Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir
Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir is the historical founder-saint at the heart of Yezidism. Born in the 1070s at Bait Far near Baalbek in the Beqaa valley, of a family reputed to descend from the Umayyads, he studied Sufism in Baghdad before withdrawing in the early twelfth century to the remote valley of Lalish north of Mosul. There he established the ʿAdawiyya order and gathered the community of followers whose fusion of his teaching with older local religious traditions produced the Yezidi faith. He died at Lalish about 1162, and his domed tomb remains the central Yezidi shrine and the focus of pilgrimage. In Yezidi sacred poetry the historical ascetic is wholly transfigured into a divine being: he is the second of the three hypostases of the one God, alongside Tawûsî Melek and Sultan Ezid, and is repeatedly identified as an earthly manifestation of the Peacock Angel himself.
Domains
- founding of the yezidi community
- sanctity of lalish
Powers
- to gather and found the community of disciples from whom the Yezidis descend
Epithets
Relations
- subordinate to: Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock AngelAs the second person of the divine triad he is treated in Yezidi tradition as a manifestation of the Peacock Angel, who heads the Heptad.Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Khalil Jindy Rashow, 'God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect: Sacred Poems and Religious Narratives from the Yezidi Tradition', Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2005. (secondary)
Sources
- Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir was a twelfth-century Sufi (c. 1075–1162) who settled at Lalish, founded the ʿAdawiyya order, and is venerated in Yezidism as a divine hypostasis and manifestation of Tawûsî Melek.: Christine Allison, 'Yazidis i. General', Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2004. (secondary); Birgül Açıkyıldız, 'The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion', I.B. Tauris, London, 2010. (secondary)