Dasni

The Dasni, or Dasini, were the leading tribe of the Yazidi Kurds of the northern Mosul country, holding the mountains around Duhok, Sheikhan and Sinjar. For centuries Dasini served as a general name for the Yazidis.

Their memory of revolt went back to Mir Jafar Dasni's rising against the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim in the 840s and an uprising against the Hamdanids in 906. Around the end of the thirteenth century their principality, centered on Duhok beneath Mount Dasin, was reorganized as Sheikhan, though its rulers kept the epithet Dasini.

In the fifteenth century Sheikhan came under pressure from the Bahdinan emirate. After the Ottoman conquest of Iraq, Mir Hussein Beg Dasini governed Mosul from 1534, while his sons held governorships and carried the Dasini name into the late sixteenth century.