Feyli Kurds conf. concludes proceedings

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The national general conference of the Feyli Kurds was concluded on Saturday at Baghdad ‘s al-Mansour Hotel with recommendations demanding rights for the group support for their political partnership. “Our project through this two-day event, held under the rubric ‘Unity and justice are our way to flourishing future’, is to set up a central council representing all entities and elites active in the Kurdish arena,” Sheikh Mohammed Saeed al-No’mani, the conference organizer, told Iraqi News. Feyli Kurds are largely a Shiite community living in Baghdad and the province of Diala around Khanaqin and Mandili. They are an estimated 2-3 million Feylis living in Iraq . Also in Iran , mainly in Ilam and Kermanshah as well as due to migration, to cities such as Tabriz , Tehran and Hamadan . Feylis speak Feyli, a dialect of the Pahlawani. The roots of the Feylis go back to the Aryan immigrants of the first millennium BC, and more specifically, the Parthian/Pahlawi/Pahlawanid settlements of the 2nd century BD. They embraced Islam in the early stages of the Islamic conquest and colonisation of Mesopotamia ( Iraq ) and Iran , though archaeological evidence from the Ilam province in Iran indicates that a significant proportion of Feyli were Nestorian Christians until the 18th Century. When the Safavid dynasty (1507-1721) held sway over Persia , Feyli Kurds switched to the Shiite Jaafari doctrine under Persian influence. In modern times the Feylis have been subject to state persecutions. In the mid 1970s, Iraq expelled around 40,000 Shiite Feyli Kurds who had lived for generations near Baghdad and Khanaqin, alleging that they were Iranian nationals. AmR (S)/SR 1