Khalid al-Baghdadi

Founder of the Khalidiyya branch of the Naqshbandi order; a Sufi known among the Naqshbandis by the title Mawlana. His full name was Abu al-Baha Diya al-Din Khalid b. Ahmad b. Husayn al-Shahrazuri al-Kurdi.

He was born in 1193 (1779) in the town of Qaradagh, attached to the city of Sulaymaniyya in Iraq. His father, Pir Mika'il, known by the nickname Shesh-angusht ("six-fingered"), was probably a Sufi of the Qadiriyya; his mother too belonged to a famous Sufi family of the region. It is related that his lineage on his father's side reached back to 'Uthman. In Qaradagh he completed his education under various teachers, above all Shaykh 'Abd al-Rahim of the Barzinji family and his brother Shaykh 'Abd al-Karim; he then concentrated on logic and theology, travelled through the other centres of learning in the region and went to Baghdad. He declined an offer of a teaching post from the governor, Baban Ibrahim Pasha. When Shaykh 'Abd al-Karim Barzinji died of the plague in 1213 (1798-99), he took charge of his madrasa in Sulaymaniyya and taught there for about seven years; in these years he became known for the asceticism that kept him away from political authority and for his deep learning.

The journey he undertook in 1805 with the intention of pilgrimage brought the events that turned him toward Sufism. According to the source, in Medina he met a man from Yemen who warned him not to be hasty in condemning things that outwardly seemed contrary to the Shari'a. In Mecca, seeing a man seated with his back to the Ka'ba and his face toward him, he forgot this warning and inwardly condemned him; when the man said, "Do you not know that the worth of a believing servant in God's sight is higher than the worth of the Ka'ba?", he asked forgiveness in wonder and remorse and begged to be accepted as his disciple. The man declined, saying that his guide awaited him in India. After the pilgrimage Khalid returned to his post at the madrasa.

In 1809 an Indian dervish visiting Sulaymaniyya, Mirza Rahim Allah 'Azimabadi, advised him to go to India and take initiation from the Naqshbandi shaykh of Delhi, 'Abd Allah Dihlawi. Setting out at once, Khalid reached Delhi by way of Iran and Afghanistan in about six months; the sectarian debates he engaged in along the way with Shi'i scholars, especially with Shaykh Isma'il Kashi, a mujtahid of Tehran, made the journey arduous. In Delhi he took initiation from 'Abd Allah Dihlawi, passed through the stages of Naqshbandi spiritual wayfaring, and was sent back to Sulaymaniyya by his shaykh as his deputy. Besides the Naqshbandiyya he was also authorised to guide in the Qadiri, Suhrawardi, Kubrawi and Chishti orders. The return journey, again delayed by debates in Muscat, Yazd, Shiraz, Isfahan, Hamadan and Sanandaj, took about fifty days.

His beginning to spread the Naqshbandiyya in Sulaymaniyya disturbed the Qadiri shaykhs of the region; when they tried to use the governor against him, Khalid went again to Baghdad in 1813, turned a madrasa he bought there into a Naqshbandi lodge, began to guide and gathered many disciples. On one visit to Sulaymaniyya the governor, Mahmud Pasha, built a lodge for him; but after a while he returned to Baghdad and continued his guidance there. He appointed many deputies to guide his ever more numerous followers in the Ottoman lands. Shaykh Ahmad Katib Irbili, whom he sent to Damascus, brought the mufti of Damascus, Husayn Efendi Muradi, into his following; in 1823 Muradi persuaded him to come from Baghdad to Damascus. Received there with respect, Khalid settled in the Banu Ghazzi khalwa-house in the Umayyad Mosque, married 'A'isha Hanim, the sister of Shaykh Isma'il Ghazzi, and later moved to a house he bought. He spent the rest of his life in Damascus, leaving the city only to make the pilgrimage a second time and to go to Jerusalem, where thanks to his deputy Shaykh 'Abd Allah Fardi he was received with great enthusiasm.

In 1826, realising that he would die in the plague spreading around Damascus, he left instructions that Isma'il Anarani, Muhammad al-Nasih and 'Abd al-Fattah al-'Aqri should succeed him and that his property in Qaradagh be given to his nephew Mahmud al-Sahib. After the place of his burial had been fixed and the preparations completed, he died on 14 Dhu al-Qa'da 1242 (9 June 1827). His children Baha' al-Din and 'Abd al-Rahman also died of the plague in the same year.

His Circle of Influence — Through Mawlana Khalid's hundreds of deputies the Khalidiyya spread over a vast area, from the Balkans and the Crimea to Southeast Asia; its main sphere, however, was northern Iraq, southeastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran, all under the Ottoman state. Many Ottoman scholars belonged to the Khalidiyya, among them the Hanafi jurist Ibn 'Abidin, Shihab al-Din Mahmud al-Alusi, author of the Qur'an commentary Ruh al-ma'ani, and Mekkizade Mustafa Asım Efendi, şeyhülislam of Mahmud II. The branch overshadowed the older Naqshbandi branches in Anatolia and Istanbul, and through it the Naqshbandis for the first time gained an important place among the Sufis of Syria, Palestine and Iraq. The source notes that in northern Iraq, where the Qadiriyya had been dominant throughout history, the weight shifted to the Naqshbandiyya with the rise of the Khalidiyya; most shaykhly families such as the Barzinji and the Sadat-i Nahri went over to the Naqshbandiyya, and the passing of leadership from father to son explains the spread of these families down to the present. The Khalidis showed firm loyalty to the Ottoman state as the focus of Muslim unity and strength, and almost everywhere the order spread, from Daghestan to Sumatra, its members stood out for their activity on behalf of the Ottomans.

His Poetry and Sufi Line — The Khalidiyya is known for the special importance it gives, alongside the order's traditional beliefs and practices, to adherence to the Shari'a and to avoiding the vocal dhikr. Mawlana Khalid's views also contain new elements debated even among Naqshbandis, foremost among them his interpretation of rabita: in his only treatise on Sufi questions he defined rabita as "picturing the form of the shaykh in the mind of the disciple" and said that, even after his death, rabita could be directed only to himself. His poems are mostly in Persian, and also in Arabic and Kurdish; his Persian ghazals show the influence of Indo-Persian masters such as Bidil and Mir Dard. The source says that some of them are full of subtleties reflecting his imagination, but that their artistic value is on the whole middling; the Diwan is also important for the biographical information it contains.

His Works — The source lists the following works: the Diwan; Risala fi ithbat al-rabita, also translated into Turkish; Bughyat al-wajid fi maktubat al-Mawlana Khalid, made up of letters to his disciples and deputies, some in Persian and most in Arabic, compiled by his nephew Muhammad As'ad Sahibzade; Risala fi adab al-dhikr; Risala fi adab al-murid ma'a shaykhihi; Risala fi al-tariq; Jala' al-akdar, a poem containing the names of the fighters of Badr; Fara'id al-fawa'id, a Persian commentary on the hadith of Gabriel; Wasiyyat al-Shaykh Khalid; and Risalat al-'iqd al-jawhari, which examines the views of the Ash'aris and the Maturidis on acquisition (kasb) and partial will. Besides these he wrote short treatises, glosses and commentaries of a few pages on creed, jurisprudence and theology. All his Arabic, Persian and Kurdish works were published together by Mulla 'Abd al-Karim Mudarris under the title Yade Merdan.

His Tomb and Complex — He was buried on one of the heights of Jabal Qasiyun near Damascus. A building was later raised over his grave; this place, consisting of a lodge and a library, is today a place of visitation.