Encyclopedia of Islam

Naqshbandi Sufi Order

The Naqshbandiyya Sufis constitute one of the 

world’s most prominent Sufi orders and are known 

best for their active engagement in worldly affairs 

and their rejection of outward signs of religious 

devotion. The order is named after a 14th-century 

mystic and Sufi 

shaykh

 named Baha al-Din al-

Naqshbandi, born in 1317 in the village of Qasr 

al-Arifan near b

Ukhara

 in Central Asia. As an 

infant he was taken under the tutelage of a promi-

nent Sufi master. In his youth he experienced 

visionary revelations and before the age of 20 was 

recognized as a brilliant Islamic scholar. He is 

said to have received training through the spirit—

ruhaniyat—of earlier masters of the lineage, and 

by the mysterious Khidir, a special agent of God 

known to Islamic tradition. Baha al-Din died in 

1389 and was buried in his birthplace.

Through the endowments of successive rulers 

of Bukhara, a khanqah (Sufi hospice), 

madrasa

,

and 

mosqUe

 were added to his tomb site, quickly 

making the area a major learning and pilgrimage 

center. By the end of the 15th century the Naqsh-

bandis had become the dominant Sufi order in 

Central Asia, creating a strand of religious and 

cultural continuity and political influence across 

the geographically and culturally disparate Sunni 

strongholds of the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia, 

and i

ndia

.

The Naqshbandi Sufis consider themselves 

guardians of the practices of m

Uhammad

 and 

his Companions, and trace their lineage back to 

a

bU

  b

akr

 (d. 634), the first 

caliph

. This, they 

claim, informs their highly distinctive practice 

of silent—as opposed to vocal—

dhikr

 (repeated 

invocation in the name of Allah), a practice they 

believe was first given to Abu Bakr by God.

Another distinctive characteristic of the 

Naqshbandi order, made definitive in the 15th 

century by Kwaja Nasiruddin Ubayd Allah Ahrar, 

is the primacy given to the establishment of 

sharia

in Muslim societies. With Ahrar, Naqshbandi 

engagement with political establishments became 

characterized by the shaykhs’ involvement with 

political rulers in concerns of both spiritual and 

mundane importance in order to cause these lead-

ers to establish and enforce the sharia laws.

One of the great Naqshbandi innovators, 

Shaykh  a

hmad

  s

irhindi

 (1564–1624), contrib-

uted substantially to the diffusion of the order 

by establishing the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya 

lineage in India. Another major leader of the 

Naqshbandis was Khalid Shahrazuri, a 19th-cen-

tury Kurd from present-day northern Iraq, who 

initiated a new lineage, the Khalidis. The Khalidi 

branch was influential in the 19th-century Otto-

man Empire, and it continues to be so in contem-

porary t

Urkey

.

The Naqshbandis of Central Asia were actively 

involved in resisting Russian colonization in the 

19th century. Since the 1990s many communities 

in the former republics of Soviet Central Asia have 

been seeking to reconstruct their religious tradi-

tions, which involves recovering Naqshbandi tra-

ditions and histories. In Uzbekistan, for example, 

a recent resurgence of interest in Sufi heritage 

has involved an efflorescence of hagiographic