Saints And Sons: The Making And Remaking Of The Rashīdi Aḥmadi Sufi Order, 1799-2000

This first history of the Rashīdi Aḥmadiyya argues for a new explanation of the great Sufi revival of the eighteenth century, and also defines a new paradigm of development and change in Sufi orders. In his study of one widespread Sufi order over two centuries and three continents, the author identifies a repeating cycle in which a section of an order rises under a great shaykh, splits, and stabilizes. Though each great shaykh seems to remake the order with little reference to what has gone before, there are in fact two constants through all the written literature of the order, and the limiting effect on even the greatest shaykhs of their followers' expectations.