Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir (, ; born 1072/1078, died 1162) was a 12th-century mystic, ascetic and theologian who is the central saint in the Yazidi religion, considered as the reformer, renewer or founder of Yazidism. His tomb at Lalish, Iraq is the holiest site in Yazidism and the focal point of annual Yazidi pilgrimage. In Yazidi belief, Sheikh Adi is venerated as an earthly incarnation of God. His own writings, preserved in the oldest surviving Yazidi documents (mişûrs) dating to the 13th century and highly revered by Yazidis, express a pantheistic self-understanding and self-identification as God: "In the secret of my knowledge there is no God but me."
Sheikh Adi's religious background is a subject of active debate. Islamic literature and Western scholarship traditionally describe him as a Sufi mystic of Islamic background who gathered followers known as the Adawiyya. Some scholars dispute this Islamic framing, arguing that if Sheikh Adi had been an Arab Muslim Sufi, he could not so easily have gained prestige and a following across the region, as reported by Ibn Khallikan, without meeting notable resistance, unless his teachings connected with a spiritual tradition already held by the local population. Yazidis themselves reject any claim of an Islamic background. The name Adawiyya ("Sheikh Adi's people"), which is also used to refer to the Yazidi religion, refers to those who follow Sheikh Adi's mystic and spiritual path. The name is not used by Yazidis and is unknown within the Yazidi community, though it is used in Yazidi sacred hymns as a self-designation for Yazidis.
Biography Early life Sheikh Adi was born in the 1070s in the village of Bait Far, near Baalbek, in the Beqaa Valley of present-day Lebanon. The village is situated in a region identified in medieval Arabic geographical sources as Shuf al-Akrad, (lit. "Shuf of the Kurds"), a designation recorded by the Muslim historian Ibn al-Mustawfi (1169–1239), who preserves an account on the authority of Sheikh Adi's own nephew placing his birth there. Sheikh Adi's full name is recorded as Sharaf al-Din Abu al-Fadl Adi ibn Musafir ibn Ismail Musa ibn Marwan.
His life and activity coincided with the era of the Crusades, a period in which theological thought across the Near East was flourishing, various mystical currents and schools were developing, and the political landscape was deeply unsettled, with the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in conflict with the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt while Crusader forces advanced toward the Levant. This context gave new impetus to the revival of ancient mystical traditions under the guise of dervish brotherhoods. Yazidi tradition distinguishes two figures named Sheikh Adi: the first is Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, who came from the Levant and remained in Lalish; the second is his grandnephew Sheikh Adi ibn Abu'l Barakat, who together with other Yazidi preachers spread the teaching of his ancestor. Yazidi sacred texts are focused on Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir.
In Yazidism, Sheikh Adi's birth is described as a moment of divine significance and Yazidis use the term "revealed himself" rather than "was born" to describe his coming into the world, in reflection of the Yazidi belief that Sheikh Adi is an incarnation of God. Thus, his birthplace of Bait Far is described in Yazidi sacred texts as the place "where Sheikh Adi revealed himself." Yazidi tradition understands Sheikh Adi's life as the earthly manifestation of a divine being, who arrived in the world already bearing divine essence ("surr").
The hymn of Qasīdā Safā Waqtī (The Time of Mine Has Been Purified) preserves an account of Sheikh Adi's miraculous birth and opens with Sheikh Adi's own words: "My time has been purified, and I reached the highest level / Even in the womb, I was brought up / My true Sheikh came to my rescue." It continues: "In this house I am blessing and surr" and "When I was born, forty men of perfect men were with me". The term surr carries specific meaning in Yazidi religious usage: the power of God, divine magic, or secret thought.
A story about Sheikh Adi's miraculous birth is preserved in Yazidi tradition and Arabic hagiographic works. In the Yazidi version, the account begins with Sheikh Adi's father, Musafir, who lived in Baalbek with his family. The angel Jibrail appeared to him in a dream and told him to go to the mountain of Baalbek and spend time there in prayer and devotion, after which God would reveal Himself in his family. Sheikh Musafir went to a cave on the mountain and remained there for a long time in prayer. When he returned home and knocked at the door, his wife did not open it. She said to him: "Go to the hill and spend the night there until morning, so that the people of Sham do not judge wrongly, that she received a stranger at night. And if you have spent many years in prayer and awaiting a divine sign, then a sign you must receive."
Sheikh Musafir went to the hill and asked God for a sign. By God's will he called out: "I, Sheikh Musafir of Sham, have spent a long time in a cave in prayer and devotion, and in my family God will manifest Himself." The people of the neighborhood gathered before his house to bow before him and congratulate him. The divine essence, surr, descended upon the wife of Musafir and she conceived.
Six months into the pregnancy, two holy men, Sheikh Aqil and Sheikh Muslim learned that God was about to manifest Himself. They came to Baalbek and saw at a spring a woman spinning wool. Sheikh Aqil said to Sheikh Muslim: "Look at this woman. When she inhales and exhales, a radiance appears and disappears from her mouth and around her head. I am certain that this is the surr of God within her." In the Yazidi version of the tradition, the two holy men greeted the woman but she did not respond and turned away. The two holy men understood that the surr had not yet fully manifested. After three months, Sheikh Adi revealed himself, completing a nine-month gestation of divine significance.
When Sheikh Adi was seven years old, children were playing a ball game in the Levant known as kasho, a game similar to polo. Sheikh Adi was the most skilled among them. Sheikh Aqil and Sheikh Muslim were watching from the field when one of the players seized the ball and cried out: "Hola hola Sultan Ezida!" ("Glory, glory to Sultan Ezid!"). Sheikh Aqil said to Sheikh Muslim: "That is him!" They approached the child and greeted him. He answered their greeting three times. They asked why three times. He replied: "The first greeting I gave because I could not respond from my mother's womb. The second I now give on behalf of my mother, who could not answer when you greeted her. The third I give now."
A version of the same narrative is recorded in Qalāʾid al-Jawāhir, an Arabic hagiographic work on Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani, who was Sheikh Adi's contemporary and associate, which records: his father Musafir spent forty years in the forest, after which a voice in a dream told him to return to his wife, for "God will give you a saint and he will become famous." When Sheikh Adi's mother was pregnant, two Sufi masters, Sheikh Muslim and Sheikh Aqil, passed her near a spring. Sheikh Muslim said to Sheikh Aqil: "A shining light comes from the belly of this woman and reaches heaven", declaring: "This is our son Adi! Let us greet him!" and greeted the unborn child "Greetings to you, oh ʿAdī! Greetings, O holy God!". When he was seven years old they returned and greeted him, and he answered their greeting three times. When asked why three times, he replied once for the present greeting and twice for the greetings they had offered him while he was still unborn, and that only out of respect for Jesus son of Mary did he not answer from the womb. When he had grown up, he heard a voice in a dream: "Get up, ʿAdī, go to Lalish, that is your place. And God will revive many dead hearts with your hands."
Ancestry & Lineage The genealogy and ethnic origins of Sheikh Adi have been a matter of scholarly dispute since the medieval period, with Islamic sources, Yazidi sources, and modern scholarship offering differing and sometimes contradictory accounts.
Ethnicity Western scholarship widely identifies Sheikh Adi as being an Arab of Umayyad ancestry. Birgül Açikyildiz describes Sheikh Adi as "an Arab from the Umayyad dynasty with Kurdish blood running in his veins". This identification has, however, been disputed by other scholars.
Regarding his ethnicity, according to Adnan Zeyan Farhan and Qader Saleem Shamo, Kurdish and Orientalist scholars "generally agree" that Sheikh Adi was Kurdish in origin, and that his ancestors came from the Hakkari mountains, identified in the sources as Jabal Dasin. The Kurdish historian Anwar al-Mawi records that Sheikh Adi's ancestors were forced to leave the Hakkari mountains and take refuge in the Levant, and other Yazidi researchers support this position with the argument that if his ancestors had not been from that region, its population would not have gathered around him upon his arrival at Lalish in such great numbers and with such eagerness, nor would he have been given the title al-Hakkari.
Ibn al-Mustawfi al-Arbili, drawing on contemporary sources, believed Sheikh Adi was "from the Kurds of the Levant," drawing on the account of Sheikh Adi's own nephew that his home village of Bayt al-Far was located in a region of the Levant known as Shuf al-Akrad, meaning "Shuf of the Kurds" in Arabic.
Farhan and Shamo further note that some medieval sources record that Sheikh Adi spoke Kurdish, and that most of the historians who personally witnessed, saw, or met him, including Ibn Khallikan, Ibn al-Mustawfi al-Arbili, Muzaffar al-Din al-Arbili, and Ibn al-Arabi, confirm his Kurdish origin.
The biographer al-Safadi (1296–1363) refers to Sheikh Adi as al-Kurdi while also noting his Hakkari nisba and Levantine birthplace. Ibn Kathir (1300–1374) traces his lineage as "Sheikh Adi bin Musafir bin Ismail bin Musa bin Marwan bin Al-Hasan bin Marwan al-Hakkari," connecting him to the Hakkari.
A 14th-century Persian biographical source by the medieval historian and genealogist Ibn Enbah, Al-Fusul al-Fakhriyya, lists Sheikh Adi explicitly among notable Kurdish figures alongside other prominent Kurds of the era and describes him as being from the Hakkari region. His Kurdish lineage is also corroborated by the historian Ismail Pasha al-Baghdadi in his book Clarifying the Hidden (in Arabic).
A hagiographic account in Qalāʾid al-Jawāhir, a biography of Sheikh Adi's contemporary and associate Abdul Qadir Gilani, records an episode in which Sheikh Adi is said to have relieved the suffering of a deceased man through prayer. According to the account, after the man's torment had ceased, Sheikh Adi approached the grave and addressed him in Kurdish, asking, "O Husain, khoshā khoshā?" ("Are you well?"). The man replied from within the grave that he was well and that the torment had been lifted from him.
Al-Dhahabi (1274–1348), in his Siyar Aʿlam al-Nubalāʾ, identifies Sheikh Hasan, son of Sheikh Adi's grandnephew, with the nisba of al-Kurdi as Ibn Adi Hassan bin Adi bin Abi al-Barakat al-Kurdi.
Umayyad lineage Of the twenty-five medieval Islamic writers surveyed in modern scholarship covering the medieval through early modern period, only five attribute Umayyad ancestry to Sheikh Adi, all of whom wrote centuries after his death. The earliest historian to introduce the Umayyad designation was al-Shatnufi (died 1314), followed by al-Maqrizi (died 1441), Ibn Taghribirdi (died 1470), al-Tadafi al-Hanbali (died 1565), and al-Sha'rani (died 1565).