Ala al-Din Attar

Close associate, son-in-law and primary successor of Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband; the next link after him in the Naqšbandī chain. The source lists him under the nesba Boḵārī and notes that he is also known as “ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār.”

He was the youngest of three sons of a migrant from Ḵᵛārazm who had made his home in Bukhara. When the father died, ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn renounced his share in the inheritance and took up residence in a madrasa, living a severe and ascetic life. It was there that Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband first met him. Impressed by the sparseness of the furnishings in his cell — a worn mat, a brick to serve as a pillow, and a broken water pot — Bahāʾ-al-Dīn offered him the hand of his daughter in marriage, without any preliminary, and also adopted him as his spiritual son. The marriage took place the same day; one son, Ḵᵛāja Ḥasan ʿAṭṭār, was born of it.

Bahāʾ-al-Dīn did not initiate him immediately, but told him to spend his days gathering firewood and hawking apples, barefoot, in the markets of Bukhara. This ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn did joyfully, much to the chagrin of his two brothers, who were both respectable shopkeepers. After these pursuits had wrought the necessary purgation, he was formally initiated by Bahāʾ-al-Dīn and swiftly advanced to the position of chief disciple. Bahāʾ-al-Dīn assigned to him the training of numerous less advanced adepts, remarking of him, “he has greatly lessened our burden.”

When Bahāʾ-al-Dīn died in 791/1389, ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn received the allegiance of all his other disciples, including even Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad Pārsā, whom Bahāʾ-al-Dīn had seemed to favor at one point for the succession. His leadership of the Naqšbandī community lasted for ten years. In this period he established himself in the village of Čaḡānīān; from there he wrote to Mawlānā Yaʿqūb Čarḵī, who had gone to Keš and Badaḵšān after Bahāʾ-al-Dīn's death, reminding him of Bahāʾ-al-Dīn's wish that Čarḵī keep his company; Čarḵī joined him in Čaḡānīān and remained there until ʿAṭṭār's death.

On 2 Rajab 802 (29 February 1400) he fell sick and predicted that he would soon die. He enjoined his followers to follow the sunna of the Prophet, to observe the principles of the Naqšbandī path, and not to grieve his passing. He died eighteen days later and was buried in the village of Čaḡānīān (or Nowčaḡānīān).

His Circle of Influence — He appointed ten successors, each of whom seems to have had responsibility for a particular region, and it was their dispersion that enabled the Naqšbandī path to spread beyond the immediate environs of Bukhara: Ḵᵛāja ʿAbd-Allāh Emāmī Eṣfahānī, for example, created a Naqšbandī presence in Shiraz. The best known of his successors was the celebrated theologian and scholar Sayyed Šarīf Jorjānī, who is said to have remarked, “until I attained the company of Ḵᵛāja ʿAṭṭār (i.e. Boḵārī), I did not truly know God.” The most important of them for the perpetuation of the Naqšbandī order was Mawlānā Neẓām-al-Dīn Ḵāmūš, the initiator of Saʿd-al-Dīn Kāšḡarī (d. 860/1455), who was in turn the preceptor of the poets Jāmī and ʿAlī-Šīr Navāʾī and other luminaries of Timurid Herat. Yaʿqūb Čarḵī — although initiated by Bahāʾ-al-Dīn himself, he was assigned to ʿAṭṭār for his formal training — generally comes after ʿAṭṭār in enumerations of the Naqšbandī genealogy; Čarḵī's successor was Ḵᵛāja ʿObayd-Allāh Aḥrār.

His Poetry and Sufi Line — Numerous of his sayings concerning the principles and terminology of the Naqšbandī path have been preserved in contemporary or near-contemporary texts. His final injunction — adherence to the sunna and observance of the principles of the path — sums up his line.

His Works — He was the first person to collect the dicta and biography of Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband, and composed a brief work on the subject, Maqāmāt-e Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband. Many other early accounts of Bahāʾ-al-Dīn's life — notably Ṣalāḥ b. Mobārak's Anīs al-ṭālebīn wa ʿoddat al-sālekīn — also draw on material supplied orally by ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn.

His Tomb and Complex — The source records that he was buried in the village of Čaḡānīān (or Nowčaḡānīān), which it describes as “near Bukhara”; it gives no information about the tomb structure.