The Yaresan or Ahl-e Haqq are a relatively large minority group whose religion originates in
the border regions between Iran and Iraq. As members of traditional Yaresan communities are
becoming more visible in the West both as diaspora groups and in academia there is an
increasing demand for reliable information about their background. Academic interest is also
growing. Recent scholarly publications however tend to assume a fundamental knowledge of the
Yaresan tradition which is not easy to glean from existing sources. This is made more
complicated by the very real differences between the European world view and that of
traditional Yarsanism. For that reason and because music plays an unusually prominent role in
Yaresan observance it was decided to combine the authors' work on religious traditions and
music respectively in two volumes. In doing so the religious realities of the traditional
Yaresan of the Guran region is communicated by quoting extensively from interviews with
community members. The first volume also offers a survey of other religious traditions that are
thought to have been influential in shaping modern Yarsanism.
