Shabak

The Shabak are a people of the Nineveh Plains east of Mosul in northern Iraq. Their origins are disputed and probably mixed: most Shabak clans trace themselves to Kurdish tribes such as the Zangana, Bajalan, Dawudi and Rojbayani, others to Turkmen or Arab tribes, and the name itself is often explained from an Arabic word meaning 'to intertwine'. They speak Shabaki (ISO sdb), a Gorani language of the Northwestern Iranian branch, close to Bajelani and Sarli and full of Turkish, Persian and Arabic loanwords, alongside Arabic and Kurdish. Their religious heritage goes back to the Safavid Sufi order and the Qizilbash: their sacred book, the Kitab al-Manaqib or Buyruk, is written in Turkic, and they revered Shah Ismail and Haji Bektash. Ottoman officials forced Shabak leaders to convert to Sunni Islam in the 1890s; the 1987 census registered them as Arabs, the Kurdistan Region counts them as Kurds, and most Shabak today say they are a people of their own, neither Arab nor Kurdish. They grew from about 10,000 people in 1925 to several hundred thousand today.

Shabak life is rooted in farming villages of the rain-fed Nineveh Plains, where extended families live close together. Villages are organised around clans, and religious life was once led by pirs, hereditary spiritual guides, under a supreme baba. Older Shabak houses had conical mud-brick roofs. They kept close ties with their Yazidi neighbours, celebrating holidays together and visiting Yazidi shrines, including Lalish. Muharram mourning for Imam Husayn is the high point of the year for Shia Shabak.

Traditional Shabak religion blended Twelver Shi'ism with Safavid Sufism: Allah, Muhammad and Ali were honoured together, the poems of Shah Ismail were sung, and initiates (murid) confessed their sins to a pir and met in ritual gatherings. In the 20th century, as Shabak moved to Mosul and came under the influence of mainstream Twelver clergy, most adopted orthodox Twelver practice with mosques, husseiniyas and Ashura processions, and the older rites survive mainly among elders. About a quarter of Shabak are Sunni. A few families joined the Kaka'i (Yarsan). Religion now shapes politics: Shia Shabak lean toward Baghdad and Shia parties, while Sunni Shabak tend to identify as Kurds.

Bible portions exist in Shabaki, and audio and video Bible stories have been recorded; there is no Shabaki New Testament or Jesus Film. Almost all Shabak speak Arabic, which has full Bibles, the Jesus Film and Christian satellite television, and many also speak Kurdish. The Shabak live intermixed with Syriac and Assyrian Christians in Bartella, Bakhdida (Qaraqosh) and Bashiqa, but relations are strained by property and security disputes.

When the Islamic State took Mosul in June 2014 it treated the Shabak as apostate Shia. Fighters painted the letter R, for Rafida (rejecters), on Shabak houses to mark them for seizure, abducted Shabak men and executed others, and the whole community fled the Nineveh Plains within weeks, Shia families mostly to Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad, and others to Erbil. Many Shabak villages and husseiniyas were looted, mined or destroyed before Iraqi and Kurdish forces retook the plains in late 2016. Shabak volunteers formed their own brigade within the Popular Mobilization Forces in September 2014, which has controlled Bartella and the surrounding villages since 2017.