Shabak (ethnic group)

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Shabak in Northern Iraq
Shabak at a demonstration in Mosul (2005)
Members of the Schabak ethnic group at a demonstration in Germany

The Shabak (الشبك, DMG aš-Šabak ) are a Shabak- speaking ethno-religious group and a heterodox religious community in northern Iraq . The Shabaks usually consider themselves Kurds . According to experts like Michael M. Gunter , the Schabak mostly consider themselves an independent ethnic group . As they speak their own language (Shabaki), they are considered an independent ethnic group. The Shabak are culturally different from Kurds and Arabs. They have their own traditions and their own language. According to Hunain Kaddo(Iraqi MP and representative of the Shabak), the Shabak is imposed by the Iraqi Kurds, a Kurdish identity, with the aim of annexing the territories of the Shabak. Most of the members of the Shabak are Shiite , only a minority within the Shabak are Sunni . Furthermore, the Shabak have their own special religious customs and some elements from other religions. About two-thirds or 70 percent of Shabaks practice Shabakism . When the Schabak emerged as a group is unclear, possibly in the 16th century. Their settlement areas are in the disputed areas of Northern Iraq . In July 2014, the Shabaks had to leave their settlement areas due to crimes against humanity by the Islamic State , which took over the Iraqi city of Mosul and the surrounding villages. About 250 families of the Schabak ethnic group currently live in Germany.

Flag of the Shabak

Origin of the designation

The origin of the name "Schabak" is not exactly known. The term Schabak is used for an ethnic group and a language in connection.

The Arabic name for the word stands for intertwine or interweave (Schabaka).

The Schabak themselves derive their name from the military leader Shah Bek .

Settlement areas

The Shabak themselves trace their origins back to the military leader Shah Bek , who wanted to conquer the city of Mosul in the 16th century. Shah Bek had mobilized an army in the southwest of the Caspian Sea . His attempt to conquer Mosul failed and the members of the army settled in the area east of Mosul. There they lived in 64 villages. Even today, languages ​​are spoken in the villages in the southwest of the Caspian Sea, which are related to the language of the Shabak the Shabaki .

The Shabak settle in several dozen villages in the area east of Mosul to the Great Zab . Shabaks also live in the city of Mosul. The exact number of shabaks is unknown. In a 1960 Iraqi census, 15,000 shabaks were recorded. Current estimates assume a number of up to 100,000 Shabaks or even around 250,000 (around the year 2000, before the start of the civil war in Iraq ).

identity

The Shabak's mother tongue is Shabaki , which is very similar to the northwest Iranian language Hawrami ( Gorani ). But they use Turkish as the liturgical language . They are usually multilingual, which led to the Shabaks being viewed as Kurds , Arabs, or Turkomans . In the 1970s and 1980s, the Shabaks found themselves exposed to great pressure to assimilate from the Baatre government . During the Anfal operation in 1988, most of the shabak villages were evacuated and thousands of shabaks were collected in camps in Erbil . Many were allowed to return when they officially declared themselves Arabs.

In the 19th century, when Iraq was still Ottoman, the Shabaks were forcibly converted to Sunni under Sultan Abdülhamid II . But later the Shabak fell back from Sunniism. More recently, some Shabaks are beginning to identify as Shiites . After the Iraq war in 2003, the Shabaks became the target of Sunni extremists who proclaimed an Islamic emirate in Mosul in 2006. An attack on the Shabak on August 10, 2009 killed 36 people. As a result of the advance of the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) in summer / autumn 2014, the Shabak culture in northern Iraq is in danger of being wiped out by IS. A large part of the Shabak is calling for their settlement areas to be connected to the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan . The IS action against the Shabak is classified as genocidal . In spring 2015, on the orders of Kurdish President Masud Barzani, a Shabak battalion was founded within the Peshmerga to allow minorities to actively participate in the defense of their homeland.

According to a report by the non-governmental human rights organization Human Rights Watch , the Shabaks have been recognized as an independent ethnic group in Iraq since 1952 and the Kurdish authorities are forcing the Shabaks with a Kurdish identity.

According to Yousif Muharram, the representative of the Schabak in Germany and throughout Europe, the Schabak in the refugee camps in the autonomous region of Kurdistan are under pressure to pretend to be Kurds.

According to Abd al-Zahra Bashir al Agha, spokesman for the Shabak Intellectuals Association, "historians have not been fair to the Shabak. Some have viewed them as Kurds and others as Arabs, and some even as Turks or Iranians." He added that "our association wants to highlight the history and aspirations of the Shabak and their language. We recently published newspapers (Al-Yaqeen) and (Shabak Kull) and we have a number of websites."

Believe

The Schabak are a religious community whose beliefs contain elements of different religions. It is very similar to the Alevis . Like them, the Shabak hold the religious ritual of the Cem and include Alevi saints such as Pir Sultan Abdal and Shah Ismail in their prayers. The holy book of the Shabak called Kitab al-Manaqib consists of two parts. The first part consists of a dialogue between Sheikh Safi al-Din and his son Sadr al-Din about morality and belief. The second part consists of a set of rules called Buyruk , which has a lot in common with the Alevis Buyruk . This and other similarities to the Alevis in Anatolia led to the thesis that the Shabak were possibly Alevi emigrants from Anatolia who came to Mosul in the course of the conflict between the Ottomans and the Safavids in the 16th century.

The Shabak make pilgrimages to various places in their vicinity. Important pilgrimage sites are ʿAlī Raṣḥ (Kurdish for Black Ali ) and ʿAbbās . The first place equates the Shabak with the tomb of Imam Zain al-ʿĀbidīn and the second with the younger son Ali ibn Abi Talib named ʿAbbās, who perished in the battle of Karbala . Both are important saints and martyrs of the Shiites and Alevis. Furthermore, the Shabaks also make pilgrimages to sacred places of the Yazidis . More recently, the graves of the saints in Karbala or Najaf have also been visited. The Shabaks throw stones at the grave of the governor of Karbala Ubayd Allah bin Ziyad. This belonged to the then ruling Umayyad dynasty and was an opponent of the followers of Ali ibn Abi Talib.

The organization of the Shabak shows great similarities to the other religions in the region such as the Yazidis, Ahl-e Haqq , Bajwan and Sarli. The spiritual leaders are called Pir . The chief pir is called Baba (dt .: father). The office of pirs is inherited from father to son and is reserved for a few families only. The pir holds the service with a deer (German: guide or signpost). As with the Alevis, there are twelve offices or functions to be held in the worship service. The main religious festivals of Shabak are New Year, Ashura and Forgiveness Day .

Pursuit of the Shabak

It is estimated that between 2003 and 2014 around 1,300 members of the Shabak died from bomb attacks and targeted killing. In July 2014, the Islamic State's persecution of the Shabak increased.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b VG Bayreuth, judgment v. 07.03.2017 - B 3 K 16.31008 - Citizen Service. Retrieved October 22, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Martin van Bruinessen : Shabak . In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume 9, p. 152.
  3. ^ A b Michael M. Gunter ( Kurdologist , political scientist , author of seven books on the Kurds and board member of the Center for Eurasian Studies "AVIM"): Historical Dictionary of the Kurds . Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, ISBN 978-1-5381-1050-8 ( google.de [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  4. ^ A b c d Frankfurter Allgemeine Archiv, Hans Peter Trötscher: The "Islamic State": Historical and political dimension . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, 2015, ISBN 978-3-89843-382-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 22, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Hans-Joachim Löwer: The hour of the Kurds: How they change the Middle East . Styriabooks, 2015, ISBN 978-3-99040-354-9 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 22, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Walid A. Hindo: From Baghdad on the Tigris to Baghdad on the Subway . Archway Publishing, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4808-3403-3 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 22, 2018]).
  7. ↑ Michael M. Gunter: Historical Dictionary of the Kurds . Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, ISBN 978-1-5381-1050-8 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 22, 2018]).
  8. ↑ a b Shabak - Minority Rights Group . In: Minority Rights Group . ( minorityrights.org [accessed October 22, 2018]).
  9. ^ Amal Vinogradov: Ethnicity, Cultural Discontinuity and Power Brokers in Northern Iraq: The Case of the Shabak . In: American Ethnologist . tape 1 , no. 1 , February 1974, ISSN  1548-1425 , pp. 207-218, here p. 208 , doi : 10.1525 / ae.1974.1.1.02a00110 ( wiley.com ).
  10. ^ Joshua Castellino, Kathleen A. Cavanaugh: Minority Rights in the Middle East . OUP Oxford, 2013, ISBN 0-19-166888-5 ( google.de [accessed October 28, 2018]).
  11. ↑ Minorities in Iraq Persecuted by the Kurds? Retrieved October 30, 2018 .
  12. ^ The People of the Book and the Hierarchy of Discrimination. Retrieved October 27, 2018 .
  13. ^ Mina al-Lami: Iraq: The minorities of Nineveh . In: BBC News . July 21, 2014 ( bbc.com [accessed October 27, 2018]).
  14. ↑ Michiel Leezenberg, 1994, p. 3
  15. ^ Alfred Hackensberger: A sheikh and his dream of the new Iraq . In: THE WORLD . October 20, 2016 ( welt.de [accessed October 26, 2018]).
  16. ↑ IS terror in Iraq History in one fell swoop. Retrieved October 26, 2018 .
  17. ↑ On the situation of religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. (PDF) In: www.bundestag.de. German Bundestag , 2016, accessed on October 26, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Rabeea Natiq Hussein starts new life in Asbeck . In: MLZ . ( muensterlandzeitung.de [accessed October 29, 2018]).
  19. ↑ Abbas Sultan: AN ACCOUNT OF LIGHT VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN SHABAKI . ( academia.edu [accessed October 23, 2018]).
  20. ^ Shabak - Minority Rights Group . In: Minority Rights Group . ( minorityrights.org [accessed October 23, 2018]).
  21. ^ EK Brown, RE Asher, JMY Simpson: Encyclopedia of language & linguistics . Elsevier, 2006, ISBN 978-0-08-044299-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 23, 2018]).
  22. ^ Harry van der Hulst, Rob Goedemans, Ellen van Zanten: A Survey of Word Accentual Patterns in the Languages ​​of the World . Walter de Gruyter, 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-019631-3 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 23, 2018]).
  23. ^ A b c Rainer Hermann: Persecuted and expelled. The fate of the Shabak represents the extermination of the minorities in Iraq . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 21, 2014, p. 10.
  24. ↑ Hans-Joachim Löwer: The hour of the Kurds: How they change the Middle East . Styriabooks, 2015, ISBN 978-3-99040-354-9 ( google.de [accessed October 26, 2018]).
  25. ↑ Iraq: The Shabak minority was bombed near Mosul ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Message from the Society for Threatened Peoples @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gfbv.de
  26. ↑ Iraq's Shabak community demands incorporation into Kurdistan ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Article from Aswat al-Iraq @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / en.aswataliraq.info
  27. ↑ Lars Berster, Björn Schiffbauer: “Genocide in Northern Iraq ?: The acts of the terrorist group“ Islamic State ”and their implications under international law.“ In: ZaöRV 2014, pp. 847–873.
  28. ^ Human Rights Watch (HRW): On Vulnerable Ground. November 10, 2009, accessed October 3, 2016 .
  29. ^ Adel Kamal: The Shabak Search for Identity . In: Niqash . ( niqash.org [accessed October 25, 2018]).
  30. ↑ No group persecution of the Shabaks in all of Iraq. VG Bayreuth, March 7, 2017, accessed October 26, 2018 .