What does "Firman" mean? The word that Yazidis use for persecution.

When a community has its own word for persecution, it says something about how often it has needed to use it.

The word

Firman is the Yazidi word for a wave of persecution—not for a single attack, but for a time when existence itself was at stake. The term goes back to the Persian-Ottoman fermân, the decree, the order from above. And that is exactly what it usually was: not a spontaneous outburst, but something orchestrated.

How many Firman there have been throughout history is counted in different ways. A specific number is often cited and passed down in many families; it cannot be historically verified. More important than the number is what it means: in the Yazidi memory, persecution is not an accident, but a recurring pattern.

Shingal, August 2014

Shingal—often referred to as Sinjar in English—is a mountainous region in northwestern Iraq. Until 2014, a great many Yazidis lived there.

In August 2014, the so-called Islamic State attacked the region. Men were killed. Women and children were abducted and enslaved. Hundreds of thousands fled, many to the mountain itself, where they held out for days without water.

Some of those abducted have not reappeared to this day.

Why 2014 was different

Not because it was worse than everything before it—there is no meaningful way to calculate that. But because for the first time, someone from the outside found a name for it. What happened in Shingal is classified internationally as genocide; the United Nations and the German Bundestag, among others, have designated it as such.

For the Yazidis, it was the latest Firman in a long series. For the world, it was the first time it looked.

The single date

In many Yazidi associations in Germany, there is a board hanging with photos of the deceased. Under most of them, there are two dates—birth and death.

Under some, there is only one.

These are the people who have been missing since 2014. You cannot write the second date as long as you do not know if it is correct. For these families, a funeral has never taken place. No grave, no day when everyone comes together to say who someone was. Some have been waiting for over ten years.

Why the word is important

Anyone who says Firman is saying two things at once: that something terrible has happened—and that it was not the first time. The word carries the experience that such a thing can happen again.

This is precisely why there is a concern within the community: that in the end, only the pain remains. That young Yazidis can say nothing about themselves except for this one thing. Whoever only has that ends up with pain and no religion.

How to talk about it

In almost every Yazidi community in Germany, there is someone who came from Shingal. Usually, this person is politely left alone—because no one knows how to ask, and because everyone is afraid of breaking something.

Whether they want to talk, one does not know. It is the exact question that no one ever asks them.

Where to find more information

ÊZÎDÎ — What we really believe is Volume 1 of a series and is about faith, not persecution. Shingal appears in one scene, as far as it belongs in a volume about faith. Volume 3 covers it in detail.