search for the origins of the Yezidi cult points to several other religions which also refer to the seven angels, and concludes with the Harranian ‘Sabians’, whose beliefs were a mixture of elements of Platonism and local traditions. The preserved accounts about them allow the conclusion that, after the destruction of their temples, when the last representatives of the Sabians migrated to the area of Mardin and Mosul, they could have joined the religious community that was forming there between the 12th and 14th centuries and which became known as Yezidis.