Silsila

The following is a list of notable Sufi orders or schools (tariqa).

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.

ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib was the last Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, the successor state to the Islamic prophet Muhammad's political dominions. He is considered by Shia Muslims to be the first Imam, the rightful religious and political successor to Muhammad. The issue of succession caused a major rift between Muslims and divided them into two major branches: Shia following an appointed hereditary leadership among Ali's descendants, and Sunni following political dynasties. Ali's assassination in the Grand Mosque of Kufa by a Kharijite coincided with the rise of the Umayyad Caliphate. The Imam Ali Shrine and the city of Najaf were built around Ali's tomb and it is visited yearly by millions of devotees.

The Chishtī Order is a tariqa, an order or school within the mystic Sufi tradition of Sunni Islam. The Chishti Order is known for its emphasis on love, tolerance, and openness. It began with Abu Ishaq Shami in Chisht, a small town near Herat, Afghanistan about 930 AD.

The Suhrawardiyya is a Sufi order founded by Abu al-Najib Suhrawardi. Lacking a centralised structure, it eventually divided into various branches. The order was especially prominent in India. The ideology of the Suhrawardiyya was inspired by Junayd of Baghdad a Persian scholar and mystic from Baghdad.

South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. As commonly conceptualised, South Asia consists of the countries of Bangladesh,Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, with some neighbouring territories, such as Afghanistan, also sometimes included.

Abu Bakr Abdullah ibn Uthman Abi Quhafa was the senior companion and was, through his daughter Aisha, a father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, as well as the first Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate. He is known with the honorific title "al-Siddiq" by Sunni Muslims.

In the context of the recitation of the Quran, tajwīd is a set of rules for the correct pronunciation of the letters with all their qualities and applying the various traditional methods of recitation (Qira'at). In Arabic, the term tajwīd is derived from the verb جود, from the triliteral root ج-و-د‎ (j-w-d), meaning enhancement or to make something excellent. Technically, it means giving every letter its right in reciting the Qur'an.

Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centered around the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam, called Muslims, number approximately 1.9 billion globally and are the world's second-largest religious population after Christians.

Ḥadīth or Athar refers to what most Muslims and the mainstream schools of Islamic thought, believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators. In other words, the ḥadīth are transmitted reports attributed to what Muhammad said and did.

Sufism, also known as Tasawwuf, is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ritualism, asceticism and esotericism. It has been variously defined as "Islamic mysticism", "the mystical expression of Islamic faith", "the inward dimension of Islam", "the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam", the "main manifestation and the most important and central crystallization" of mystical practice in Islam, and "the interiorization and intensification of Islamic faith and practice".

Abu Bakr Abdullah ibn Uthman Abi Quhafa was the senior companion and was, through his daughter Aisha, a father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, as well as the first Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate. He is known with the honorific title "al-Siddiq" by Sunni Muslims.

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in a pure form. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver, naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium, and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium.

Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others.

Asceticism is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world for their practices or continue to be part of their society, but typically adopt a frugal lifestyle, characterised by the renunciation of material possessions and physical pleasures, and also spend time fasting while concentrating on the practice of religion or reflection upon spiritual matters. Various individuals have also attempted an ascetic lifestyle to free themselves from addictions, some of them particular to modern life, such as money, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, entertainment, sex, food, etc.

The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the northwestern provinces and in the Zhongyuan region. According to the 2011 census, China is home to approximately 10.5 million Hui people. The 110,000 Dungan people of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are also considered part of the Hui ethnicity.

Menhuan is a term used by the Hui and Uyghur Muslim populations of China to indicate a Chinese Ṣūfī ṭarīḳa. The leaders of a menhuan, which usually are Ṣūfī Muslim murs̲h̲id ("masters") or walī ("saints"), form a chain of spiritual successors over the ages, known in Arabic as silsilah, which goes back to the order's founder in China, and beyond, toward his teachers in Arabia.

Ma Laichi, also known as Abu 'l-Futūh Ma Laichi, was a Chinese Sufi master, who brought the Khufiyya movement to China and created the Huasi menhuan - the earliest and most important Naqshbandi (نقشبندية，納克什班迪) order in Chinese Muslim history.

Ma Mingxin (1719–1781) was a Chinese Sufi master, the founder of the Jahriyya menhuan.