The Haqqa Movement: From heterodox Sufism, to socio-political struggle and back Lana Askari One day I told my mother, I am going to join the Mama Razayeti [Haqqa movement under Sheikh Mama Raza]. She told me, your father is going to kill you. I said no, even if he would kill me I will go and convert anyway. I left and ran to the takiye (dervish lodge) and told them I wanted to convert. They quickly heated up some water and shaved my head, leaving only a little bit of hair on the top. This [taking off his cap and pointing to the small patch of long hair] has not been cut for over 50 years, it is still the same do you hear! During the time of the prophet, people had their hair like this. Our greeting ‘ya karim, ya raza’, this is also from the time of the prophet. When I went back home I told my father I had joined Mama Raza and received a beating. However, after four nights, four brothers of the order came to our house and talked to my father. After a long discussion, they also converted my father. I was the first in my family in Sergalu village to convert. I came to the Haqqa with a clean conscious and therefore I am still part of it and still live in the khanaqa [rest- and guesthouse]. (Muhammed Aziz, filmed interview with author, 2014) While growing up, I noticed some people who, when visiting my grandparents’ house, would use a strange greeting, exclaiming ‘ya karim, ya raza’ whilst slightly touching each other’s palms, instead of a usual greeting of a handshake or kiss. Intrigued by this handshake, I decided to delve into the history of this movement that is part of my father’s family and make a documentary film about the Haqqa. I have an intricate relationship to this lineage. From my paternal grandmother side, I am the great-grand daughter of Mama Raza. Through my paternal grandfather, I am the great-great-grand daughter of Ali of Askar (not to be confused with shahid Ali Askari – son of Abdullah, another brother of Abdulkarim and Mama Raza), Abdulkarim and Mama Raza’s cousin, and great grand-daughter of Hasan Mustafa, the brother of Abdulkarim and Mama Raza. The documentary film “The Haqqa Handshake” can be requested to be viewed by contacting the author through lana.askari@gmail.com In 2014, I filmed several interviews with the remaining followers and descendants of the Haqqa – a heterodox Sufi movement – established by Sheikh Abdulkarim in the village of Shadala, north of Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan. Muhammed Aziz is one of the few murid (disciples) who has lived in the Kalkasmaq khanaqa for over 60 years. He converted when he was about seven years old. In the early twentieth century, Sheikh Abdulkarim established the Haqqa as a religious-political movement following the Islamic Naqshbandi order. Establishing a different doctrine from mainstream Sufism, Sheikh Abdulkarim (1892/3-1942) taught practices that emphasised yeksani (equality). His successor, Sheikh Mama Raza (1905–61) took his teachings even further to include xushek ew brayati (sister- and brotherhood). Coming from the Arabic word al-haq (the truth), its followers were thought to have even screamed ‘haqqa’ when being startled, as they would have been in such a continuous deep trance. This latter rumour is one of many that attempted to discredit the Haqqa and their progression in faith and social practise. As part of this wider publication on religious minorities in Iraqi Kurdistan, bizudnaway Haqqa (the Haqqa movement), who as a Sufi heterodoxy turned towards socio-political issues in the rural areas of Iraqi Kurdistan, provides an example of the region’s peasant and nationalist struggles. This essay will provide general overview of the movement’s history and its current situation. While including other writings on this particular history, this paper is mainly based on filmed interviews with the Haqqa community, and visits to different sites of Kalkasmaq and Shadala. This film project also documents the community's knowledge and experiences. I argue that the religious-political character of the sheikhs and Haqqa, which saw its height around the early and mid-twentieth century, the decline of followers in the past decades, the push back into mainstream Islam, and the movement’s split provide another example of power struggles in Iraqi Kurdistan. Other historical analyses of this area suggest similar rivalries lie at the forefront of Kurdish fragmentation (Bruinessen 2002; Jwaideh 2006) and the breakdown of the local political parties and the larger Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). Thus, rather than treating the Haqqa as merely an anomaly within the religious and political landscape in Iraqi Kurdistan (but perhaps indeed as an undervalued part of Kurdish history), it is very much part of existing socio-political structures and cannot be excluded from geopolitical developments of the past century. The spread of the Naqshbandi order and start of Haqqa The Haqqa can be seen as having two stages of development; firstly, founding by Sheikh Abdulkarim, and secondly, further development by Sheikh Mama Raza, also called mama razayeti. The Naqshbandi tariqat (Sufi doctrine) originated in Central Asia and then expanded in Kurdistan through Mawlana Khalid in the early nineteenth century (van Bruinessen, 1992; 222-234). Based on Sufism, which adopts Islam’s mystical experience of direct communication with God, Mawlana Khalid trained in India and successfully spread this order in Kurdistan due to Naqsbandi’s autonomous growth, which was not based purely on succession through family lineage (Ibid; 224 -226). At the same time, disbanding the Kurdish emirates left a power vacuum replaced by Ottoman governors, who could not control conflicts and feuds. This environment led to a turn to the sheikhs standing outside of tribal structures, to resolve tribal conflicts. During this time, the Ottoman administration reformed land entitlement; aghas and sheikhs were able to register most land in their own names. In addition, sheikhs were granted waqf lands (land used to maintain mosques and shrines), which they treated as their personal lands. Van Bruinessen notes that the growing fear of imperial and Christian influence, and the lack of security following the collapse of the Kurdish emirates inspired people to turn back to religion and the sheikhs (Ibid; 232-233). Thus, in this environment, the sheikhs gained power and many followers in the nineteenth century. As Mawlana Khalid and the Naqsbandi order gained many followers, other Sufi orders such as the Qadari’s, and the nobles and aghas of the Sulaimaniya area began to oppose him and plot his murder. One opponent Sheikh Ahmad-i Serdar lived near Shadala village so Mawlana Khalid went to talk to him and convinced him to join Mawlana and became a Naqshbandi. He became his qadir, and set his khalifa [person who has received permission from a sheikh to teach a tariqat] in Sargallu village. Another time, trying to escape the opposition in Sulaimaniya, Mawlana walked to Sargallu and was helped by Sheikh Ahmad of the area. Mawlana told him that if Sheikh Qadri had been older he would have made him khalifa instead of Ahmad. Sheikh Qadri went to Kirkuk and followed his father in becoming a khalifa. In Naqshbandi the khalifa is not inherited but goes to someone appointed because of their character and abilities. But this was an exception because Mawlana appointed Qadri-Sur himself. (Mustafa Askari, filmed interview 2014). Mawlana Khalid told Qadri-Sur that, including himself, the order should have seven khalifas. See also the chart of the Barzanji family sheikh lineage (van Bruinessen 1992; 320). After Sheikh Mustafa’s death in 1915, he was buried in Baghdad and his son Abdulkarim became the new khalifa and also sat in Shadala. While the Naqshbandi tariqat intended to not necessarily follow bloodlines, slowly the sheikh’s position became hereditary and their tombs became a pilgrimage site, as both the Shadala and Khalkasmaq village shrines still are today. Non-violence and equality Sheikh Abdulkarim studied in Koya under Mullah Abdullah Jelli. He spoke and read Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, and Kurdish and made the hajj pilgrimage in 1922 and 1931. While his Ottoman identity card (nasname) says he was born in 1871/2, he had probably added about 20 years to his life to avoid being drafted by the Ottoman army because the card dates back to 1917 (time of WW1). The picture taken of him in 1936 by Cecil Edmonds (1957) is unlikely to be of a man in his 60s, but more probably in his 40s (Askari 1983: 14-16). In 1920, Sheikh Abdulkarim’s teachings developed into a separate form following Koranic ideas that sought haqqiqat (truth); he taught his murids peacefulness (ashti) and equality (yeksani). His followers discussed Sufism and some came to believe that the time of the Mahdi (redeemer of Islam – time of the Messiah) had come, mostly under the guidance of Hama Sur. Abdulkarim did not approve of such talk. Apparently, he also opposed his murids from seeing Shadala as another Mecca, somehow limiting the movement’s messianic character. He disapproved of heretical behaviour, such as wearing jewellery or unclean clothes. However, while his followers considered ideas about the end of time and truth of Islam, he turned his tariqat into pure teachings removed from political and tribal affairs to lead his murids. Zikr (prayers reciting God’s names) were not that distinct from other Islamic or Sufi rituals at this time but were not mandatory. He taught followers to improve their own situation in daily life, rather than looking to the sky for a saviour, and to find justice in creating an equal society. As Mustafa Askari points out, the messianic belief turned into a heterodoxy that tried to help rural people who had nothing (Ibid). Abdulkarim told people to stay away from bad people, to refute dictatorship through agha leadership and to do good beyond only taking prayers. In their trance, the Haqqa would call out ‘Allah’ and ‘Haqq’. Being different, other people named Sheikh Abdulkarim’s community after his tariqat – Haqqa. The name was adopted, and from there on the Haqqa movement started. Most importantly, during this time, the state demanded taxes in the form of food; this resulted in widespread poverty and hunger. Abdulkarim’s movement is thought to have relieved hunger and fought feudalism (to some extent) by distributing land from feudal landlords directly to the farmers (Naqshbandi in Schmidinger 2014). Subsequently, he gained many followers in the Surdash area around Sulaimaniya. Hadij Sheikh Abdulkarim addressed important problems resulting from geopolitical shifts and the Kurds’ powerlessness. WWI resulted in widespread hunger and poverty and need for a movement to increase hope for survival. Adulkarim named the movement equality, yeksani, but the British colonialists were afraid that Kurdistan would have the same revolt as in India with Gandhi or perhaps even as in Russia with the Bolsheviks. Out of fear that a regional movement could become national, the British colonialists arrested Abdulkarim in 1934. This was a turning point of the religion of Islam as it is was something different than Sufism. (Dr Ali Askari, filmed interview with me, 2014) Many of Sheikh Abdulkarim’s contemporaries were unsettled by his teachings. People spread bad propaganda against him because he did not interfere in tribal or Ottoman rulings. Subsequently, three mullahs (Islamic clergy) of the area wrote a letter to the mufti (expert in religious law) of Sulaimaniya asking for Abdulkarim to be imprisoned. In 1934, the Iraqi government, which had just been removed from the tight control of the British Mandate, imprisoned Sheikh Abdulkarim on the grounds of heresy. After the loss of their sheikh, thousands of his followers – the number is not exact – sold their belongings, burned their clothes and dressed in guny (cloth made of jute). They marched to Kirkuk and held protests for his release, much like the non-violent marches incited by Mahatma Gandhi in India around the same time. This event is remembered by the Haqqa community as sali guny labar (year of jute cloth). After interrogations, Said Ahmad Khanaqa, a sheikh of the Naqshbandi residing in Kirkuk and parliamentarian of the time, negotiated with the government for the release of Abdulkarim. Rumours and stories about the Haqqa continued even after Abdulkarim’s release. The British, protecting their interest and securing their position in Iraq, sent Cecil Edmunds, a political officer, to check these rumours of heresy and their threat to the administration. Edmonds visited Sheikh Abdulkarim in 1936 and describes in his writings the sheikh’s appearance of wisdom and how his white clothing was set off by his freshly dyed black beard (1957). In his book, he also notes eccentric behaviour around the Haqqa: men and women bathing together, allowing dogs into the bathing water, passing around bowls of urine to drink from and even raiding a mosque in Sergalu village and burning the Koran (Ibid, 204-206). As Schmidinger points out, many Western writers, such as Martin van Bruinessen or Michael Gunter, have mentioned Edmonds descriptions, but have not provided any critical analysis nor scepticism of these rumours around the Haqqa (2014). Some Haqqa descendants have described other stories about Edmonds visit to their former sheikh. Edmunds, an Englishmen, went to Shadala and disguised himself as a dervish (member of mystical/Sufi order). Karim told him to sit down outside during prayer before praying with us. Upon seeing his face, Karim, in his sheikhly ‘powers’, recognised Edmonds face as not being a dervish and started talking to him. (Faghri Mama Raza, filmed interview with me, 2014) Edmonds told him that they would give him money if he would stop taking about these Marxist things. Karim said that they didn’t need money and they live in a self-sufficient community and lead simple lives. Edmonds went away and returned afterwards on an official visit and forbade him to continue. After this they captured Karim. His followers then dressed in jute and went to go get him. (Mustafa Askari, filmed interview with me, 2014) As van Bruinessen notes of the political aspect of heterodoxies in Kurdistan, ‘I know of few prophetic or messianic movements in the strict sense in Kurdistan, but many political movements had a distinctly prophetic flavour to them. It is not an accident that most Kurdish nationalist revolts were led by sheikhs, who were also not the most orthodox ones’ (1992: 206). Earlier heterodoxies such as Alevi, Yezidism and the Ahl-e Haqq had become sustainable structures in their own right; however a few communities also developed in the nineteenth and twentieth century under the Naqshbandi order. Van Bruinessen (1992) and Schmidinger (2014) mention the most notable example of a messianic heterodoxy amongst the sheikhs of Barzan, Sheikh Abdulsalam I and his son, Mihemed, and under Sheikh Ahmad Barzani, who was deemed to be the God incarnate, leading to the blind obedience of his followers (1992: 244). These sects returned in to mainstream Sunni Islam eventually in the twentieth century (Schmidinger 2014). Throughout the twentieth century, the Haqqa movement continued to develop its teachings, the messianic character was subdued, and the social aspect of creating an equal society came to the forefront. Turbulences in succession In 1942, when walking back home from the mosque after an evening prayer, a rock (or some say a bullet) breaks Sheikh Abdulkarim’s leg. After 40 days, he died from what some believe to have been gangrene (Askari 1983: 14-16). It is not known who attacked him, but what is known is that his succession became a point of conflict between Abdulkarim’s older brother, Abdulkarim’s younger brother Mama Raza, Abdulkarim’s son Hama Agha Kani Tew, and Hama Sur who studied under Abdulkarim. Hama Sur looked European, but he was Kurdish from Shashokh village. He left the village to stay with his uncle to stay with Abdulkarim, he was a kid when he came to the khanaqa in Shadala. He was a small, but sturdily built with red hair. His uncle took him to Shadala and there he was brought up in the Khanaqa in Shadala. Here he stayed and worked for the KQ but he also sat with the Sufis and murids and became learned and was well spoken. As he grew older, he stopped his normal work and became a Sufi. After Karim’s death, he also wanted to take over his place. He got the mezer (hat) and jiba (cloak) of Karim and put it on himself. Some brother and sisters got together and decided to follow Mama Raza, Karim’s younger brother. After seeing people were following Mama Raza, Hama Sur got about 50 people together and went to Kirkuk and settled in the village of Klaw Qut in a commune. They had a good and equal life, but they didn’t survive. They had couples, but no children, no coffee, tea or cigarettes. But they were really neat and well groomed, they always had a mishki (scarf used for the head), they were very well dressed and mixed together. They sold prayer beads and led simple lives. (Mustafa Askari, filmed interview, 2014). Hama Sur’s commune was a collectively owned farm in a village later destroyed during the Anfal attacks in the 1980s. Hama Sur passed away in 1986 without a successor and this separate branch of Haqqa slowly died out. As van Bruinessen notes, ‘Hama Sur himself is apparently the only one who is more equal than the others in this “egalitarian” society: he disposes of much money, and he was said (in 1975) still to arrogate, in spite of his seventy years, the ius primae noctis of all the village girls’ (1992: 326). However, the Hagga community refutes these rumours. From tariqat to sister- and brotherhood If we can think of Abdulkarim’s time as the first wave in the Haqqa movement influenced by non-violent nationalist action, under Mama Raza, Abdulkarim’s younger brother, the Haqqa experienced its second wave, shaped partly by the spread of socialism and communism as global ideologies. Mama Raza had lived in Shadala village to learn under Abdulkarim. After his brother’s death, Mama Raza took the succession because many murids followed him because of his charism, but Abdulkarim’s sons asked him to leave Shadala because of the power struggle for successor. Mama Raza first went to his oldest brother in Goptapa village, in the Chamchamal region towards Kirkuk, to ask for his support. When his older brother also asked him to leave, he went to the village of Askar to seek support from Raza of Askar, his cousin’s son, where he was received well. Son of Ali of Askar, who is the son of Abdulrahman – Hadji Sheikh Mustafa’s brother. Here Mama Raza was able to develop his own teachings of Sufism intertwined with socialist ideas. He then chooses Kalkasmaq village to settle as the Sufis there, who had followed his father before, invited him to live with them. Under Mama Raza, the Naqshbandi tariqat ended (as Abdulkarim was the seventh khalifa) and the Haqqa developed an even more social and communal character, which they called xushek ew brayati (sister- and brotherhood). The pillars of Mama Razayeti, are hawghozi (equality), rastgoyi (justice), and brayati (brotherhood). Not a focus on materialistic living, but rather an inner faith as in Sufism, as well as helping other people. Prayer and fasting were not compulsory, and equality for men and women, rich and poor were tantamount. They abandoned the custom of kissing hands, and a new handshake – ‘ya karim, ya raza’ – was implemented when entering a room. The greeting was given to everyone in the room, upon which you would sit next to the last person who had arrived, making no distinction between class, age or gender. Women’s rights were also introduced, forced and early marriage of women was stopped, As were customs of shirbaii (bridewealth), shilan (dowry), and tray surana (tax paid to the agha for a marriage’s first consummation). acts that were deemed immoral at the time by others. Mama Raza erected a khanaqa in Kalkasmaq village, which became a communal living space, the brothers and sisters of the movement would live and work the lands together. The lands were divided amongst the farmers there. There were also instances where Mama Raza would receive farmers that would complain about aghas taking their lands. In this case he would buy the lands from certain aghas and give back the properties by registering the farmers as legal owners (Askari, 1983). Food was served at the same time and equal for everyone. I once came there when I was little and you had to walk up the hill to the khanaqa yourself because there were no cars. When we arrived Mama Raza and all the brothers and sisters were sitting there. I had a big apple with me and brought it to Mama Raza, he told me to cut down the apple for all the people. I had to cut the apple into paper thin slices for people to merely taste the apple. Life was on equal terms. (Mustafa Askari, filmed interview with me, 2014). The Haqqa community grew further as a system of bra sayara (the moving brothers) was set up; these Haqqa followers acted as messengers, who would travel through villages to talk to people in the rural areas. In villages with many followers, a takiye was set up where people could meet or travellers could be helped or housed. These lodges had a wooden stick in front of the door (a sign of peace and non-violence), and women even headed some of them. People were asked to clean and groom themselves, men to shave their beards and people were asked to leave their shoes outside of the lodge. The villages collected money, the takiye and in the khanaqa, to be distributed amongst those in need in the community, supporting visitors, illness or marriages. The community’s non-hierarchical and democratic decision-making process always involved a group of women and men. The community undoubtedly grew as the poor would come to the lodges and the khanaqa to be fed or helped in another way. About 150 are estimated to have lived in the Kalkasmaq khanaqa up until the 1970s. Intellectuals and poets would also frequent the khanaqa; for example, Mama Raza had a close relationship with the poet Goran. The work in the communal farm was divided by age and knowledge, and food was served on serving trays to be shared by two people, an uncommon aspect as individual dishes were used on this tray, which as a luxury at the time. What Haqqa has done is very advanced and changed a movement in Islam that is completely different. I think myself that Haqqa is a great thing and a big thing of it is that it says in the rules of Naqshbandi is that you have to defend the poor. So, all Naqshbandi will never sit in front, all will sit on equal level... I’m a grandson of them and I never was treated differently than someone who wasn’t of the family. I think myself that Haqqa is piroza (praiseworthy) and it is not for everyone, not everyone can do it because you have to be on equal terms and live together with everyone and share everything with them – equally, no difference in materiality, so that no one has more than another. All people can sit at the same level and eat the same food. This believe in equality is not something that everyone can do. (Amanj Askari, filmed interview, 2014). Imprisonment and nationalist struggle Mama Raza was imprisoned on three occasions, the first two were during Abdulkarim’s time, the last one another important marker which the Haqqa call yar whalli (year of the stick). This latter event happed in 1944, when Mama Raza was captured in Dokan town, and sent to Imara prison, in the south of Iraq. Edmonds recalls this incident in his writings as an administrative error made by the mutasarif (district head) of Erbil (Hewler), and that upon meeting Mama Raza he did not deem him a threat to the administration. However, as van Bruinessen mentions (1993; 326), and others of the Haqqa followers tell, they believe that the Iraqi government imprisoned Mama Raza because he had helped Mullah Mustafa Barzani and the Kurdish resistance on several occasions. Earlier on, Sheikh Abdulkarim had received and helped Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji, who was leading the Kurdish uprisings against the British at the time. This time, Mama Raza had aided Mullah Mustafa by sending him troops when he had fled house arrest in Sulaimaniya and returned back to the Barzan region. On other occasions, the Haqqa had also aided in setting up of the Republic of Mahabad, and in negotiating the return of Barzani’s troops from the Soviet Union into Iraqi Kurdistan. Upon Mama Raza’s imprisonment, thousands of his followers came together, sold their belongings and marched to Kirkuk by foot, where they surrounded the British office and asked for Mama Raza’s release. Eyewitnesses claim that thousands of followers were there, Edmonds estimates the number at hundreds (1957). Promoting their peaceful demands, instead of any weapons they only carried an approximately one-meter-long stick of a balaluk (wild cherry trunk), called dari ashti (peacefull stick) or dara qulla (wooden stick). We went by foot all of us... Aisha the oldest daughter of Mama Raza died there. After that, in Kirkuk we stayed at Yar Whalli where we set up camp, an area in the north of Kirkuk to await Mama Raza for more than 2 months... we camped at an old military camp, we were poor... Mama Raza had an agreement with the government himself and that was when they released him.... We were kids at the time, when I went from Askar village to there, I remember that Mama Raza and the Haqqa where afraid of the government and also some other Kurdish groups because of he had so many followers from far away and the sheikhs there couldn’t take this... We were 2,000 people there all from different villages. (Muhammad Askari, filmed interview, 2014). The first place to get together was in Goptapa village where all followers got together. From there a man, Hama Shutat, who sang ‘first place is Goptapa, ohh brothers where is Mama Raza?’ So, we went until we would find Mama Raza. In the Shwan area, the police captured thirteen men (one of them my father). They were brought to Kirkuk and we kept marching until Yar Whalli. The government wanted us to die because we had to stay under terrible conditions. Afterwards, we decided we would all stay in Kirkuk until he was released. In front of the house of Lion (the British), there was a park, we camped there a couple of nights. The government was scared and we were put in another neighbourhood, in some of the houses, but some of us had to sleep on the streets... So, the thirteen people who were captured were released and we were moved to another place. If Mama Raza negotiated for him to return to Sulaimaniya, then they would release him. (Mustafa Askari, filmed interview with me, 2014). The British allowed Mama Raza to go to the village of Byara, near the Iranian border, under the watch of Sheikh Alla’edin. After a year, he was allowed to go back to Kalkasmaq. In the decades to follow, the Haqqa sent troops to Qazi Muhammad in setting up the Republic of Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan. The Republic of Mahabad was a short lived self-proclaimed Kurdish state within the region of Iranian Kurdistan (January – December 1946). Mustafa Barzani and his troops took part in establishing the republic but were exiled to the Soviet Union when it collapsed. While Mama Raza promoted the idea of peaceful social change, he saw the Haqqa as part of the Kurdish struggle, but without a political affiliation to any parties. He received everyone that ran from the Iraqi regime, such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Kurdish Communists. Many Communists were sent to Kalkasmaq to find shelter, thus the Haqqa became associated with the Communist movement, and shared socialist ideas. Although some people declared that Mama Raza became a Communist, he never joined any party and his teachings also forbade this because of their religious roots. After the coup d’état of 1958 overthrew the Iraqi king and Mullah Mustafa came back to Iraq, the Haqqa also became involved in the nationalist struggle. In 1953, Mama Raza became partly paralysed from what may have been a stroke (Askari, 1983: 61). Too sick to travel he remained in Kalkasmaq for the rest of his life. For example, he could not travel to Baghdad to receive Mullah Mustafa when he returned to Iraq, but sent some Haqqa followers with a letter. In 1961, he passed away and his son, Sheikh Kaka Hama, took over the khanaqa. Mama Raza is buried next to his brother Sheikh Abdulkarim in the Shadala burial site. The collective farm in Kalkasmaq remained running in this capacity until the Ba’ath party turned to the Kurdish countryside. In the 1980s, the Iraqi army completed destroyed our village except for the concrete buildings so they could use it themselves... In 1986 when the Anfal campaign was happening, before everything the roads were blocked between the villages. We became homeless and we knew they wanted to erase the Kurds. So, we decided to fight in the peshmerga. My father, kaka Hama, then helped the yeketi (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - PUK) under mam Jalal [Talabani] by putting together about 100 people to fight from his followers of which about 40 became martyrs. So, the Haqqa followers have fought along with the other groups in Kurdistan against dictatorship and colonialism. We kept on supporting our country and we are still ready for this support and help our fellow Kurds. (Sheikh Hawre, current sheikh in Kalkasmaq village, filmed interview with me, 2014). Image 1. Shadala village around the mid-twentieth century. (Family archive, courtesy of Kirmanj Askari) Image 2. The khanaqa in Kalkasmaq village around the mid-twentieth century. (Family archive, courtesy of Kirmanj Askari). The Haqqa thus became part of the Kurdish struggle in these latter decades and formed their own unit within the PUK. Both Shadala and Kalkasmaq village were destroyed by the Iraqi military under the Ba’ath regime, and had to rebuild their khanaqa in the 1990s. In 1994, kaka Hama died and his son, Sheikh Hawre, who also led the Haqqa unit of the peshmerga, became the new head of the community. Present-day struggles Currently, Sheikh Hawre and his family live in the communal house, with several (mostly elderly) murids still residing in their own quarters there. While numbers of residents and followers have gone down, they host visitors, especially during Jazn (Eid - Islamic holidays) when still about a thousand people visit the khanaqa and join in a communal meal. Visitors include current followers, the families of former followers, and guests from other sects or orders. For example, followers of the Baha’i religion frequent these areas as they believe their prophet had once resided in the mountains of this part of the Surdash region. While helping others is still at the forefront of the Haqqa teachings, the once ‘unorthodox’ ideas that were introduced, such as equality and women’s rights, have appeared elsewhere in society, leaving the khanaqa with a more mainstream Sunni character. As much of the urban and rural make-up of Kurdistan has changed, zikr is not performed communally anymore, and no Sufis are left in the khanaqa. The decline in followers can be attributed to political affiliation taking over former patron-client structures in the region, or as Sheikh Hawre puts it ‘people are too busy in their lives now, but we serve the community in the way we can’. The movement’s character has changed with the disappearance of the communal and religious factors. Currently, the Kalkasmaq and Shadala khanaqa remain two separate branches with different leaders, Sheikh Hawre at Kalkasmaq and Sheikh Mahmood at Shadala, although they continue to share family ties. The sheikhs’ families mainly own the lands, though the khanaqa continue to serve visitors and the Haqqa community. Political divisions within the branches have also created a split, as these affiliations come with funds and positions that secure the upkeep of the khanaqa estates—leading to inter-rivalry struggles about power over and the future of the Haqqa community. Both van Bruinessen (1992) and Schmidinger (2014) have raised the question of whether the Haqqa heterodoxy will remain intact or will develop in new ways. At present, the loss of followers, the halt in Sufi rituals and the decline of communal farming and living have led the Haqqa to resembling the more mainstream Islamic orders in Iraqi Kurdistan; the khanaqa now serves as a guesthouse for visitors who come during Islamic holidays or visit the pilgrimage sites. Image 3. Screenshot from ‘The Haqqa Handshake’ (Dir. Lana Askari, 2014). Murid Hussein Hadji showing his room in the Kalkasmaq khanaqa with on the wall (f.l.t.r) a picture of Sheikh Kaka Hama, drawings of Mama Raza and Sheikh Abdulkarim, and two pictures of Hussein Hadji himself in his youth. (Lana Askari, Kalkasmaq, 2014). Image 4. Bomb left as a marker of history in Shadala village. Under the Ba’ath regime Kurdistan’s rural areas were bombed and cleared to obstruct the guerrilla fighters in the mountains. (Lana Askari, Shadala, 2012). In conclusion, while the Haqqa movement grew out of a messianic heterodoxy in the twentieth century, it went through different waves of change before it eventually returned to mainstream Islam in the twenty-first century. The Haqqa started under Sheikh Abdulkarim, whose teachings of equality and peacefulness were deemed unorthodox. Trying to create a better existence for people, the movement attracted thousands of followers in rural Iraqi Kurdistan. This first stage of the Haqqa lay the grounds for Abdulkarim’s successor, Mama Raza, to develop the movement towards more socialist ideas of collective living and gender equality, which they called xushek ew brayati. Inevitably, these two stages cannot be separated with what was happening in the rest of the world, the spread of anti-colonial sentiments and non-violent protest, and the development of communism and socialism. With the Kurdish nationalist struggle intensifying from the 1960s onwards, the Haqqa joined the fight and thus this social-political movement was pulled back into larger Kurdish political structures. When the villages of Iraqi Kurdistan were bombed and cleared by the Iraqi military during the Ba’ath regime, the Haqqa also lost their villages. As rural areas were evacuated and Iraqi Kurdistan became urbanised in the past two decades, the political parties came to replace and incorporated tribal and religious affiliations into their patron-client structures. The Haqqa movement, as progressive as it was in its teachings, also became part of the larger political structures and lost its secular heritage, showing another example of fragmented Kurdishness in a once strong community that had sought to improve the lives of the rural poor. Bibliography Askari, M. 1983. Awardanawayek le bizudnaway Haqqa. Bagdhad: Alaa. van Bruinessen, Martin. 1992. Agha, Sheikh and state: the social and political structures of Kurdistan. London: Zed books. van Bruinessen, Martin. 2002. ‘Kurds, states and tribes’, In Tribes and power: nationalism and ethnicity in the Middle East. Falih A. Jabar & Hosham Dawod, eds. 165–183. London: Saqi books. Edmonds, Cecil, J. 1957. Kurds, Turks and Arabs. Politics, travel and research in North Eastern Iraq, 1919-1925. London: Oxford University Press. Jong, F. 2010. Sufi orders in Ottoman and post-Ottoman Egypt and the Middle East. Collected studies. Istanbul: Isis Press. Jwaiweh, Wadie. 2006. Kurdish national movement: its origins and development Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Schmidinger, T. 2014. The Haqqa Community: A Heterodox Movement with Sufi Origins. In Religious Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream, edited by Khanna Omarkhali. Wiesbaden, pp. 227–235. Tofîq, R.H. 2010. Komelî Heqe. Le Șêx Ebdulkerîmî Ședelewe ta Hemesûrî Kilawqut 1920 – 1986 Slemani. Enstitutya Kelepure Kurdi.  13