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Baha' al-Din Naqshband

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Baha' al-Din Naqshband
Bahaouddin Naqshbandi mausoleum entrance 3.JPG
The mausoleum of Baha al-Din Naqshband in Bukhara, now present-day Uzbekistan
BornMarch 1318
Qasr-i Hinduvan, Chagatai Khanate
Died2 March 1389
Qasr-i Hinduvan, Timurid Empire

Baha' al-Din Naqshband (Persian: بهاءالدین محمد نقشبند; 1318–1389) was the eponymous founder of what would become one of the largest Sufi Sunni orders, the Naqshbandi.[1]

Background

Baha al-Din was born in March 1318 in the village of Qasr-i Hinduvan, which was one farsakh from the city of Bukhara.[1][2] Like the majority of the sedentary population of the region, Baha al-Din was a Tajik, i.e. a speaker of Persian and a participant in its culture.[2] According to H. Algar / Encyclopædia Iranica, the texts that claim Baha al-Din was descended from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through Ja'far al-Sadiq (died 765), should be "treated with reserve". Early texts do not mention Baha al-Din's supposed ancestry to Muhammad, but they do imply that his teacher Amir Kulal (died 1370) was a descendant of Muhammad through Ja'far al-Sadiq, which may suggest that their genealogies were later mixed up.[1]

On the other hand Annemarie Schimmel highlights the descent of Bahauddin from Hasan al Askari, referring to Khwaja Mir Dard's family and "many nobles, from Bukhara; they led their pedigree back to Baha`uddin Naqshband, after whom the Naqshbandi order is named, and who was a descendent, in the 13th generation of the 11th Shia imam al-Hasan al-Askari".[3]

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Bukhara

Bukhara

Bukhara is the seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan, with a population of 280,187 as of 1 January 2020, and the capital of Bukhara Region.

Encyclopædia Iranica

Encyclopædia Iranica

Encyclopædia Iranica is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times.

Muhammad

Muhammad

Muhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets within Islam. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis of Islamic religious belief.

Ja'far al-Sadiq

Ja'far al-Sadiq

Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Ṣādiq, commonly known as Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, was an 8th-century Shia Muslim scholar, jurist, and theologian. He was the founder of the Jaʿfarī school of Islamic jurisprudence and the sixth Imam of the Twelver and Ismāʿīlī denominations of Shīʿa Islam. The traditions (ḥadīth) recorded from al-Ṣādiq and his predecessor, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Bāqir, are said to be more numerous than all the ḥadīth reports preserved from the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the other Shīʿīte Imams combined. Among other theological contributions, he elaborated the doctrine of nass and isma, as well as that of taqiya.

Amir Kulal

Amir Kulal

Amir Kulāl (1278–1370), Persian: امیر کلال, Arabic: امیر کلال, birth name Shams ud-Dīn, was a Persian Sufi Islamic scholar, widely considered to be one of the most influential in history. He was a member of the mystical Khajagan order. His father was the Sufi scholar Saif ud-Dīn Hamza, a sayyid descendant of Prophet Muhammad. Saif ud-Dīn Hamza was amir (chieftain) of the Persian Kulal-Tribe, his full title being Amir-i-Kulal. After his father's death, Shams ud-Dīn became the amir and head of the tribe. By this time his reputation as a scholar and religious figure had spread through Chagatai Khanate and the title Amir-i-Kulal, had become his common name. Because he made earthenware, he was popularly referred to as “Kulāl”, which means "potter" in Persian.

Annemarie Schimmel

Annemarie Schimmel

Annemarie Schimmel was an influential German Orientalist and scholar who wrote extensively on Islam, especially Sufism. She was a professor at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992.

Hasan al-Askari

Hasan al-Askari

Hasan ibn Ali ibn Muhammad, better known as Hasan al-Askari, was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is regarded as the eleventh of the Twelve Imams, succeeding his father, Ali al-Hadi. Hasan Al-Askari was born in Medina in 844 and brought with his father to the garrison town of Samarra in 848, where the Abbasid caliphs held them under close surveillance until their deaths, even though neither were politically active. After the death of al-Hadi in 868, the majority of his following acknowledged his son, al-Askari, as their next Imam. Al-Askari's contact with the Shia population was restricted by the caliphs and instead he communicated with his followers through a network of representatives. He died in Samarra in 873-874 at the age of about twenty-eight and was buried in the family home next to his father, which later developed into al-Askari shrine, a major center for Shia pilgrimage. Shia sources commonly hold the Abbasids responsible for the death of al-Askari and his father. A well-known early Shia commentary of the Quran is attributed to al-Askari.

Khwaja Mir Dard

Khwaja Mir Dard

Khwaja Mir Dard (1720-1785) was a poet of the Delhi School and a Sufi saint of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddadi religious order.

Life

Three days after his birth, Baha al-Din was adopted as a spiritual son by Baba Mohammad Sammasi, a master of the Khwajagan, a Sufi order founded by Yusuf Hamadani (died 1140). It was Baha al-Din's paternal grandfather who brought him to Sammasi, as he was a murid (novice) of the latter.[4][1] Sammasi later entrusted Baha al-Din's training to his distinguished student Amir Kulal.[1]

Early texts do not mention how Baha al-Din gained the nickname "Naqshband", nor its meaning. An agreement was later partly reached that it referred to the naqsh (imprint) of the name of Allah that is firm in the heart through constant and continuous prayer. In Bukhara, Baha al-Din more practically became its patron saint and was commonly referred to as "Khwaja Bala-gardan" by its inhabitants. Amongst the members of the present-day Naqshbandi order, particularly in Turkey, Baha al-Din is known as "Shah-e Naqshband."[1]

Some historians agree that the original Naqshbandi had a particularly Iranian or Khurasanian attitude, which according to H. Algar / Encyclopædia Iranica is supported by the fact that Baha al-Din was surrounded by a company of urban dwellers that mostly spoke Tajik. However, the Naqshbandi had also been influenced by Turkic Sufi order, the Yasawiyya, and thus had a Turkic component as well. Three generations after Baha al-Din's death, the Naqshbandi started receiving support among the Turkic inhabitants of Central Asia, thus displaying an all-inclusive appeal.[1]

Baha al-Din died on 2 March 1389 in Qasr-i Hinduvan, which was then renamed Qasr-i Arifan out of respect to him.[1]

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Khwajagan

Khwajagan

Khwājagān is a Persian title for "the Masters". Khwajagan, as the plural for "Khwāja", is often used to refer to a network of Sufis in Central Asia from the 10th to the 16th century who are often incorporated into later Naqshbandi hierarchies, as well as other Sufi groups, such as the Yasaviyya. In Firdowsi's Shahnama the word is used many times for some rulers and heroes of ancient Iran as well. The special zikr of the Khwajagan is called 'Khatm Khajagan'.

Yusuf Hamadani

Yusuf Hamadani

Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf al-Hamadānī, best simply known as Yusuf Hamadani, was a Persian Sufi of the Middle Ages. He was the first of the group of Central Asian Sufi teachers known simply as Khwajagan of the Naqshbandi order. His shrine is at Merv, Turkmenistan.

Murid

Murid

In Sufism, a murīd is a novice committed to spiritual enlightenment by sulūk under a spiritual guide, who may take the title murshid, pir or shaykh. A sālik or Sufi follower only becomes a murīd when he makes a pledge (bayʿah) to a murshid. The equivalent Persian term is shāgird.

Amir Kulal

Amir Kulal

Amir Kulāl (1278–1370), Persian: امیر کلال, Arabic: امیر کلال, birth name Shams ud-Dīn, was a Persian Sufi Islamic scholar, widely considered to be one of the most influential in history. He was a member of the mystical Khajagan order. His father was the Sufi scholar Saif ud-Dīn Hamza, a sayyid descendant of Prophet Muhammad. Saif ud-Dīn Hamza was amir (chieftain) of the Persian Kulal-Tribe, his full title being Amir-i-Kulal. After his father's death, Shams ud-Dīn became the amir and head of the tribe. By this time his reputation as a scholar and religious figure had spread through Chagatai Khanate and the title Amir-i-Kulal, had become his common name. Because he made earthenware, he was popularly referred to as “Kulāl”, which means "potter" in Persian.

Allah

Allah

Allah is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh, which means "the god", and is linguistically related to the Aramaic words Elah and Syriac ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlāhā) and the Hebrew word El (Elohim) for God.

Patron saint

Patron saint

A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, or Eastern Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person.

Turkey

Turkey

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq to the southeast; Syria and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; the Aegean Sea to the west; and Greece and Bulgaria to the northwest. Cyprus is off the south coast. Most of the country's citizens are ethnic Turks, while Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city; Istanbul is its largest city and main financial centre.

Greater Khorasan

Greater Khorasan

Greater Khorāsān, or Khorāsān, is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plateau between Western and Central Asia. The name Khorāsān is Persian meaning "where the sun arrives from" or "the Eastern Province". The name was first given to the eastern province of Persia during the Sasanian Empire and was used from the late Middle Ages in distinction to neighbouring Transoxiana. Greater Khorasan is today sometimes used to distinguish the larger historical region from the former Khorasan Province of Iran (1906–2004), which roughly encompassed the western half of the historical Greater Khorasan.

Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which are colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as the countries all have names ending with the Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of". The current geographical location of Central Asia was formerly part of the historic region of Turkestan, also known as Turan.

Source: "Baha' al-Din Naqshband", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, February 10th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baha'_al-Din_Naqshband.

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References
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Algar 1988a, pp. 433–435.
  2. ^ a b Soucek 2000, p. 137.
  3. ^ Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Century Muslim India” p.32, Annemarie Schimmel
  4. ^ Algar 1988b, pp. 294–295.
Sources
  • Algar, H. (1988a). "Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband". Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, Vol. III, Fasc. 4. New York. pp. 433–435.
  • Algar, H. (1988b). "Bābā Sammāsī". Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, Vol. III, Fasc. 3. New York. pp. 294–295.
  • Soucek, Svat (2000). A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521657044.
Further reading

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