Shaykh succession in the classical Naqshbandiyya: spirituality, heredity and the question of body (The Tariqa's cohesional power and the Shaykhhood succession question)

Abstract

This article discusses the succession issue within a particular Sufi order, the Central Asian Naqshbandiyya, during it pre-modern period, that is from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. Although the Naqshbandi tariqa is theoretically opposed to the hereditary mode of succession and defends a strictly spiritual process, the history of the order shows a fairly different image. From the early founding principles to the Makhdûmzâda Khwâjagân, we fi nd controversies and changes in the regulation of shaykh succession (for example, the question of primogeniture or the notion of nisbat). However, I wish to reconsider the consistency, rather than the contradiction, of the various and successive rules of Naqshbandi succession. It seems that, throughout its pre-modern history, the order experienced an accumulation of ways of succession while it tried to maintain a rigorous continuity, in practice and in doctrine as well, oriented toward the sunna and the Prophetic model. Thus the various shaykh succession logics appear as anxious attempts to struggle against the double danger of a decline and of the growing distance from the Prophet. And among them, Naqshbandis found a paradoxical solution in heredity, perceived as embodiment, rather than simple imitation, of the Prophetic ideal.