Zaza People: Ethnic group in eastern Anatolia
The Zazas (also known as Zazaki or Dimili) are an Iranian people in eastern Turkey who traditionally speak the Zaza language, a western Iranian language written in the Latin script.
Their homeland is made of Tunceli and Bingöl provinces and parts of Elazığ, Erzincan and Diyarbakır provinces. Zazas might say that they are Kurds. They are often named Zaza Kurds by scholars.
 Geographic distribution of Zaza speakers (darker green) among Iranian speakers | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 2 to 3 million | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 TurkeyDiaspora: Approx. 300,000 Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States | |
| Languages | |
| Zaza, Kurmanji Kurdish, and Turkish | |
| Religion | |
| Mainly Shafiʽi school of Sunni Islam and minority Alevism and Hanafism |
The reason Zazas are comsidered Kurdish is speculated to be "control". In an area hard to control, Zazas were grouped with Kurdish people to assimilate and break them from their roots.
In an effort to preserve their culture and declare they are a seperate nationality, Zazas founded ZAZA-DER Archived 2020-05-13 at the Wayback Machine. In the page about their sociological and historical roots, it is extensively explained with sources that Zazas are a seperate nationality with different language, culture and etimology.
Religion
Sunnism
Predominantly Zazas adhere to Sunni Islam. According to a 2015 study that examined the voting-age adults of the Eastern and Southern Anatolia 75.4% of the people who stated that they were ethnically Zazas belonged to the Shafiʽi school of Islam, similar to Kurdish groups, but in contrast to local Turkish and Arab people who were majority Hanafi. Shafi‘i followers among the Zaza people are mostly Naqshbandi.
Alevism
Alevism is the second largest Islamic sect among Zazas with 14.8% adhering to it. Zazas had the highest Alevi percentage among any group by far, being followed by Turks (5.4%) and Kurds (3.1%). It was also reported that around 70% of the Alevis spoke Zazaki as their mother language. Zaza Alevis mainly live around Tunceli Province. Hanafism, which is the biggest Islamic school in both Turkey and among the Turkish and Arabic people in the region, is followed by 9.8% of Zazas.
Shia
Historically, a small Shia Zaza population existed in Gerger.
Related articles
Notes
- Arakelova, Victoria (1999), "The Zaza People as a New Ethno-Political Factor in the Region", Iran & the Caucasus, 3/4: 397–408, doi:10.1163/157338499X00335, JSTOR 4030804
- Asatrian, Garnik (1995). "DIMLĪ". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. VI. Fasc. 4. pp. 405–411. ISBN 978-0933273634.
- Barry, Maximilien-Étienne-Émile (1881), Maximilien-Étienne-Émile Barry, Mission scientifique de Mr. Ernest Chantre sous-directeur du Muséum de Lyon dans la haute Mésopotamie, le Kurdistan et le Caucase: 2018.R.23-38 Kurdes Zazas, Diarbékir (Kurdistan) (in English and French), Getty Research Institute, hdl:10020/cifa2018r23, retrieved 14 November 2020
- Dündar, Fuat (2000), Türkiye Nüfus Sayımlarında Azınlıklar (in Turkish), Chiviyazıları Yayınevi, ISBN 9758086774
- Endangered Language Alliance, "Zaza", elalliance.org, retrieved 7 June 2020
- Gippert, Jost (1999), Iranische Sprachen / Iranian Languages, Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien (TITUS), retrieved 7 June 2020
- Haber Türk (2013), Meclis'e sıçrayan polemi (in Turkish), retrieved 19 February 2016
- Kalafat, Yaşar (1996). "Anadolu Türk Halk Sufizmi: Zazalar" (PDF) (in Turkish). Ankara: Dinler Tarihi Derneği Yayınları. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
- Kasımoğlu, Ahmet (2012), "Xoybûn de cayê Kirdan" (PDF), II. Uluslararası Zaza Tarihi ve Kültürü Sempozyumu (in Zazaki), Bingöl Üniversitesi Yayınları: 654–676
- Kaya, Mehmed S. (2009), The Zaza Kurds of Turkey : a Middle Eastern minority in a globalised society, London: Tauris Academic Studies, ISBN 9781845118754
- Kausen, Ernst (2006), Zaza (PDF) (in German), archived from the original (PDF) on 15 August 2011, retrieved 7 June 2020
- Kehl-Bodrogi; Otter-Beaujean; Kellner-Heikele (1997), Syncretistic religious communities in the Near East : collected papers of the international symposium "Alevism in Turkey and comparable syncretistic religious communities in the Near East in the past and present", Berlin, 14-17 April 1995, Leiden: Brill Publishing, ISBN 9789004108615
- Kehl-Bodrogi, Krisztina (October 1999), "Kurds, Turks, or a People in their own Right? Competing Collective Identities Among the Zazas", The Muslim World, 89 (3–4): 439–454, doi:10.1111/j.1478-1913.1999.tb02757.x
- Keskin, Mesut (2015), Zaza Dili (Zaza Language) (PDF) (in Turkish), vol. 1, Bingöl: Bingöl Üniversitesi Yaşayan Diller Enstitüsü Dergisi, archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2020, retrieved 7 June 2020
- Köhler, herausgegeben von Bärbel (1998), Religion und Wahrheit : religionsgeschichtliche Studien : Festschrift für Gernot Wiessner zum 65. Geburtstag, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 385–399, ISBN 978-3447039758
- Malmîsanij, Mehemed (1996), Kırd, Kırmanc, Dımıli veya Zaza Kürtleri (in Turkish and Zazaki), Deng, pp. 1–43, retrieved 7 June 2020
- Nasidze, Ivan; Quinque, Dominique; Ozturk, Murat; Bendukidze, Nina; Stoneking, Mark (2005), "MtDNA and Y-chromosome Variation in Kurdish Groups", Annals of Human Genetics, 69 (4): 401–412, doi:10.1046/j.1529-8817.2005.00174.x, ISSN 0003-4800, PMID 15996169, S2CID 23771698
- Özoğlu, Hakan (2004), Kurdish notables and the Ottoman state : evolving identities, competing loyalties, and shifting boundaries, Albany: State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-5993-5
- Postgate (2007), Languages of Iraq, ancient and modern. (PDF), Cambridge: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, ISBN 978-0-903472-21-0, archived from the original (PDF) on 2 August 2019, retrieved 20 May 2019
- Taylor, J. G. (1865), "Travels in Kurdistan, with Notices of the Sources of the Eastern and Western Tigris, and Ancient Ruins in Their Neighbourhood", Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 35: 21–58, doi:10.2307/3698077, JSTOR 3698077
- van Bruinessen, Martin (1989), The Ethnic Identity of the Kurds in Turkey, pp. 613–621
- Werner, Eberhard (2012), "Considerations about the religions of the Zaza people" (PDF), II. Uluslararası Zaza Tarihi ve Kültürü Sempozyumu (in Zazaki), Bingöl Üniversitesi Yayınları, retrieved 7 June 2020
Further reading
- I. International Symposium on Zaza Language (2011)
- II. International Symposium on Zaza History and Culture (2012)
- Arakelova, Victoria (2020). "A Note on Tree Worship in the Zaza Folk Beliefs". Iran and the Caucasus. 24 (4): 404–407. doi:10.1163/1573384X-20200406. S2CID 230620560.
- Arslan, Sevda (August 2019). "Language, Religion, and Emplacement of Zazaki Speakers". Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies. 6 (2): 11–22. doi:10.29333/EJECS/244. ISSN 2149-1291. S2CID 202232470.
- Faruk İremet, "Zonê Ma Zazaki" (Dilimiz Zazaca), (Our language Zaza and Zazas
- Did a Genocide Take Place in the Dersim region of Turkey in 1938? ÖI Boztas - Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2015 - academia.edu
- Munzur Çem, "Kirmanjki (Zazaki) Speaking Kurds And Their Ethnic Identity". Institute Kirmancki (Zazaki)
- Unknown peoples; Zazas
- CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE RELIGIONS OF THE ZAZA PEOPLE
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Zaza people, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.