Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir

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Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir (Kurdish: شیخادی, romanized: Şîxadî, Arabic: شيخ عدي; 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...

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