He died during his exile, and was buried in a valley called Lash,[21] which means in Kurdish “the place of a body,” probably a name given after the interment. There are four ranks in the priesthood of the Yezidis: Pir, Shaikh, Qawwal, and Faqir. The first, a Kurdish and Persian word signifying an elder or a saint, are persons of great sanctity and abstention. The Shaikhs (leader, chief), correspond to resident priests, while the Qawwal (speaker) are itinerant, and are expected to sing and dance in the festivals which demand those exercises. The last order, the Faqir (poor, humble), perform menial tasks in attendance upon the tomb of Shaikh Adi, at the valley of that name near Mosul. The language used is a Kurdish dialect, but Arabic is employed in their chants and hymns. A great deal of mystery surrounds their origin, and, as reading and writing are considered crimes among them, documents do not exist to help speculation. Layard imagined them to be Chaldean by origin, who have adopted the outward forms of many religions as a protective measure, and incidentally fallen into confusion regarding their own tenets. They have been regarded from earliest times with execration by Musulman and Christian alike, and have lived ever at hostility with all their neighbours. At one time they possessed some numerical strength, and harassed their enemies very seriously, but a Kurdish chief subdued them and broke their power by a wholesale massacre. Since then they live here and there among the Christians and Kurds, a certain number still inhabiting the Sinjar range of hills, which stretches in a westerly direction from Mosul. They also exist in the Caucasus, near Tiflis and Bayazid. Since Layard’s time they have suffered further persecution from Turk, Kurd, and Christian, and at present are in a miserable state of poverty. Except for the fact that they do not wear blue, they are indistinguishable from the population of Kurd, Turkoman, and Chaldean among whom they live, except by those little marks only a native or a dweller in the land can discern. South of the range that we passed that second day out of Mosul, and beyond the River Ghazar, they do not exist now. This river we crossed, trending to the east of our morning course, and had great difficulty in passing its ford, the mules several times tottering, rendering the rider’s balance doubly insecure. The river is an affluent of the Greater Zab, and flows into it very near the place we passed. In fact, our course, which was towards the Greater Zab River, lay across the point of land, a few miles wide, between the two. We reached the high banks of this historical stream in the afternoon at the same time as the rain, and finding our way half-way down its cliffs by a little path, threw our loads upon a ledge some ten feet wide, and sheltered under a projecting rock.