Baha' al-Din Naqshband

Baha' al-Din Naqshband (; 1318–1389) was the eponymous founder of what would become one of the largest Sufi Sunni orders, the Naqshbandi. Background Baha al-Din was born in March 1318 in the village of Qasr-i Hinduvan, which was one farsakh from the city of Bukhara. Like the majority of the sedentary population of the region, Baha al-Din was a Tajik, i.e. a speaker of Persian and a participant in its culture. According to H. Algar / Encyclopædia Iranica, the texts that claim Baha al-Din was descended from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through Ja'far al-Sadiq (died 765), should be "treated with reserve". Early texts do not mention Baha al-Din's supposed ancestry to Muhammad, but they do imply that his teacher Amir Kulal (died 1370) was a descendant of Muhammad through Ja'far al-Sadiq, which may suggest that their genealogies were later mixed up. On the other hand Annemarie Schimmel highlights the descent of Bahauddin from Hasan al Askari, referring to Khwaja Mir Dard's family and "many nobles, from Bukhara; they led their pedigree back to Baha`uddin Naqshband, after whom the Naqshbandi order is named, and who was a descendant, in the 13th generation of the 11th Shia imam al-Hasan al-Askari". Life Three days after his birth, Baha al-Din was adopted as a spiritual son by Baba Mohammad Sammasi, a master of the Khwajagan, a Sufi order founded by Yusuf Hamadani (died 1140). It was Baha al-Din's paternal grandfather who brought him to Sammasi, as he was a murid (novice) of the latter. Sammasi later entrusted Baha al-Din's training to his distinguished student Amir Kulal.