Abdul Khaliq Ghijduwani

Abdul Khaliq Ghijduwani, also spelled Ghijduvani or Ghujdawani, was a Central Asian Sufi teacher of the Khwajagan line who died in 1179. Born in the small town of Ghijduvan near Bukhara to a father who had migrated from Malatya in eastern Anatolia, he first became drawn to the Sufi path while studying tafsir in Bukhara and received further training from Yusuf Hamadani, becoming the next link in the Naqshbandi silsila after him. The teaching method he developed became known as the way of the Khojas, or teachers, and he left later generations of the Naqshbandi silsila a set of guiding principles for their practice, formulated in Persian and known collectively as the Sacred Words, or the Rules or Secrets of the Naqshbandi Order.