A Robe Sewn From Patches, Worn as Proof of a Chain

The khirqa is a cloak, historically often visibly pieced together from many patches of cloth, presented by a Sufi sheikh to a disciple as a mark of formal spiritual authorisation within a specific order and lineage. Receiving the khirqa is not simply a gift of clothing; it functions as a physical certificate of initiation, signalling that the wearer has been formally accepted into a silsila, the chain of spiritual transmission a Sufi order traces back, master to master, ultimately to the Prophet Muhammad, so putting on the robe is understood as taking one's own place within a continuous, named lineage of teachers rather than beginning a private spiritual practice with no attachment to any wider community.

Trimingham's survey of the Sufi orders situates the khirqa ceremony among the central formal acts by which historical Sufi orders regulated membership and authority, since a claim to have received the khirqa from a recognised sheikh was, in practice, the primary way a disciple's own later authority to teach could itself be verified by others. A disciple who later founded a lineage of his own could in turn bestow the khirqa on his own students, so a single garment's lineage of transmission, traced sheikh to sheikh across centuries, could function as a kind of family tree for an entire Sufi order.