(“God’s most beautiful names”), composed by the
Egyptian musician Sayyid Makkawi (1924–1997).
Recitations of God’s names have also been posted
as audio files on the Internet.
See also prayer; theology.
Jon Armajani
Further reading: Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muham-
mad al-Tusi al-Ghazali, The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names
of God. Translated by David B. Burrell and Nazih Daher.
(Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1995); Mujtaba
Musavi Lari and Hamid Algar, God and His Attributes
(Qom, Iran: Foundation of Islamic C.P.W., 2000);
Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (Minneapo-
lis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1994); Muhammad ibn Abd
al-Wahhab, Kitab al Tawhid: Essay on the Unicity of Allah
or What Is Due to Allah from His Creatures. Translated by
Ismail al-Faruqi. (Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates: Zayed
Welfare Centre for the New Muslims, 1990).
Naqshbandi Sufi Order
The Naqshbandiyya Sufis constitute one of the
world’s most prominent Sufi orders and are known
best for their active engagement in worldly affairs
and their rejection of outward signs of religious
devotion. The order is named after a 14th-century
mystic and Sufi shaykh named Baha al-Din al-
Naqshbandi, born in 1317 in the village of Qasr
al-Arifan near bUkhara in Central Asia. As an
infant he was taken under the tutelage of a promi-
nent Sufi master. In his youth he experienced
visionary revelations and before the age of 20 was
recognized as a brilliant Islamic scholar. He is
said to have received training through the spirit—
ruhaniyat—of earlier masters of the lineage, and
by the mysterious Khidir, a special agent of God
known to Islamic tradition. Baha al-Din died in
1389 and was buried in his birthplace.
Through the endowments of successive rulers
of Bukhara, a khanqah (Sufi hospice), madrasa,
and mosqUe were added to his tomb site, quickly
making the area a major learning and pilgrimage
center. By the end of the 15th century the Naqsh-
bandis had become the dominant Sufi order in
Central Asia, creating a strand of religious and
cultural continuity and political influence across
the geographically and culturally disparate Sunni
strongholds of the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia,
and india.
The Naqshbandi Sufis consider themselves
guardians of the practices of mUhammad and
his Companions, and trace their lineage back to
abU bakr (d. 634), the first caliph. This, they
claim, informs their highly distinctive practice
of silent—as opposed to vocal—dhikr (repeated
invocation in the name of Allah), a practice they
believe was first given to Abu Bakr by God.
Another distinctive characteristic of the
Naqshbandi order, made definitive in the 15th
century by Kwaja Nasiruddin Ubayd Allah Ahrar,
is the primacy given to the establishment of sharia
in Muslim societies. With Ahrar, Naqshbandi
engagement with political establishments became
characterized by the shaykhs’ involvement with
political rulers in concerns of both spiritual and
mundane importance in order to cause these lead-
ers to establish and enforce the sharia laws.
One of the great Naqshbandi innovators,
Shaykh ahmad sirhindi (1564–1624), contrib-
uted substantially to the diffusion of the order
by establishing the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya
lineage in India. Another major leader of the
Naqshbandis was Khalid Shahrazuri, a 19th-cen-
tury Kurd from present-day northern Iraq, who
initiated a new lineage, the Khalidis. The Khalidi
branch was influential in the 19th-century Otto-
man Empire, and it continues to be so in contem-
porary tUrkey.
The Naqshbandis of Central Asia were actively
involved in resisting Russian colonization in the
19th century. Since the 1990s many communities
in the former republics of Soviet Central Asia have
been seeking to reconstruct their religious tradi-
tions, which involves recovering Naqshbandi tra-
ditions and histories. In Uzbekistan, for example,
a recent resurgence of interest in Sufi heritage
has involved an efflorescence of hagiographicNaqshbandi Sufi Order 517 J