Mujaddidi Order

The Mujaddidi order, also called the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya, is a major reformist branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, one of the principal spiritual lineages of Sunni Islam. It was established in the seventeenth century by the Indian Islamic scholar Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, known as the Reviver of the Second Millennium, as a movement to revitalize Sunni orthodoxy within Sufism in the Mughal Empire. The order is distinguished by its strict adherence to Islamic law, its rejection of religious innovation, and its adherence to the doctrine of Wahdat al-Shuhud rather than the Wahdat al-Wujud favored by other orders. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it had become the dominant branch of the Naqshbandi order, spreading from India to Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire, China and the wider Islamic world.