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Regarding religion, the majority of the Kurds were Sunni Muslim. The Sunni Kurds, however, did not use their Sunni religious beliefs to form alliances with other ethnic groups. This was mostly because the Kurds were the followers of Shafi’i School of Islam as opposed to the non-Kurd Sunnis who practiced Hanafi school of jurisprudence (Price, pg. 179).

There were some Shi’ite Kurds too. Most of the Kurds that practiced Shi’ism were located in the southern part of Iran. Around 15% of the official Shi’ite sect followed Iran’s official Shi’ite sect. They lived around Kirmanshah and spoke the southeastern dialect. (Price, pg. 95). Others followed the Alevid religion, which was a militant Shi’ite group. The Alevids evolved around the fifteenth century and incorporated a combination of Zoroastrian, Shi’ite, pre-Islamic, and Turkmen shahman ideas (Price, pg. 179).

During the breakdown of prestigious lineages came the appearance of the unorthodox Islamic religious leaders known as the shaikhs. Shaikhs were Sufi leaders who channeled Sufi beliefs and spread the idea of magical powers. In spreading those beliefs of miraculous and powerful abilities, people that followed the shaikhs were subject to participate in dangerous communal acts, such as swallowing fire (Price, pg. 127).

The final Kurdish religious group was the Yazidis. A very small portion of the Kurds followed the Yazidi religion. The Yazidi dialect was Kurmanji. Although most of the Yazidi Kurds lived in Iraq, there were some found in Iran and Turkey. With a combination of Zoroastrian, Jewish, Manichean, Christian, old pagan and Muslim beliefs as well as just being a minority, the Yazidis were subject to persecution in both Iraq and Turkey, but not in Iran (Price, pg. 179).

V. Culture

Because of the ethnic heterogeneity of the Kurds themse

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