Dingir: I Am Yazidi. That Is Reason Enough.

For a generation raised in Europe, Dingir has become something deeply personal: a visible sign of belonging. Its origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia. Its place in our lives belongs to us.

Other children had something around their necks that said who they were. A cross. A small Qur’an pendant. The sword of Ali. I grew up in Europe and wanted something that said the same about me.

I am Yazidi.

There was no readily available necklace in my childhood or adolescence that gave me that feeling. Our faith existed. Our symbols existed. What I did not have was something I could put on before leaving the house and recognise as mine.

Today, young Yazidis have that. They wear Dingir.

For them, it is first and foremost belonging. Identity. The pleasure of wearing something connected to their own people, rather than borrowing somebody else’s sign or leaving that part of themselves invisible.

Nobody asks a Christian to become a theologian before putting on a cross. A young Yazidi should not need to defend a doctoral thesis before wearing Dingir.

Older than the shop selling it

Dingir’s roots reach back to Sumerian writing in ancient Mesopotamia, the historical region around the Euphrates and Tigris.

Researchers Daniele Chiriu and colleagues identify it on clay tablets from the Uruk IV period, approximately 3300–3200 BCE. More than five thousand years before today’s pendants, it was already part of an emerging written world.

The Sumerian word diŋir, usually written dingir, means god, goddess or deity. The sign is catalogued as AN. Depending on context, it could also stand for the sky or the god An. Before a divine name, it functioned as a determinative: a written indication that the name referred to a deity, generally not spoken aloud in that role. Akkadian scribes also used the sign, including for ilu, their word for god.

Its shape changed with the development of writing. Early drawn forms became arrangements of wedges pressed into clay. The familiar star-like form carried into jewellery belongs to that long history.

That is the history behind the sign we wear today. An ancient mark of the divine, carried into the present as a visible expression of Yazidi belonging.

What we mean when we wear it

In Yazidi use, Dingir is a symbol for God. The peacock represents Tawûs-î-Melek, the guardian angel. These meanings should not be muddled because somebody outside our faith finds the distinction inconvenient.

In the understanding of our tradition expressed here, God created the seven holy beings from His own light. They were therefore part of Him. Through the free will God gave them, they became beings with identities of their own. Tawûs-î-Melek is one of those seven: not God Himself, but originating in God’s light.

The peacock refers to Tawûs-î-Melek. Dingir refers to God.

For a young Yazidi wearing the sign, that religious meaning can sit alongside something immediately personal: this belongs to my identity. It connects me to my family, my people and where we come from.

We Yazidis have breathed new life into Dingir. A sign encountered on ancient tablets and in archaeological collections has become something we wear, give to one another and recognise as an expression of who we are.

On our necks, it speaks of God, family and belonging. Young Yazidis have given this ancient symbol a place in everyday life. We carry it into classrooms, workplaces and the streets of the diaspora.

That revival deserves to be named. We have made Dingir part of our living identity. Its history reaches back thousands of years. Its life among us continues now.

After 2014, I saw a change

The genocide of 2014 was an attempt to destroy us. In 2016, the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that ISIS had committed genocide against Yazidis.

I deliberately call it the most recent genocide. I refuse to call it the last as though that were already guaranteed.

My position is clear: we need a protected homeland, self-administration and our own accountable defence capacity. Our future must not depend on whether somebody else decides to keep a promise when we need it most. I want guarantees we can rely on, and a say in our own security.

Alongside the grief, I witnessed a change among younger Yazidis. More wanted to be visible. More wanted to say who they were without lowering their voices. Pride became something they wore.

“Be hewiya Xwedê”: placing hope in God. I know that hope. I also want us to organise, to insist on our rights and to take responsibility for our future. Those things belong together.

In the years after 2014, I began seeing more small shops offering affordable Yazidi jewellery. I liked it. Finally, something a young person could buy and recognise as theirs without needing a large budget.

Dingir was already familiar to me within Yazidi imagery. After 2014, I saw it more often around the necks of young Yazidis: belonging made visible, an ancient sign given new life by the people wearing it.

Our DINGIR Necklace — Black Stainless Steel is part of that present: a sign you can carry into ordinary life. Into school, work, a café, a train carriage. Wherever you happen to be Yazidi. Which, of course, is everywhere you go.

A politician’s brooch is not permission to insult a people

In June 2015, Feleknas Uca, then an HDP member of the Turkish parliament, wore a peacock brooch during her parliamentary oath.

Haberler.com reported on it on 23 June. Yeni Akit and HaberAlp published reports on 24 June. They associated the peacock with the personification of evil that Yazidis supposedly revered. HaberAlp put that demonisation in its headline.

The brooch represented Tawûs-î-Melek. The reports supplied the slander.

I do not support Uca’s political line. I can criticise her decisions, statements and political allegiances. I do not need to approve of her to recognise an insult aimed at our faith.

That distinction applies to every politician and every public figure. Criticise what they do. Challenge what they say. Their identity does not give you permission to invent allegations about an entire community.

A Christian politician’s cross is not evidence against Christians. A Muslim politician’s religious identity does not make every Muslim responsible for that person’s conduct. Apply the same standard to Yazidis.

Why should that even need asking?

Those reports took a brooch and used it to repeat a hostile claim about our people. The accusation was old. The photograph was new. We examined the longer history behind it in “Who Taught the World That Yazidis Worship Evil?”.

I am Yazidi. That is reason enough.

Dingir is unfamiliar to many people I meet. Sometimes that means a question arrives before a prejudice. I welcome the question. I would like the chance to answer it myself.

But I am not wearing my identity as an invitation to be interrogated.

The peacock remains the symbol of Tawûs-î-Melek. Dingir remains a symbol for God. A young Yazidi may choose either, and nobody else gets to decide how much visibility is acceptable.

They can wear Dingir because they believe. Because it reminds them of home. Because they like the design. Because they are proud to be Yazidi.

The child I was wanted something that belonged to him. Today, a younger generation can wear exactly that.

We have spent enough time answering other people’s descriptions of us.

Let them ask what the sign means.

They do not get to tell us who we are.

Sources

• Chiriu et al., Raman identification of cuneiform tablet pigments, Heliyon 3 (2017), e00272, DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2017.e00272.
• ORACC, AN sign list and diŋir: deity.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, fragment of the Weidner God List.
• Contemporary Yazidi jewellery: Atlas Ezidi Dingir — a product description presenting Dingir as a sign of God and heaven.
• UN Commission of Inquiry, They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis (2016).
• Haberler.com, 23/24 June 2015, Yeni Akit, 24 June 2015, and HaberAlp, 24 June 2015. These document the misrepresentation examined here; their claims about Yazidi faith are not endorsed.