ABSTRACT
The origins of the Naqshbandiyya lie in the mystical tradition of the Great Masters – the Khwajagan – which flourished during the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries in the oases of Central Asia. From there it spread westward to Anatolia, eastward to what is now Chinese Turkistan, and southward to the Indian subcontinent. Here at the beginning of the seventeenth century it gave rise to its major offshoot, the Mujaddidiyya, which produced its own missionaries. These carried the message to the Turkish and Arab lands, as well as back to Central Asia. In the early nineteenth century the Khalidi offshoot of the Mujaddidiyya was established in the Ottoman Empire and further extended the geographical boundaries of the brotherhood to such remote areas as the Caucasus and Indonesia, and later to Western Europe and North America. The Naqshbandi tradition looms large at the background of such diverse modern Islamic movements as the Jadidi trend in the Muslim lands under Russian rule, the Ulama Council in colonial and postcolonial India, and the Salvation Party in Turkey.1
