The Yazidi creation account is preserved entirely in qewls — sung sacred poems held by trained reciters, since Yazidism has no written scripture in the ordinary sense. God existed alone with a pearl; the pearl burst; the world formed; the seven angels were set over it and Melek Taus was made chief. That the entire cosmology lives in song rather than text is why the loss of qewl reciters to violence and displacement is a threat to the religion's survival itself.