A R T I K E L : ʿAdī b. Musāfir, Shaykh - - - zu den Jesiden / Yeziden / Yazīdīs / Êzîdî ئێزیدی / Eziden - - - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE: Shaykh ʿAdī b. Musāfir al-Hakkārī (d. c.557/1162) was an Arab ascetic of Umayyad descent who settled in the Kurdish mountains of Iraq around 505/1111, founded the ʿAdawiyya ṭarīqa (Ṣūfī order, lit. “way”), and became the central, highly venerated figure of the Kurdish Yazīdiyya. The Yazīdīs are a religious sect found in parts of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Armenia, the Caucasus, and Iran. Their religion is a combination of Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Jewish, Nestorian Christian, and Islamic elements. They claim to be descended from supporters of the Umayyad caliph Yazīd I (r. 60–4/680–3), who was noted for his suppression of a rebellion led by Ḥusayn, the son of ʿAlī, and they believe that they have been created separately from the rest of mankind. Contrary to the Yazīdī claim regarding the antiquity of their religion, historians hold that the sect was founded on the teachings of ʿAdī b. Musāfir—albeit carried to the extreme and integrated with doctrines and ceremonials practised by neighbouring Christian and Muslim sects of the seventh/thirteenth to eighth/fourteenth century. Shaykh ʿAdī was born near Baʿlabakk, in present-day Lebanon. After a period of study in Baghdad with ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (470–561/1077 or 1078–1166, traditionally held to be the founder of the Qādirī Ṣūfī order), with Abū l-Najīb ʿAbd al-Qāhir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Suhrawardī (c. 490–563/1097–1168), author of Ādāb al-Murīdīn, one of the best known compilation of rules of conduct for the Ṣūfī novice, with the allegedly illiterate Baghdadi shaykh Ḥammād al-Dabbās (d. 525/1130–1), and with other Ṣūfī masters, he dedicated himself to long periods of wandering in the wilderness of northern Iraq, where he continued his training under local masters. Finally, he established a zāwiya (monastic complex) in the valley of Lālish (50 kilometres north-northeast of Mosul), in a mountainous region inhabited by the Hakkārī Kurds, and became the head of a Ṣūfī community there. He gained a reputation for piety, extreme poverty, asceticism, and miraculous powers, among both local villagers and distant Ṣūfīs and Christian monks (local Nestorians attempted to identify Shaykh ʿAdī with the legendary Christian apostle Addaï, a missionary in Mesopotamia). Shaykh ʿAdī died an old man, in about 557/1162. Having no son of his own, he bequeathed the zāwiya to his nephew, Ṣakhr Abū l-Barakāt. ʿAdawī communities had been established also in Syria and in Cairo (with a zāwiya in al-Qarāfa) but seem to have dissolved in the tenth/sixteenth century. Shaykh ʿAdī’s extant works, all in Arabic, include four manuscript tracts—which enjoin strict adherence to the sharīʿa, abstinence, lengthy prayer, and the avoidance of “innovative” theological doctrine—as well as some Ṣūfī poetry. Under the leadership of the fourth head of the ʿAdawiyya ṭarīqa, Ḥasan b. ʿAdī b. Abī l-Barakāt, the followers of the ṭarīqa in Iraq alienated themselves from the surrounding Muslim population and tradition, incurring the criticism of, among others, the renowned theologian Ibn Taymiyya (661–728/1263–1328). They cultivated an extravagant veneration of Shaykh ʿAdī and an absolute reliance on his shafāʿa (power of “intercession” with God), as well as the glorification of the caliph Yazīd and belief in the transmigration of souls and in various divine and angelic beings. Shaykh Ḥasan was executed in 644/1246–7 by the Zangid ruler of Mosul, Badr al-Dīn Luʾluʾ (r. 631–57/1234–59), who also had Shaykh ʿAdī’s grave, in Lālish, desecrated. It was repaired, burnt down in 817/1414–5 by Sunnī zealots, and rebuilt. It is the most important centre of the Yazīdīs, their equivalent of the qibla. The tomb encompasses a cave, a sacred spring (named Zamzam, after the well located in the al-Ḥarām mosque in Mecca, twenty metres east of the Kaʿba), and graves claimed to be those of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (21–109/642–728, a deeply pious and ascetic Muslim, who was one of the most important religious figures in early Islam), and other pivotal figures of the Ṣūfī tradition. An annual autumn festival, during which a symbolic bier of the shaykh is brought out and washed in the sacred spring, is held there. The spring is the site of the baptism of all Yazīdī children. Barren couples wishing for a child make special visits to the shrine of the shaykh, while those suffering from various other disorders seek the shaykh’s healing power at the nearby graves of his companions and friends. Yazīdīs, wishing to dissociate themselves from Islam altogether, currently minimise the role of Shaykh Adī to that of a mere reformer of their religion, one who introduced Islamic and Arabic elements into it. Daniella J. Talmon-Heller ______________________ Bibliography A. S. Tritton, ʿAdī b. Musāfir, EI2; ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athir, al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkh (Beirut 1966), 11:289 Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya fī l-taʾrīkh (Beirut 1993), 12:302 al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ and Muḥammad Naʿīm al-Arqasūsī (Beirut 1984–5), 20:342–4 Ibn al-Mustawfī, Taʾrīkh Irbil, ed. Sāmī b. al-Sayyid Khammās al-Ṣaqqār (Baghdad 1980), 1:114–5 al-Maqrīzī, al-Sulūk fī maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, ed. Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-ʿĀshūr (Cairo 1972), 4:292–4 Ibn al-ʿImad, Shadharāt al-dhahab, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ and Maḥmūd al-Arnāʾūṭ (Beirut 1991), 6:300–1 Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut 1977), 3:254–5 Philip G. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism. Its background, observances and textual tradition, Lewiston NY 1995 Philip G. Kreyenbroek, Yazīdī, EI2; Zourabi A. Aloiane, Re-construction of Šayḫ ʿAdī b. Musāfir’s biography on the basis of Arabic and Kurdish sources, The Arabist (Budapest) 18 (1996), 95–104 John S. Guest, Survival among the Kurds. A history of the Yezidis, London and New York 1993 Eszter Spät, The Yezidis, London 2005. ______ aus: EI³ / EI Three referenceworks.brillonline/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/adi-b-musafir-shaykh-COM_23655?s.num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaedia-of-islam-3&s.q=Yezidi
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 16:14:49 +0000
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