Shah Ismail of the Safavid Empire

He invited the Arab Shia clerics to establish their religious movement in the newly created Safavid Empire in the fifteen century. Almost all of the clerics did not respond to the king except one, the Lebanese Shi'i cleric, Ali al-Karaki al-Amili, who visited Iran multiple times and finally settled there.

Here's the reasoning provided in the book as to why the Arab Shi'i clerics declined Safavid King's invitation

The great majority of Arab Shi’i clerics held firm to the traditional Shi’i refusal to serve any government, even one that claimed to be Shi’i, in the absence of the Hidden Imam. Others were put off by the extremist manifestations of Safavid Shi’ism.

They objected to the deification of Ismail, the practice of prostration before the king – a practice they believed should be reserved for prayer before God alone – the cavalier attitude towards the precepts of the Sharia (Islamic law), such as the prohibition on drinking wine, and the ritual cursing of the first three caliphs of Islam who, in the eyes of the Shi’a, had usurped the office that rightly belonged to the Imam Ali.

Ismail had officials go through the streets carrying axes over their shoulders and crying out: ‘Cursed be Abu Bakr! Cursed be Omar! Cursed be Uthman!’ – the names of the first three caliphs. Anyone who heard this was obliged, on pain of death, to express their approval. Arab Shi’i clerics feared that this practice would provoke retaliation against Shi’a living under Sunni regimes. Ismail does seem to have made some attempt to distance himself from the extremism of his Qizilbash followers.

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