Person · Naqshbandi Sufi scholar · India
Ahmad Sirhindi
Also known as Ahmad Sirhindi — Sirhind
The 16-17 century Naqshbandi Sufi scholar Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624), called 'Mujaddid Alf-i Sani' ('Renewer of the Second Islamic Millennium') by his followers. Sirhindi was the leading Naqshbandi master in India under the Mughal emperor Jahangir and the key figure in the orthodox Sunni reaction to Akbar's syncretic Din-i-Ilahi religion. His 536 Persian letters (Maktubat-i-Imam-Rabbani) collected after his death became the foundational text of the Mujaddidi Naqshbandi order, which spread across Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire and eastern Europe. Sirhindi was imprisoned at Gwalior Fort by Jahangir in 1619 for a year over doctrinal disputes before being released. His tomb at Sirhind (modern Fatehgarh Sahib) draws Sufi pilgrims. The Mujaddidi order remains one of the largest Sufi lineages globally; the Barelvi-Deobandi doctrinal controversies of 19-20 century Indian Islam largely trace back to debates over Sirhindi's theology.
- Date
- 1564–1624
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Condition
- historical person + shrine tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 30.640, 76.380
About the place
Placed at Sirhind, where he taught, wrote the Maktubat and is buried — the town the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi line takes its name from.
Connections (1)
- CampaignAkbar
Ahmad Sirhindi's letters attack Akbar's religious experiments — the Dīn-i Ilāhī, the abolition of jizya, the scholarly debates at Fatehpur Sīkrī — as a dilution of Islam, and argue for the reassertion of the sharia against Sufi monism. Jahangir imprisoned him at Gwalior for a year and then released him on good terms. The quarrel between imperial syncretism and Naqshbandi reform runs through the next three centuries of South Asian Islam.
On these journeys
Sources
Maktubat-i Imam Rabbani; histories of the Naqshbandiyya in Mughal India.
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