Shabaks (, ) are a group that inhabit the Nineveh Plains in Iraq. They speak Shabaki, a Northwestern Iranian language belonging to the Shabaki-Bajelani subgroup of the Gorani group. They largely follow Shia Islam. Their ethnic origin is uncertain and disputed, although they were largely considered Kurds by scholars.
History According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, the Shabak were a heterodox religious community which commonly considered itself Kurdish and lived in several dozen villages east of Mosul, in a triangle bounded by the Tigris and the Greater Zab. Their population was estimated around 10,000 in 1925, and the 1960 Iraqi census estimated 15,000 Shabaks in 35 villages.M. van Bruinessen, "SHABAK", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume IX (San-Sze), pp. 152-153. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Shabak population was estimated between 100,000 and 500,000.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 3.
It was unclear when the Shabaks emerged as a distinctive group, and their historic use of multiple languages gave rise to several contradictory claims about their origin, most commonly Kurdish or Turkoman, or even Arab.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, 2018, pp. 160, .Historical Dictionary of Iraq, Beth K. Dougherty, 2019, pp. 682, .Islam des Kurdes, Martin van Bruinessen, Joyce Blau, 1999, pp. 186. Some claimed the name of the Shabak meant "to intertwine" in Arabic and that the Shabak consisted of groups of different origins.Leezenberg, M. (1994). The Shabak and the Kakais: Dynamics of Ethnicity in Iraqi Kurdistan. pp. 5-6.Forensic Linguistics: Asylum-seekers, Refugees and Immigrants, 2019, pp. 60-61, . Others added that the Shabaks from the Tay, Juhaysh, and Jubur tribes were of Arab origin, those from the Bayat tribe were of Turkmen origin, and those of the Bajalan, Zangana, Zaza, Dawudi, and Rojbayani were of Kurdish origin, but all of them were linked by the Shabak culture and collective identity.الشبك في العراق، عبود زهير كاظم، 2009، pp. 38, . The Mamusi tribe contained both Shabak and Yazidi members although they could not intermarry.Leezenberg, M. (1994). The Shabak and the Kakais: Dynamics of Ethnicity in Iraqi Kurdistan. pp. 6.
The traditional religion of the Shabaks was closely related to Anatolian Alevism. A Shabak invocation given by Al-Sarraf explicitly claimed Haji Bektash and the adepts of Ardabil (the Safavids) as the founders of their spiritual path. Some Shabak religious poems were attributed to Shah Ismail and Pir Sultan Abdal. A basic tenet of traditional Shabak religion was the belief that Allah and Muhammad and Ali constituted a trinity, in which Ali appeared as the dominant manifestation of the divine. The sacred book of the Shabak was known as Kitab al-Manaqib, also known as the Buyruk, which the Shabaks pronounced as Burukh. The Shabak were often described as descendants of Kurdish elements of the Qizilbash.
The native language of most Shabaks was a variant of Gorani. The religious language of the Shabak was Turkic, and most Shabaks were historically multilingual, which gave rise to some claims that they were really Turkmen or Kurdish speakers or even Arabs. The Shabaks called their dialect Shabaki or Macho, and it was similar but distinct from the Bajalani dialect of Gorani. Shabaki and Bajalani were close to the Gorani spoken by the Kaka'is near Kirkuk, and to the varieties known as Hawrami, spoken in Hawraman. They were all labelled Gorani, although Leezenberg during his 1992 survey noted that none of the speakers collectively referred to the dialects as Gorani.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 5-6. Many Shabaks additionally spoke Kurmanji and Sorani, as well as Arabic.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 6.
The Safavid-Qizilbash religious affiliation of the Shabaks historically distinguished them from their neighbors, such as the Yazidis to the north and the Sarliyya to the southeast. The Sarliyya were a Yarsani community like the Kaka'is, and spoke a Gorani dialect similar to the Shabaks. They also celebrated Laylat al-Kafsha like the Shabaks. The Bajalan, also known as Bajwan, also lived near the Shabaks and were sometimes said to be part of the Shabak or vice-versa. The Bajalan were tribally organized while the Shabaks were non-tribal. The Bajalan were also Sunni while the Shabak were heterodox Shia. Some claimed that the Bajalan were part of the Shabak. Some Bajalan were considered Shabak while others were not.Forensic Linguistics: Asylum-seekers, Refugees and Immigrants, 2019, pp. 66, . During his 1992 survey of the region, Leezenberg visited a Sarli community which referred to themselves as Ibrahimi Kaka'is and were under the Kaka'i leader Fattah Agha. A significant number of Shabaks had become Kaka'i and accepted the patronage of Fattah Agha.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 10. Many of the Shabaks who became Kaka'i were Kurdish nationalists and saw it as closer to their true beliefs and wanted to resist Arabization.Leezenberg, M. (1994). The Shabak and the Kakais: Dynamics of Ethnicity in Iraqi Kurdistan. pp. 14. The Sarliyya beliefs were claimed to be intermediary between the beliefs of the Shabaks and Kaka'i.Leezenberg, M. (1994). The Shabak and the Kakais: Dynamics of Ethnicity in Iraqi Kurdistan. pp. 13. Shabaks and Yazidis historically celebrated holidays together and had good relations despite being at odds theologically.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 3-4. In the 1890s, the Ottoman general Omer Vehbi Pasha humiliated many Yazidi and Shabak (called "Shebekli" in the official documents) leaders by inviting them to Mosul and then forcing them to publicly convert to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 8.
In the 1920s, many Shabaks were Arabized as they moved to Mosul for opportunities, and they left their traditional faith and converted to orthodox Shia Islam. The Shabaks began to disintegrate at the beginning of the Iraqi republican period.Leezenberg, M. (1994). The Shabak and the Kakais: Dynamics of Ethnicity in Iraqi Kurdistan. pp. 6-7. In the 1970s, the Iraqi government began an Arabization campaign targeting the Shabaks, and around 20 Shabak villages were destroyed in 1988. In the early 1980s, some Shabak leaders joined the National Defence Battalions, although as the Kurdish insurgency intensified throughout the Iran–Iraq War, the Iraqi government targeted the Shabaks, with special orders to target the Shabaks who joined the NDB. In September 1988, some 22 Shabak villages were evacuated and destroyed by the fifth division of the Iraqi army in the Mosul area, with over 3,000 Shabaks relocating to camps around Erbil. Those Shabak lands were leased to Arabs from southern Iraq, while rich Arabs from Mosul city had bought some twelve Shabak villages and the lands surrounding them, and had settled Arab farmers there.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 10-11. In the 1987 census, the government registered the Shabaks as Arabs, and deported the Shabaks who protested and claimed they were Kurdish.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 12. In the 1990s, nationalist circles in Turkey aimed at countering Kurdish gains after the establishment of Kurdish autonomy during the 1991 Iraqi uprisings. They began making greater and more inflated claims about the Iraqi Turkmen and Turkmeneli, arguing that if the Kurds gained an autonomous region, the Turkmen deserved one as well. They claimed the heterodox Shia groups in northern Iraq, like the Shabak, the Bajalan, the Sarli and the Kaka'i as unambiguously Turkmen. Turkey-backed Iraqi Turkmen nationalist groups claimed that they were Turkmen due to their usage of the Turkish language. While some Kaka'i laymen near Tawuq some Turkmen, most of them spoke Gorani, and the Shabaks also spoke Gorani with only religious specialists knowing Turkish.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 13. In the early and mid-1990s in Iraqi Kurdistan, due to the Turkish-backed organizations like the Iraqi National Turcoman Party (Irak Milli Türkmen Partisi, IMTP) and the Turkish Red Crescent were said to have taken advantage of the humanitarian crisis and supplied financial support and food aid to locals only on the condition that they sign a document stating that they were Turkmen. Kurdish authorities acknowledged that these practices occurred, but stated they could not stop them. With the Oil for Food program in 1997 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the economic situation of Iraqi Kurdistan gradually improved. The IMTP fell into oblivion in the 1992 elections. The efforts at Turkification stopped shortly after as they never had a lasting effect.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 14. Many Shabaks began to see themselves more unambiguously as Kurds and less as a distinct subgroup due to the persecution they endured under the Ba'athist government, as they felt like they were targeted for being Kurds.Leezenberg, M. (1994). The Shabak and the Kakais: Dynamics of Ethnicity in Iraqi Kurdistan. pp. 9.
After 2003, the Shabaks were divided in politics, with subsequent elections showing that a slight majority aligned with Shia political groups, despite occasional odds, while a large minority wanted to join the Kurdistan Region, despite past misgivings with the KDP. A smaller minority were Shabak nationalists asserting distinctness from both.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 17-19. Also after 2003, Mosul was governed by an Arab nationalist coalition, and the Shabaks had largely been left exposed to the violence of local insurgent groups. After 2003, and especially after 2006, hundreds of Shabaks were targeted for their Shia affiliation and were kidnapped or killed. After the US assault on nearby Fallujah in November 2004, there was a massive by the Mosul police force, consisting mostly of Sunni Arabs. Insurgents captured many of the weapons. The US had to call the Peshmerga to Mosul, and the situation escalated especially in 2006, with Kurdish and other minorities being targeted and thousands of civilians leaving Mosul after receiving death threats. Between 2003 and 2009, at least 675 Shabaks were killed in terrorist attacks.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 14-15. Shabaks blamed Atheel al-Nujaifi for creating a hostile environment for them in Mosul which led to them being targeted.Leezenberg, M. (2014). The end of heterodoxy? The Shabak in post-Saddam Iraq. Studies in Oriental Religions, 68, 247-268. pp. 17.