Ghulat in the context of "Kufa"

Alawites (Arabic: العلويون, romanized: al-ʿAlawiyyūn) are an ethnoreligious group who live primarily in the Levant region in West Asia and follow Alawism, an offshoot of Shia Islam as a ghulat branch during the ninth century. Alawites venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, the "first Imam" in the Twelver school, as a manifestation of the divine essence. It is the only ghulat sect still in existence today. The group was founded during the ninth century by Ibn Nusayr, who was a disciple of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al-Hadi, and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al-Askari. For this reason, Alawites are also called Nusayris, although this term can be considered derogatory in the present day.

Surveys suggest Alawites represent an important portion of the Syrian population and are a significant minority in the Hatay Province of Turkey and northern Lebanon. There is also a population living in the village of Ghajar in the Golan Heights, where there had been two other Alawite villages (Ayn Fit and Za'ura) before the Six-Day War. The Alawites form the dominant religious group on the Syrian coast and towns near the coast, which are also inhabited by Sunnis, Christians, and Ismailis. They are often confused with the Alevis, a religious group in Turkey that shares certain similarities with the Alawites but has key differences.

Rajʿa (Arabic: رجعة, lit. 'return'), also known as ḥashr khāṣṣ (lit. 'specific resurrection'), is a doctrine in Shia Islam positing that some of the dead will return to life before the Resurrection to avenge their oppression.

In Twelver Shia doctrine, the concept of rajʿa is closely intertwined with the eschatological concept of occultation (ghayba) and the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi in the end times to establish peace and justice on earth. This doctrine, which was elaborated in the early 10th century by the then emerging Twelver sect, goes back on earlier ideas developed by early Shia sects such as the late 7th-century Kaysāniyya and the early 9th-century Wāqifiyya, who denied the deaths of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya (died 700) and Musa al-Kazim (died 799) and awaited their return. The doctrine was also current among the 8th/9th-century Shias known as ghulāt (lit. 'exaggerators'), whose elaboration of the idea may have influenced early Twelver scholars.

Shaykh Haydar or Sheikh Haydar (Persian: شیخ حیدر Shaikh Ḥaidar; 1459–9 July 1488) was the successor of his father (Shaykh Junayd) as leader of the Safavid order from 1460 to 1488. Haydar maintained the policies and political ambitions initiated by his father. Under Sheikh Haydar, the order became crystallized as a political movement with an increasingly extremist heterodox Twelver Shi'i coloring and Haydar was viewed as a divine figure by his followers. 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".

Haydar soon came into conflict with the Shirvanshahs, as well as the Ak Koyunlu, who were allied to the former. 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. In a pitched battled that ensued, Shaykh Haydar and his men were defeated and killed. He was succeeded by his son Soltan-Ali as leader of the order. Soltan-Ali was on his part succeeded by Haydar's younger son, who would become the founder of the Safavid dynasty, and known by his regnal name of Ismail I.