Archive for the ‘yezidi’ Category
Our latest Google Map shows some of the surviving Yezidi villages in the Kurd Dagh, or “Kurdish Mountains”, a largely Kurdish region in the far NW of Syria. Other Yezidi villages in this area have been abandoned, although their shrines and mausoleums remain places of pilgrimage.
Yezidis also live in the main town Afrin (also known as Efrîn) and in other Kurdish settlements in the area.
The latest Bluebird Research Google Map is a work-in-progress showing the location of the Yezidi villages of Kurdistan. At present, the map shows primarily those villages which are extant and were not destroyed during the post-WW2 era in Iraq, when Yezidis (and other Kurds and minority groups) were subject to periodic persecution, sometimes of genocidal ferocity, by the Baathist state in Baghdad.
Sites of destroyed villages will be added where they can be ascertained. These will be evident when the map is viewed at higher magnification – the settlement will often appear as if rubbed out and few if any traces may be visible on the satellite image.
In addition, the map shows some of the modern collective villages into which Yezidis (and others) were forced during the Baathist rule. Generally, the population of four or more villages were deported from their centuries-old traditional settlements in the mountains and rehoused in planned but usually poorly executed collectives on the plains. Sometimes the collective would be named after one of the source villages; alternatively, different quarters of the collective might be named after the razed mountain villages, with the former inhabitants of each living in the eponymous neighbourhoods.
The location of the Yezidi villages of the Republic of Armenia is shown on Bluebird Research’s Google Map.
Old and new names of the Yezidi settlements are given. Armenian script can be and is transliterated into the Latin alphabet in a number of different ways, and the map legend gives some variants as well the standard modern name form.
If a village is shown without comment, it means that it is understood to be a wholly Yezidi village, as is the case especially with the two clusters of villages in Aragatsotn province, respectively west of Talin and around Alagyaz.
Some of the ancient Yezidi places of habitation in Aragotsotn, especially those NE of Mount Aragats, have been claimed to date back to the 11th century (and certainly they date back to at least the 16th century). Others are of much more recent origin, having been settled during or after the second decade of the 20th century, when Yezidis fled oppression in Turkish lands in eastern Anatolia.
One old Yezidi village in the Marmarik valley has not been located exactly, nor its modern name ascertained. This is Soukh-Bulakh (or -Bulagh, the Turkic word for a spring), which appears in a 19th century Russian gazetteer as a small Yezidi settlement of 16 “hearths”. It is possible that the site has been abandoned. Please contact us if you know the location of this village.
Bluebird Research would be pleased to hear from any family historians researching Yezidi ancestry.
The Armenians and the Greeks were not the only nationalities to be largely removed from Asia Minor as Turkey redefined itself as a single-nation state in the post-Ottoman era. The Yezidis (or Yazidis) – Kurds with their own distinctive non-Islamic religion – have also largely disappeared, either assimilating into the Kurdish population, crossing the border into the Republic of Armenia or emigrating to continental Europe (e.g. Germany).
Bluebird Research has created a Google Map showing the location of the former Yezidi villages of the Kars oblast, or province, of the Russian Empire circa 1910 before it was re-taken by the Turks after the end of WW1. During the Russian era, the distinctiveness of the Yezidi people was recognised and these villages constituted their own administrative district or okrug.
Click here to view the Google Map showing the Yezidi Villages of Kars Province.
Bluebird Research has no experience of Yezidi genealogical research but is always interested in expanding its knowledge and would be delighted to hear from anyone who is researching their Yezidi ancestry.
There were a number of villages named Karakala in the Russian oblast (province) of Kars circa 1900-1914. To help distinguish between them and particularly to assist family historians with ancestors from Armenian Karakala, Bluebird Research has created an online map identifying and displaying the location of the villages named Karakala in the then Kars oblast.
Please note that that there were additional villages of this name elsewhere in Russian Armenia (i.e. in Yerevan province) and, of course, in Ottoman Turkey. These are not displayed on the map.
This map should be used in conjunction with our other related recent (March 2011) posts on this subject.
Please click here to view the map showing Places Named Karakala in Kars Province in Google Maps.