The Order That Keeps Its Remembrance Silent and Stays Close to Power

The Naqshbandiyya is distinguished from the other major orders by two things: it remembers God silently rather than aloud, and it engages with worldly power rather than withdrawing from it.

Silent dhikr, and a different chain

The order takes its name from Baha al-Din Naqshband of Bukhara, and it traces its chain uniquely through Abu Bakr rather than through Ali, which is one reason for its particular standing in Sunni scholarly circles. Its signature practices are silent dhikr and the principle of solitude in the crowd, engagement with society rather than retreat from it. Where the Rifai or Mevlevi orders are known for audible and bodily forms of remembrance, the Naqshbandi discipline is inward and outwardly unmarked.

Reform and political engagement

The order was revitalised by Ahmad Sirhindi in Mughal India and by Mawlana Khalid in the nineteenth-century Ottoman lands, and it became one of the most socially and politically active orders across Central Asia, Turkey, the Kurdish regions, India and China. Its willingness to operate near political power, rather than in withdrawal from it, is a consistent feature and distinguishes it sharply from orders that made detachment from rulers a point of principle.