Abū Yaʿqūb al-Hamadānī, Yūsuf b. Ayyūb b. al-Ḥusayn al-Būzanjirdī (440 or 441–22nd Rabīʿ I 535/1048 or 1049–5th November 1141), was a prominent shaykh of a Sufi path (ṭarīqa) which later became known as the Kh^wājagān or Naqshbandiyya Sufi order. He was born in Būzanjird, a village in the vicinity of Hamadān, a major city of west-central Persia (al-Samʿānī, 2/356; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 10/94; al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20/66).

The fame of the Niẓāmiyya School in Baghdad brought Abū Yaʿqūb to this city at the age of twenty (after 460/1068, Ibn al-Jawzī, al…