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Ḥājj Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Dhū l-Riyāsatayn Mūnis ʿAlī Shāh, born 13 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1290/11 May 1873 (Ādamiyyat, Dānishmandān, 575) in Shiraz (Humāyūnī, 233), was a spiritual master in the Dhū l-Riyāsatayn order (a group of people who congregate together, mostly under a contemporary spiritual leader) of the Niʿmatallāhiyya Ṣūfī path (a line of succession and a spiritual tendency). The latter, historically influential in Central Asia and India but today mostly in Iran, with significant groups in western Europe, go…

Sayyid Mīr ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh Dakanī (b. c. 1147/1734–5, d. end twelfth/eighteenth century) was an Indian-born spiritual master of the Niʿmatallāhī Ṣūfī order who revived Niʿmatallāhī Ṣūfism in Persia in the second half of the twelfth/eighteenth century (the Niʿmatallāhiyya, historically influential in Central Asia and India but today mostly in Iran, with significant groups in the West, goes back to Shāh Niʿmatallāh Valī, d. 843/1431, a Syrian-born Iranian mystic and author who settled in K…

Riḍā ʿAlī Shāh Dakanī (b. c.1142–3/1730, d. 1214/1799–1800) was the last of the Deccan-based aqṭāb (lit., poles, that is, heads of the order; Ar. pl. of quṭb) in the Niʿmatallāhī Ṣūfī order, as recognised in the salāsil (“chains” of spiritual authority, Ar. pl. of silsila) of its current branches (Gramlich, 1:27–57). The leadership of the Niʿmatallāhī order had been transferred from Persia to the Deccan in the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century (Algar, Niʿmat-Allāhiyya, 46), and would return there thanks to Riḍā ʿAlī Shāh (the Niʿmatallāhiyya, historically infl…