ABSTRACT
The Naqshbandiyya derives its name from Baha’uddin Naqshband, the epithet of the fourteenth-century spiritual master Muhammad al-Uwaysi of Bukhara. It is a combination of the Persian words naqsh and band, meaning impressing the divine name Allah and fixing it to the heart. Like in many other Sufi brotherhoods, though, it was the disciples of the eponym, foremost among them the charismatic ‘Ala’uddin ‘Attar and the scholarly Muhammad Parsa, and to some extent, the younger Ya‘qub Charkhi, who actually laid the foundations of the new path while evoking the name of the master as a source of legitimization.
