Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari

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Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari (1318 - 1389) was the founder of what would become one of the largest and most influential Sufi Muslim orders, the Naqshbandi.

Concerning his life much information is lacking. This is not surprising since he forbade his followers to record anything of his deeds or sayings during his lifetime, and writings composed soon after his death, such as the Anis at-Talibin of Salah ad-Din Muhammad Bukhari (d. 1383), concentrate upon matters of spiritual and moral interest.

Baha-ud-Din was born in 1318 in the village of Qasr-i-Hinduvan (later renamed Qasr-i Arifan) near Bukhara, and it was there that he died in 1389. Most of his life was spent in Bukhara and contiguous areas of Transoxiana, in keeping with the principle of "journeying within the homeland" (a practise mentioned in "The Sacred Words"),and in Omar Ali-Shah's: "The Rules or Secrets of the Naqshbandi Order", and the only long journeys he undertook were for the performance of hajj on two occasions. He came into early contact with the Khwajagan (lit: the Masters), and was adopted as spiritual progeny by one of them, Baba Muhammad Sammasi, while still an infant. Sammasi was his first guide on the path, and more important was his relationship with Sammasi's principal khalifa (successor), Amir Kulal, the last link in the silsila before Baha-ud-Din. It was Amir Kulal that Baha-ud-Din received his fundamental training on the path and whose company he kept for many years. Still more significant, however, was the instruction Baha-ud-Din received in the method of silent dhikr from the ruhaniya of Abdul Khaliq Gajadwani (ruhaniya refers to an initiation dispensed by the spiritual being of a departed preceptor). Although he was a spiritual descendant of Abdul Khaliq, Amir Kulal practised vocal dhikr, and after Baha-ud-Din received instruction in silent dhikr, he would absent himself from Amir Kulal's circle of followers whenever they engaged in dhikr of the tongue. This separation of Baha-ud-din from Amir Kulal's circle may be thought of as marking the final crystallization of the Naqshbandiya, with silent dhikr, received from Abdul Khaliq and ultimately inherited from Abu Bakr, established as normative for the order, various later deviations nontwithstanding.

Baha-ud-Din died and was buried in his native village in 1389, and the tomb that was erected there for him become one of the principal places of visitation in the Islamic East and a major element in the attraction that Bukhara radiated throughout Central Asia as a religious center. Baha-ud-Din himself entered, in Sufi estimation, into the highest rank of the saints, worthy of being mentioned in one breath with Abdel Qadir Gilani, and before long known and invoked as Shah-i Naqshband over a vast area extending from the Balkans to China.