Until the first week of this month, many people had not heard of the Yazidis. Readers had to catch up with the horrors of Iraq rapidly. Kurdish leaders, reported Richard Spencer, the Telegraph Middle East correspondent, on 4 August, were “caught unawares” by the sudden advance of the forces of the Islamic State (previously known as Isis) to capture the town of Sinjar. This “is one of two major centres of the Yazidi culture, a faith related to Zoroastrianism at whose heart is worship of an angel popularly identified by neighbouring Sunnis as Satan”, he explained. “Thousands of Yazidis have fled to areas still controlled by the Kurds, and some are said to be stuck on the mountain.” So it turned out to be.On 6 August, the Feast of the Transfiguration, the