[2] Shaykh Haydar was responsible for instructing his followers to adopt the scarlet headgear of 12 gores commemorating The Twelve Imams, which led to them being designated by the Turkish term Qizilbash "Red Head".

Following several campaigns into the North Caucasus, mainly in Circassia and Dagestan, he and his men were eventually trapped in 1488 at Tabasaran by the combined forces of the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar and Ya'qub Beg of the Ak Koyunlu.

[1] Haydar's only surviving sister, Shah-Pasha Khatun, was married off to Mohammad Beg Talish, a pivotal figure in the foundation of the Safavid dynasty in the early 16th century.

[1] In 1469-70, Haydar was installed in Ardabil by his uncle Uzun Hassan, who had defeated Jahan Shah of Kara Koyunlu dynasty at the Battle of Chapakchur and established his own authority over its former domains.

[1] In around 1473-3, Haydar and his men performed their first seaborne attack on Dagestan, during which they plundered the predominantly Circassian-inhabited town of Qaytaq as well as the Hamiri plain.

[5] In Tabasaran, outside the Bayqird Castle, Haydar and his men were cornered; in the ensuing pitched battle, on 9 July 1488, they were killed by the combined forces of the Shirvanshah ruler Farrukh Yassar and the Ak Koyunlu Sultan Ya'qub ibn Uzun Hassan.

[7][8][5] In 1473, he married a daughter of Shaykh Farid al-din Jafar b. Khvajeh Ali, the paternal uncle of his father.

[1] He would serve as an official at the Safavid shrine located in Ardabil during the reign of his half-brother and future king Ismail I.

[1] Haydar's eldest daughter, Fakhr-Jahan Khanum, was given in marriage to Bayram Beg Qaramanlu (d. 1514) a powerful tribal leader.