Bakhauddin Naqshbandi

 Northeast of Bukhara in the village of Kasri Orifon is one of Sufism's more important shrines (working hours 8am-7pm), the birthplace and the tomb of Khazreti Mohammed Bakhauddin (Baha-al-din, Uzbek: Bahovuddin) Nakhshbandi (1318-1389), the founder of the most influential of many ancient Sufi orders in Central Asia, and Bukhara's unofficial 'patron saint'.

Bakhauddin (The Decoration of Religion) was born a few kilometres from the present complex in the town of Kasri Orifon into a family of metalworkers, from where he took the name Nakhshbandi (Engraver of Metals). He came under the early influence of Abdul Khaliq Gijduvani and as a married man spent 12 years in the employ of Tamerlane's nephew Khalil Sultan after which, according to the Encyclopedia of Islam, he devoted himself to "the care of animals for seven years and road-mending for another seven". This last vocation is not quite as bizarre as it may




sound, for Nakhshbandi espoused a life of hard work, self-reliance and modesty, encouraging all his pupils to learn a trade as he himself had done. His 11 principles of conduct were based on a retreat from authority, spiritual purity and a rejection of ostentation or ceremony, principles that were

stretched to their limit by the Nakhshbandi brotherhood's early rejection of communism in the 1920s and subsequent tacit support for the basmachi revolt.

                

                 

                 

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