Adi ibn Musafir was from the Umayyad dynasty, born around 1075 in a village known as Bait Far, near Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.
[1] The region was very dangerous and isolated at the time, as many Kurds had not converted to Islam and were hostile to outsiders, especially Muslims.
By the time that Adawiyya became Yazidism and stopped accepting religious converts, virtually all Adawis were Kurdish.
[13] Adi ibn Musafir died in January 1162, and his tomb in Lalish became a shrine for his followers.
Under Sheikh Hasan, Adawiyya began to shift more towards the heterodox practices and diverge from Islam, although Adawis continued to identify as Sunni Muslims.
Ibn Taymiyya had accused Sheikh Hasan of turning the respect for Yazid into an extreme reverence.
[24] Badr al-Din Lu'lu', an Armenian slave who became Zengid ruler of Mosul, had worried of a possible Adawi uprising and arrested Sheikh Hasan in 1246.
[26] Sheikh Hasan was succeeded by his son, Sharafuddin ibn al-Hasan, who died in 1258 during a Mongol massacre on Adawis.
[27] Zaynuddin, the son of Sharafuddin, refused to lead the Adawis due to Mongol hostility, and instead settled in Damascus before moving to his ancestral Beqaa Valley, and later Egypt, where he died.
[28][23] The tensions between Adawis and other Muslims, and the alienation of Adawiyya from Islam, led to an eventual religious schism.
[48] Yazidi tradition also claimed that Ezdina Mir had met Sheikh Adi when he first went to Lalish.
[49][50] Sheikh Mand, the son of Fakhruddin, also emerged as the ruler of the Yazidi-Ayyubid Emirate of Kilis, and an Ayyubid military commander.
[54] Many believed that Sultan Ezid was simply a Kurdification of Yazid ibn Muawiyah, although the Yazidis denied it, regardless of their similarities.
[55] However, Yazidis continued to revere Yazid ibn Muawiyah, although much quieter after being incorporated into Shia-majority Iraq.
Later, Ismail Beg Chol, a Yezidi Mir, claimed that one day Muhammad was unwell and asked Muawiyah to shave his head.