Community town · Turkey
Midyat Midyad
A town of the Tur Abdin plateau near historic Yazidi villages, in a region shared with Syriac Christians.
Overview
About Midyat
Midyat lies on the Tur Abdin plateau, a region long shared by Syriac Christians and Yazidis. Villages around it were part of the Yazidi landscape of south-eastern Turkey before the twentieth-century emigrations.
The area retains its Yazidi heritage in memory and in the ties maintained by families now living in Europe.
This is a community place rather than a primarily religious one. Population and return figures move and are always given with a source and a date rather than stated as fixed.
Locate & verify
Coordinates and external references
Coordinates are approximate and provided for orientation. They should be re-checked against an authoritative gazetteer before any operational use.
Source note
References for this place
This entry is an editorial synthesis of the references below, chosen for the place type. It reproduces no restricted or copyrighted text and should be expanded only after specialist review.
The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion
Bloomsbury, 2014. Anchor reference for Yazidi sacred sites, shrines, architecture, and material culture, including Lalish and the shrines of Sinjar and Sheikhan.
The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan
Routledge, 2001. Reference for place, community, and identity in the Iraqi Yazidi heartland of Sheikhan and Sinjar.
The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq
I.B. Tauris, 1999. Settlement, society, and administration of Sinjar and Sheikhan in the late Ottoman and mandate periods.