Synonyms
Definition
The Chishtī order was one of the earliest Sufi ṭarīqa lineages to take hold in Muslim South Asia.
Overview
Taking its name from the small town of Chisht located east of Herat in present-day Afghanistan, the Chishtī Sufi order is typically understood to have had its genesis in the teachings of the well-traveled Persian Sufi master Khwāja Muʿīn al-Dīn Ḥasan Sijzī (d. 1236). The eighth link in a silsila(“initiatic lineage”) of Sufi teachers stretching back to an obscure tenth-century Sufi master associated with Chisht, Abū Iṣḥāq Shāmī (d. 940), Muʿīn al-Dīn arrived in India during the first decade of the thirteenth century, settling in the Rajasthani city of Ajmer. A strategic location on the Muslim frontier which had been seized from the Hindu Rajput Chauhans by the Ghurids in 1192, it was in Ajmer where Muʿīn al-Dīn would gather around himself a devoted group of disciples who would later go on to systematize and spread his teachings following his death....
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References
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Ohlander, E.S. (2018). Chishtī Order. In: Kassam, Z.R., Greenberg, Y.K., Bagli, J. (eds) Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1267-3_798
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1267-3_798
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