Nakshbandi

The Naqshbandi (Persian: نقشبندی‎‎) or Naqshbandiyah (Arabic: نقشبندية‎, translit. Naqshbandīyah‎) is a major Sunni spiritual order of Sufism. It was founded by Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari and traces its spiritual lineage to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, through Abu Bakr, the first Caliph and Muhammad's companion. Some Naqshbandi masters trace their lineage through Ali, His son-in-law and the fourth Caliph, in keeping with most other Sufis.

In Sufism, as in any serious Islamic discipline such as jurisprudence (fiqh), Quranic recital (tajwid), and hadith, a disciple must have a master or sheikh from whom to take the knowledge, one who has himself taken it from a master, and so on, in a continuous chain of masters back to Muhammad. According to Carl W. Ernst:

Within the Sufi tradition, the formation of the orders did not immediately produce lineages of master and disciple. There are few examples before the eleventh century of complete lineages going back to the Prophet Muhammad. Yet the symbolic importance of these lineages was immense: they provided a channel to divine authority through master-disciple chains. It was through such chains of masters and disciples that spiritual power and blessings were transmitted to both general and special devotees.

This means that a Sufi master has met and taken the way from a master, and that during his lifetime he has explicitly and verifiably invested the disciple—whether in writing or in front of a number of witnesses—as a fully authorized master (murshid ma’dhun) of the spiritual path to succeeding generations of disciples.

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