Baha al-Din Naqshband

Baha al-Din Naqshband (born near Bukhara in 1318/718 AH, died there 1389/791 AH) is the figure whose name was later given to the Naqshbandiyya, one of the most widespread Sufi orders of the Islamic world. (Sufism, taṣawwuf, is Islam's tradition of inner spiritual discipline.) He grew up in the village of Qasr-i Hinduvan, near Bukhara, renamed Qasr-i Arifan ("castle of the knowers of God") in his memory.

His tradition belonged to the Khwajagan ("the masters"), a Central Asian lineage tracing back to Yusuf al-Hamadani (died 1140). Sources name Baba Muhammad Sammasi and especially Amir Kulal as his living teachers, while later accounts describe a visionary, "Uwaysi" link (instruction across time, without a living master) to the earlier shaykh Abd al-Khaliq al-Ghijduwani, from whom he is said to have taken the practice of silent remembrance of God (dhikr khafi). A widely repeated tradition, drawn from a hagiography of Amir Kulal, says he spent years in the service of a Mongol ruler at Samarkand; this is reported, not securely established.

He is associated with a path of sobriety and of "solitude within the crowd" (khalwat dar anjuman) — pursuing inner devotion while remaining in ordinary social and working life, rather than through seclusion, audible chanting, or ecstatic music (samāʿ). These emphases, attributed to him by his followers, shaped the order's later reputation for restraint and for close attention to Islamic law. Reports of the number of his pilgrimages to Mecca range from two or three to a hagiographic thirty-two.