This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A campaign of mass killing and enslavement was carried out against the Yazidis of Sheikhan, Sinjar and Erbil, in what is now northern Iraq, between March 1832 and 1834 by Mir Muhammad of Rawanduz, the Kurdish emir of the Ottoman-era Soran Emirate. Mir Muhammad acted under religious fatwas declaring the Yazidis infidels whose lives, property and women were legitimate spoils, sanction that traced to a 1724 fatwa by Sheikh Abd-Allah Rabbatki and was reinforced by further fatwas from Mir Muhammad's own mufti, Mulla Muhammad Khatt-i. Described by historians as the bloodiest single episode in recorded Yazidi history, the campaign was led with the support of Mir Muhammad's brother Rasul Beg and Bedir Khan Beg.
The Sheikhan, Sinjar and Erbil Yazidi communities suffered catastrophic losses; the historian Sadiq al-Damlouji assessed that only about five percent of the targeted population survived. Around 10,000 Yazidis, mostly women and children, were enslaved and transported to Rawanduz, and survivors scattered as far as Mount Judi and Tur Abdin. The episode set a pattern of further Ottoman-era firmans and campaigns against the Yazidis through the rest of the nineteenth century, including under Omar Wehbi Pasha later in the century.