Tasawwuf

Abdul Qadir Gilani (c. 1077-1166 CE) was a Hanbali jurist and preacher of Baghdad whose sermons drew large audiences and whose works combine legal instruction with spiritual counsel. The Qadiriyya order was organised around his memory by his sons after his death.

Baha al-Din Naqshband of Bukhara (1318-1389 CE) gave his name to the Naqshbandi order, one of the most widespread in Islam. His insistence on silent remembrance and his rejection of music, retreat and distinctive dress set the order apart from every other Sufi path of his age.

Baha al-Din Zakariya (d. 1262 or 1265 CE) was sent from Baghdad to Multan by his master Umar Suhrawardi and, with Jalal al-Din Tabrizi, established the Suhrawardi order in the Indian subcontinent. The record of his life is thin, and this article says what it carries.

Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi (1165-1240 CE) was an Andalusian mystic whose writings, above all al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya and Fusus al-Hikam, form the most influential and most disputed body of speculative thought in Islamic mysticism.

Mu'in al-Din Hasan Sijzi (d. 1236 CE) settled at Ajmer in Rajasthan and is held by the Chishti order to be its founder in India. His shrine became the most visited Muslim sanctuary in the subcontinent, though the early record of his life is thinner than his fame suggests.

Nizam al-Din Awliya (1239-1325 CE) was the Chishti master whose hospice outside Delhi became the centre of Sufi life in the subcontinent. He outlived a dozen sultans, defended the practice of sama before the court, and admitted Hindus to his assemblies without requiring conversion.

Four Sufi orders shaped religious life in the Indian subcontinent: the Chishti, Naqshbandi, Qadiri and Suhrawardi. This article traces how they functioned there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how initiation into several orders at once weakened the identity of each.