Georgia's Yazidi community and the Sultan Ezid temple in Tbilisi

An ancient religion in a new temple

On the western edge of Tbilisi, above the district of Varketili, a building stands that most visitors drive past without recognising what it is. The Sultan Ezid Yazidi temple, completed in 2015, is a structure of modest scale — white walls, blue and gold domes, decorative tilework in the Yazidi tradition — that has no obvious parallel in the Georgian architectural landscape. It is the largest Yazidi temple outside Iraq. It serves a community of approximately 15,000 Yazidis in Georgia, most of them in Tbilisi and its surroundings. And it represents the continuation of a religious tradition of extraordinary antiquity and extraordinary fragility.

The Yazidi faith is one of the most persistently misunderstood religions in the world. It is not a form of devil-worship, as its persecutors have claimed for centuries. It is not a sect of Islam, though it absorbed some Islamic vocabulary during its medieval development. It is a coherent monotheistic religion with roots in ancient Iranian religion, elements that appear to connect to Zoroastrianism and Mithraism, and a living practice that is specific to the Yazidi people — a people who are ethnically Kurdish-speaking and who have maintained their distinctive faith through centuries of organised persecution.

Understanding who the Yazidis are, and why their presence in Georgia matters, requires some engagement with this history.

Who the Yazidis are

The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking people whose religion, also called Yazidism, centres on the worship of one God and seven angels, of whom the most important is Melek Taus — the Peacock Angel. Melek Taus is the figure whom outsiders have persistently, and catastrophically, conflated with Satan. The conflation is a misreading: in Yazidi theology, Melek Taus is not a fallen angel but the greatest of the seven, the viceroy of God on earth, who was tested and did not fall. The peacock imagery that runs through Yazidi art and practice — the iridescent tail, the pride-without-vanity — is central to how Melek Taus is understood.

Yazidi sacred literature exists in two texts: the Kitab al-Jilwa (“Book of Illumination”) and the Mishefa Res (“Black Book”). Both are written in a literary Kurmanji (the northern Kurdish dialect) and contain cosmological, ethical, and ritual guidance. They are not widely disseminated — the Yazidi tradition has historically maintained an esoteric dimension in which certain knowledge is transmitted only within the community — but they have been studied by scholars since the 19th century.

The Yazidi community is organised into a caste system: the sheikhs and pirs (religious specialists, descended from families with particular sacred roles), and the murids (lay community members). Marriage between castes is traditionally forbidden. The sheikhs and pirs maintain the ritual and textual knowledge; the murids provide the community base.

Pilgrimage to the shrine of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir at Lalish, in the Nineveh mountains of northern Iraq, is the central Yazidi religious obligation. Lalish is the holiest site of Yazidism and the gravitational centre of a community that is now scattered across Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere.

The history of persecution

The Yazidis have been subjected to what Islamic scholars and jurists historically classified as firman — a term meaning something between “edict” and “decree of extermination,” applied specifically to the Yazidis as a community deemed beyond the pale of the normal rules governing treatment of religious minorities. By one scholarly count, the Yazidis experienced 73 separate campaigns of mass violence against them over the medieval and modern periods, culminating in the Daesh (ISIS) genocide of 2014 that killed or enslaved tens of thousands of Yazidis in Sinjar, Iraq, and prompted global recognition of their situation.

The Yazidi community in Georgia arrived through a different but related history of persecution. The majority of Georgian Yazidis are descendants of refugees from Ottoman Anatolia — Yazidis who fled the genocidal violence directed at non-Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly the massacres and deportations of 1914–1918 that also destroyed the Armenian and Assyrian communities. These refugees moved east into the Russian Caucasus, and a portion of them settled in what is now Georgia.

The community that arrived was already traumatised, reduced, and conscious of its fragility. The Soviet period brought state atheism, which suppressed overt religious practice across all of Georgia’s communities — but for the Yazidis, whose small numbers and low public profile made them less of an ideological target than, say, the Georgian Orthodox Church, the suppression seems to have been somewhat less total in practice. Community rituals continued in private; the oral transmission of religious knowledge continued within families.

The Sultan Ezid temple

The decision to build a major Yazidi temple in Tbilisi was made in the 2000s and reflects several converging forces: the Georgian state’s genuine commitment to religious pluralism (which, whatever its imperfections in practice, has produced a legal environment hospitable to minority faiths), the relative economic stability of the Georgian Yazidi community, and the community’s desire to make a statement of permanence after a century of refugee status and Soviet suppression.

The temple, dedicated to Sultan Ezid (a title given to Melek Taus in the Yazidi tradition), was opened in 2015 in the Ortachala/Varketili area. Its architecture draws on the tradition of Lalish and other Yazidi sacred buildings in Iraq — conical towers (the signature Yazidi architectural form, whose distinctive ribbed spires are instantly recognisable once you have seen Lalish), white-painted stone, and decorative elements including the peacock motif.

The building is the largest Yazidi temple outside Iraq. This is a fact worth sitting with: Tbilisi, capital of a small Orthodox Christian country on the edge of Europe, contains the most significant Yazidi religious building outside the community’s ancestral homeland. It is a measure of both the Georgian state’s pluralism and the community’s determination.

The temple is open to visitors who approach with appropriate seriousness. There are no formal visiting hours posted for tourists; the community maintains the building and welcomes respectful visitors. The caretaker and religious specialists at the temple speak Kurdish, Russian, and some Georgian; English is less reliably available.

The Kurdish linguistic connection

Yazidi identity and Kurdish identity are intertwined but not identical. The Yazidis speak Kurmanji — the dominant northern Kurdish dialect — as their primary language, and they share with other Kurdish-speaking peoples a literary and oral tradition in that language. Yazidi sacred poetry, including the important genre called qawl, is composed in Kurmanji.

But Yazidi religious identity creates a distinction from Muslim Kurds that has been consequential historically. In the Ottoman and Safavid periods, Muslim Kurds were sometimes recruited as instruments of persecution against Yazidi communities — a fact that complicates straightforward Kurdish solidarity narratives, though contemporary Kurdish political movements have generally sought to include Yazidis.

In Georgia, the Yazidi community maintains its Kurdish language alongside Georgian, Russian, and (among older members) occasionally Armenian. The community schools in Tbilisi have included some Kurmanji instruction; the maintenance of the language is one of the explicit concerns of community cultural organisations.

Daily life in Tbilisi’s Yazidi community

The Yazidi community in Tbilisi is, by most measures, integrated into Georgian urban life in ways that a century of residency produces. Most Yazidis are Georgian citizens; many are professionals, small business owners, and tradespeople whose lives are outwardly similar to those of their Georgian and Armenian neighbours.

What distinguishes the community is the maintenance of religious practice — the dietary laws (pork is forbidden; some categories of food preparation restrictions apply; mealtimes with specific ritual requirements), the caste endogamy (marriage outside the Yazidi community, and particularly outside one’s own caste within it, is still a serious matter), and the calendar of religious observances.

The community gathers at the Sultan Ezid temple for major festivals, particularly Eid al-Rbia (the Yazidi New Year, celebrated in April), and for life-cycle ceremonies. The feast of Jezne Cmaiya (the Feast of the Assembly) in August is one of the most important collective observances.

Visiting the Sultan Ezid temple

The Sultan Ezid temple is at the western edge of Tbilisi, near the Ortachala bus station area. It is not easily reached on foot from the tourist centre; a taxi or the metro (closest station: Isani, followed by a taxi) is the practical option.

Before visiting:

• Dress modestly — covered shoulders, covered knees, and women should cover their hair when entering the temple building itself
• Remove shoes before entering the inner sanctuary
• Do not photograph during religious ceremonies or services
• The peacock imagery throughout the building is sacred; treat it with the respect you would give to any religious symbol
• Ask before photographing inside the building at all times

What you will find: The temple building itself, with its conical towers, decorative tilework, and peacock iconography, is the primary architectural interest. The caretaker can show visitors the main prayer hall and explain the basic elements of Yazidi practice; the depth of explanation will depend on the English available and on the community’s comfort with a given visitor.

Context before you go: The genocide perpetrated against the Yazidis by Daesh in 2014 — the murder of men, the enslavement of women, the destruction of Sinjar — is recent history for a community with family ties across the diaspora. Many members of Tbilisi’s Yazidi community lost relatives or know survivors. This is not background information to mention during your visit; it is context for understanding the resilience of what you are seeing.

The broader significance

Georgia’s Yazidi community is small by global standards but significant in what its survival represents. A people who have been subjected to organised violence for centuries — whose faith has been classified by enemies as worthy of extermination — maintains a living religious tradition, a new temple, and a community presence in a country that has, broadly, let them be. The Sultan Ezid temple is not merely a building. It is a statement of existence made by a community that has spent much of its history being told it has no right to exist.

Visiting it with appropriate seriousness is a more significant act than most temple visits. It is a recognition that this community, this faith, and this culture are real, valuable, and worth encountering on their own terms.

FAQ

Is the Sultan Ezid temple open to non-Yazidi visitors? Yes, with appropriate dress and respectful behaviour. The community welcomes visitors who approach with genuine curiosity and respect. Contact through the temple caretaker is advisable rather than unannounced arrival during ceremonies.

Is Yazidism related to Islam? No. Yazidism is a distinct religion, predating Islam, with roots in ancient Iranian religious traditions. It shares some vocabulary with both Islam and Christianity but is theologically distinct from both. The historic claim that Yazidis worship Satan is a hostile misreading propagated by persecutors.

How large is the Yazidi community in Georgia? Estimates vary; approximately 12,000–18,000 Yazidis are believed to live in Georgia, concentrated in Tbilisi and the surrounding regions. The community has grown slightly with refugees arriving from Iraq and Syria following the 2014 Sinjar genocide.

Can I attend a Yazidi religious ceremony? Some ceremonies are open to observers; others are private. The best approach is to ask at the temple or through a guide with community contacts. Unsolicited presence at private ceremonies is not appropriate.

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