This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
In 1892 the Ottoman official Omar Wehbi Pasha led a military campaign against the Yazidis of the Sheikhan and Sinjar districts, issuing an ultimatum demanding conversion to Islam. When the Yazidis refused, Ottoman forces occupied Sinjar and Sheikhan and carried out a further massacre, killing around five hundred people in the Shingal campaign of November and December 1892. Lalish, the Yazidis' central shrine, was forcibly converted into an Islamic religious school, sacred objects were confiscated, mosques were built in Yazidi villages, and the Yazidi prince Mir Mirza Beg was pressured into converting to Islam.
Sultan Abdulhamid II dismissed Wehbi Pasha from his post by telegram on 9 December 1892, citing his use of Ottoman troops in combat without authorization from the Ministry of War, and ordered him to remain in Mosul pending an inquiry. The dismissal did not undo what the campaign had accomplished: the Yazidis did not regain possession of Lalish until 1904, twelve years later, and their confiscated sacred objects were not returned until 1914, twenty two years later, by Suleiman Nazif Pasha.