Shabaks (Arabic: الشبك, Kurdish: شەبەک, romanized: Şebek) are a group of people who live east of Mosul in Iraq.
[9] The primary Shabak religious text is called the Buyruk or Kitab al-Manaqib (Book of Exemplary Acts), which is written in Turkmen.
Austin Henry Layard considered Shabaks to be descendants of Kurds who originated in Iran, and believed that they possibly had affinities with the Ali-Ilahis.
[11] Another theory suggests that the Shabaks originated from Anatolian Qizilbash Turkomans, who were forced to settle in the Mosul area after the defeat of Ismail I by the Ottomans at the Battle of Chaldiran.
[6] The campaign included both deportation and forced assimilation, and many of them (along with Zengana and Hawrami Kurds) were relocated to concentration camps (mujamma'at in Arabic) that were located in the Harir area of the northern Iraq.
The Iraqi government's efforts of forced assimilation, Arabization, and religious persecution put the Shabaks under increasing threat.