The religion and ethnic affiliation of Yezidis, an ethnoreligious minority in northern Iraq, have been at the heart of a century-long tension between the Yezidi community and Kurdish nationalists. Kurdish leaders and intellectuals framed Yezidis as “original Kurds,” and referred to the religion of Yezidis as a pre-Islamic Kurdish religion. Yezidis, who were viewed as the followers of a heretical sect by Muslim Kurds, were elevated to “pre-Islamic original Kurds” by Kurdish nationalists in the early twentieth century. Since the establishment of the autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan in the early 90s, the discourse of “original Kurds” has provided Yezidis with a discursive leverage to demand recognition from the Kurdistan Regional Government that postures itself as the protector of the Kurdish nation. The 2014 mass displacement of Iraqi Yezidis, however, marked a historical rupture in the relationship between Iraqi Yezidis and Kurds. The forced displacement of Yezidis rejuvenated an exclusive discourse of locality and belonging among Yezidis to reject the established historicity of Kurdish nationalism. In this paper, I trace the racial construction of Yezidis as “pre-Islamic original Kurds” among Kurdish intellectuals in the early twentieth century by focusing on Kurdish publications and the way they highlighted Zoroastrianism – and by extension the religion of Yezidis (Yezidism) - as an autochthonous Kurdish religion. I demonstrate how Kurdish ethnonationalism and the new form of belonging among Iraqi Yezidis operate on an ontological linkage between religion, ethnicity, and territory, or what I call “religious autochthony,” which aims at creating a temporal regimentation of cultural difference whereby historical precedence of a given religion is employed as an evidential sign for territorial claim. Combining archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate how the re-enchantment of certain historical terms such as Ezidxan (Yezidi nation), a new Yezidi flag, and the revival of religious rituals became marked signifiers of Yezidis’ distinct ethnoreligious minority, and the ground to demand recognition from the Iraqi state.