Islam’s margins: Ahl-i Haqq, angels and peacocks, and the marginal scholars who loved them

This chapter is a tribute to my late friend Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey (d. 2022), and to the late Vladimir A. Ivanow (d. 1970), two marginal scholars who spent years in self-chosen exile in Iran and shared a fascination with Ismāʿīlism and the small heterodox communities that might be influenced by it, and who in different ways contributed to my motivation to carry out field research among the Ahl-i Haqq of Gūrān, reputedly the most antinomian community that could be found in Iran. I have often had reason to revisit Ivanow’s writings, especially his book The Truth-Worshippers of Kurdistan, while over the years I have kept corresponding with Wilson about the place of Satan and the Peacock Angel in the cosmology and anthropology of the Ahl-i Haqq and the Yezidis.
I shall focus on two aspects of the Ahl-i Haqq religion: the place in their pantheon of seven angelic beings (haft tan) who appear in human incarnations in each cycle of history, and the social and ritual role of holy lineages (khānadān) in Ahl-i Haqq communities. Both suggest similarities or perhaps historical connections with other communities such as Yazidis and Alevis, as well as a possible connection with pre-Islamic Iranian religions. Some authors have claimed that the Ahl-i Haqq religion is, beneath a thin Islamic veneer, essentially a survival of Zoroastrianism or a “popular” variant of Iranian religion. I shall argue that there is a much more pervasive influence of early Islam in Ahl-i Haqq religion (as well as Yezidism and Alevism) than these scholars are willing to admit.