Zulaikhiyya

Zulaikhiyya (Abbasian: زليخية) is an esoteric belief system principally centered on Al-Khāṭiʾa, the female Hamin deity believed to be the creator of the material world. While having been subject to intense persecution by Hamin authorities, Zulaikhi congregations exist across South Abaria, primarily in urban areas and among women and sexual minorities.

Zulaikhi beliefs heavily vary between congregations, and much spiritual knowledge is held secret from the uninitiated. However, a common thread is that Al-Khāṭiʾa's unassisted creation of the material world (termed the Great Perversity in Hamin theology) was an act of unmitigated creation that cemented humanity's existential freedom from divine control. Zulaikhites view humans as having a resulting creative and spiritual energy, called the Ruh (Abbasian: الروح), which must be maintained and developed through a series of secretive Rites. Over the past century, a diverse set of modern beliefs (termed Neo-Zulaikhiyya) have emerged, adopting an atheistic viewpoint while revering the qualities embodied in Al-Khāṭiʾa.

The Zulaikhi faith seems to have originated as a divergent Mutatariff sect during the chaos of the Great Fitna. One of the first texts to reference Zulaikhi tenets was the Initiation of Zulaikha, a 14th century work consisting of a discourse between the eponymous shepherd-girl and an entity implied to be the manifestation of Al-Khāṭiʾa herself. Early Zulaikhi sects included the infamous Ghasibites, a millenarian sect most notable for their campaigns of conquest in western Shiraq in the early 1400s and their defacement of several significant Hamin shrines. Following the suppression of the Ghasibites in the 1440s, the Zulaikhis seemed to have undergone a fundamental shift, denouncing Ghasibite extremism and transitioning into the more reclusive structure typical of Zulaikhis today. During the Kumur Empire, Zulaikhi beliefs appear to have gained inroads among the upper class, particularly among noblewomen and the Kumur imperial harem, an arrangement that seems to have drawn discomfort among the Kumurid Jurists. The Spring of Nations, the fall of the Kumur Empire, and the conclusion of the Great