Abdāl Chishtī, Kh^wāja Abū Aḥmad (260–355/874–966) was one of the great shaykhs of the Chishtī ṭarīqa (Sufi order) during the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries, and bore the honorific title (laqab) of Qudwat al-Dīn (lit. ‘the exemplar of religion’). He was a Ḥasanī Sayyid, his line stretching back through seven generations to al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī (Chishtī, 58–59; Aḥmad ʿAlī, 87). He became known as Abdāl Chishtī; since, in his ṭarīqa, he was deemed to have attained the spiritual degree of the ‘Substitutes’ (abdāl, q.v.) (Aḥmad ʿAlī, 87), that is, one of the ranks in the spiritual hi…