It must be hidden – there’s not even a wikipedia entry for it. It’s called “Kakayee”, a small Kurdish religion that has existed in hiding for centuries. I stumbled across them during my time in Erbil, where a community of adherents live to the west of the city.

The reason for the secrecy, Kakayees say, is the expansion of other religions during the history of mankind. They claim that theirs was the first faith that spread the worship of God and that all others came later.

With thousands of families living in different parts of Iraqi Kurdistan and also in Iran, the believers of Kakayee, who can be recognised by their long moustaches, worship in private. What is interesting though, like Ismaelis (an Islamic sect), they want to be recognised as Muslim, not Kakayees. Perhaps that’s for security reasons though, as a minority they could quite easily be persecuted. Across the border, in Iran, Kakayee, or ‘Ahle Haq’ as it is known there, is recognised as a separate religion.

Unlike in Islam, however, the Kakayees don’t have a temple and they don’t have a regular time to pray, but rather gather in homes. They also love music, regarding it as sacred. According to their stories, when Adam was first created, his spirit was in unrest, but he found comfort in music. The tambour is the instrument most commonly used in worship.

The Kakayees’ religious language is Hawrami, which is one of the Kurdish dialects. The word itself is from a Kurdish root word, ‘kaka’ which means ‘mister’ or ‘sir’ and even now its common to call Kurdish men ‘kaka’ out of courtesy.

After a week of very intensive training it’s been wonderful to get out and visit the citadel of Erbil today with Alex, Derek, Boulos and Luay. Erbil (or Arbil) is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and is the third-largest city in Iraq after Baghdad and Mosul.

The city is the capital of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region and the Kurdistan regional government. Urban life, it seems, can be traced back at least to the twenty third century BC, which would make it an ancient Assyrian city, which was apparently known as a major centre for the worship of the Assyrian godess Ishtahar.   For me it felt like a trip down memory lane, back to the days when we lived in Central Asia.  Not surprising really, Erbil apparently was a major stop along the Silk Road.

Walking around the streets of Erbil today, it seems a peaceful place, and by and large it is.  Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, only isolated, sporadic violence has hit the city, unlike many other areas of Iraq. There were some big bomb attacks in 2004 and 2005, but it seems that people feel quite secure now. They certainly are very friendly and are only too willing to pose for a photograph – even soldiers.