Yezidi mišūrs are one of the rarest written sources on the history and religion of the Yezidis. The special value of mišūrs is that Yezidism is characterized mainly by the oral transmission of religious tradition. The article provides an overview and a description of the four versions of Mišūr of P’īr Sīnī Bahrī/P’īr Sīnī Dārānī (Mişûr of Pîr Sînî Behrî/Pîr Sînî Daranî), one of which is thought to be produced in 604/1207 or 1208, making it one of the earliest sources of Yezidi history and religion. A collaborative version of the document is presented based on these four versions. Yezidi mišūrs belong to certain lineages of P’īrs and represent certificates of recognition of those lineages and those Yezidi tribes that were attributed to them as Murids. The manuscript that is examined here is rich in historical data related to the establishment of the Yezidi community. The document also lists the tribes that today are not Yezidi. Furthermore, the mišūr identifies a number of previously unknown followers and associates of Sheikh ‘Adi. This data will be instrumental in identifying various features of Yezidism in its formative age.

The article is an attempt to answer the question why Wednesday has the status of a holy day in Yezidism. Wednesday can be seen as a commemoration of the fourth day of creation, when the life on earth began and the Peacock Angel became its ruler. The article points to the Yezidi worship of the Moon and the Sun and related angels (Melek Fakhradin and Melek Sheikh Shams) and connects it with the Pythagorean concept concerning the movement of the planets and the Music of the Spheres. Two sacred Yezidi instruments, def and shibab, appear as allegories of celestial bodies in the Yezidi sacred hymns in the cosmogonic context of the creation of the macrocosm and microcosm (Adam). The article also points out the meaning of Wednesday in Judaism as the day when God created the sun, moon and stars and briefly discusses relationships with planet worship in Harran, Zoroastrianism and Mandaeism, especially in the context of the Yezidi Çarşemiya Sor festival which takes place on the first Wednesday of the month of Nisan.

The Persian Gospel codices of the Matenadaran collection, written in Armenian script in the eighteenth century in Shamakhi and Ganja, are important sources for the study of the interethnic, interfaith, and intercultural circumstances of historical Shirvan (located in Transcaucasia) of that period. These manuscripts are also considered to be essential sources for the study of inter-linguistic issues of Armenian and Persian, the Armenian orthographic rules of that period, and one of the local versions of Persian, spoken in Shirvan. In the eighteenth century, Persian was the interethnic contact language of this area and the manuscripts examined here were written for the Christian Armenians of the region. This article presents how the Armenian alphabet reflects the phonetic system of eighteenth century Persian spoken in Shirvan using the orthographic rules of Armenian.