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ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith Dihlavī (958–1052/1551–1642) was an Indian scholar and Ṣūfī who revived ḥadīth studies in India and rendered Ṣūfī biographies into elegant prose. He wrote approximately sixty books in Arabic and Persian, many of which have been published in the original or in Urdu translation. He composed Persian verse under the takhalluṣ (pen name) Ḥaqqī (“Truthful”). Born in Delhi, he died there at the age of ninety-four, on 21 Rabīʿ I 1052/19 June 1642. 1. Scholarly and Ṣūfī training As a child, he was initiated into the Qādirī order by his father, Shaykh Sayf al-D…

ʿAbdallāh Shaṭṭār (d. 890/1485) propagated a new Ṣūfī community, the Shaṭṭāriyya, which became influential in tenth/sixteenth-century South Asia. His followers encouraged synthesis with Hindu ideals in music, literature and Yogic devotions. 1. Life Nicknamed Shaṭṭār (swift-paced) and given the title “Shāh” (king), he lived in the vicinity of Samarqand and was the khalīfa of Shaykh Muḥammad ʿĀrif in the ʿIshqiyya (not Muḥammad ʿĀshiq, as reported in Niẓāmī). The ʿIshqiyya is a Ṣūfī ṭarīqa in Central Asia that goes back to the Khalwātī order with links to Najm al-Dīn …

Aḥmad al-Burnūsī al-Fāsī “ Zarrūq” (846–99/1442–94) was a reform-oriented Ṣūfī, Mālikī jurist, and social critic in North Africa. 1. Life Aḥmad Zarrūq was born in Fez (Fās) and trained as a jurist with a Ṣūfī orientation under Muḥammad al-Qūrī (d. 872/1467–8). In 869/1465, Zarrūq opposed a revolution against the last Marīnid sultan, ʿAbd al-Ḥāqq II (r. 823–69/1420–65). Zarrūq left Fes after breaking with his first Ṣūfī master, Muḥammad al-Zaytūnī (died circa 910–20/1504–14) who supported the revolution. Zarrūq reco…