It is not a matter of sympathy but of religion. They believe in some forms of Christianity; and when they visit a church, they want to exercise their faith and not to express their sympathy. What is more, the eastern Christians have no sympathy for the devil worshippers, at least, not more than they have for any other religious body. Such an affinity is wanting between the Jews and the Christians or the Yezidis, yet they all live under the same conditions. I am not here advocating the theory, or implying, that the Yezidi sect is a corrupt form of Christianity, but am simply aiming to show that if the similarity of a certain religion with another in some phases be taken as a ground for the explanation of its origin, the Christian tradition can be regarded as a more probable theory to account for the rise of Yezidism than any other view: And, hence, to point out, what seems to me to be the best position, that the explanation must be found ultimately in some historical document which will give us a reasonable clew in the tracing of the sect in question to its founder. III THE SPECULATIVE THEORIES OF WESTERN ORIENTALISTS Thus far we have been dealing with the different theories regarding the origin of the Yezidis held in the East: the myth of the devil-worshippers themselves, the Christian tradition. Now we turn our attention to the West, which also has expressed itself on this subject. The degree of interest shown in this particular case, however, differs with different nationalities. The English-speaking scholars come first; next come the French; then the Russians; and finally the Italians. The German scholars seem to be interested mainly in certain words and festive events. And, in the discussion of these, they go so far in their unbounded speculation that one cannot tell whether the people they deal with are the Yezidis in question, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Greeks, Romans or Jews. The German writers do not seem to be interested so much in the problem of the origin of this people as a sect, unless they regard the question as settled on the ground of the Yezidis’ own statement that they are the descendants of Yezid bn Mu‘awiya.