Sultan Sahak

Template:Short description Sultan Sahak or Sultan Ishaq BarzancîTemplate:Sfnp (Template:Langx;

1. REDIRECT Template:floruit late 14th century to early 15th centuryTemplate:Sfnp) was a Kurdish religious leader who reformed the modern beliefs of Yarsanism and moreover considered to be the fourth of seven incarnations of God. During his life, he had the role of overseeing the religious instructions of his angels and disciples.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Many subsequent Yarsan leaders would trace their genealogy to Sultan Sahak.Template:Sfnp

Life

No consensus exist on when Sultan Sahak lived. Scholar Sadigh Safizadeh puts his date of birth between 1053 and 1215 AD. Yarsan sources consider the emergence of Sultan Sahak at the end of the 7th century. However, it is more probable that he lived around the late Mongol era and the rise of Timur, since it is narrated that Timur himself met with the Sultan.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Sultan Sahak was born in a poorTemplate:Sfnp Kurdish family in Barzinjah near Sulaymaniyah and came from a well-known line of Kurdish sheikhs.Template:Sfnp His family had moved to the region from Hamadan long before his birth.Template:Sfnp His mother Khatun Dayerah was daughter of the famous Hasan Beg of the Jaff tribe, while his father Shaykh Isa, son of Seyyed Ali Barzanji Gorani,Template:Sfnp was a Sufi leader. According to Yarsan mythology, his birth was miraculous, as he appeared in the form of a divine falcon.Template:Sfnp

It is said that he studied under Mulla Ilyas Shahrazuri before settling in Baghdad where he studied at the famous Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad. He afterwards travelled to Damascus and Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage. He returned to Kurdistan and built a mosque in his native town Barzinjah to guide the local people.Template:Sfnp After the death of his father, the Sultan fell into a conflict with his brothers and he decided to settle in Sheykhan village in Avroman, where he refounded the Yarsan beliefs. This story is however rejected by Yarsan traditions.Template:Sfnp

Sultan Sahak was a chief Dervish and had 12,000 followers in Avroman alone. Of his followers, he chose four (Benyamin, Piri Musi, Dawud and Razbar) to carry out religious instructions. These four disciples are considered angels in Yarsanism.Template:Sfnp The main religious book Kalâm-e Saranjâm was written when Sultan Sahak lived in Sheykhan village.Template:Sfnp He died near the village of Sheykhan on the Sirvan River. When Vladimir Minorsky visited his site in 1914, he vividly described the location and the rituals associated with the grave.Template:Sfnp