Aḥmad Sirhindī

Aḥmad Sirhindī was born in 1564 at Sirhind, in the Punjab, and educated in the religious sciences by his father and at Sialkot. In 1599 he became a disciple of Khwāja Bāqī Billāh in Delhi, who had brought the Naqshbandī Sufi order to India, and after his master’s death he became the leading figure of the order.

He lived under the Mughal emperors Akbar and Jahāngīr, at a time when the court favoured a broad religious eclecticism, and he called for a return to the law and practice of Islam. His followers gave him the title Mujaddid-i Alf-i Thānī, “Renewer of the Second Millennium”. In 1619 Jahāngīr imprisoned him for a year in the fortress of Gwalior; he was later released and restored to favour. He died in 1624.

His teaching survives mainly in his letters (Maktūbāt), addressed to disciples and nobles. The branch of the order he founded, the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya, spread across India, Central Asia and the Ottoman lands, and his critique of the “unity of being” shaped Sufi thought for centuries.

His influence reached beyond the Sufi orders into the religious politics of Mughal India, where later writers made him a symbol of the defence of Islamic law against syncretism; modern scholars have debated how far that image reflects his own concerns.