Qadiri Order

Ahmed Raza Khan of Bareilly (1856-1921) was an Indian Hanafi jurist, Sufi of the Qadiri order and prolific writer whose defence of the veneration due to the Prophet and the saints gave rise to the movement known as Barelvi, whose adherents call themselves the ulama of the Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jamaat.

Four Sufi orders shaped religious life in the Indian subcontinent: the Chishti, Naqshbandi, Qadiri and Suhrawardi. This article traces how they functioned there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how initiation into several orders at once weakened the identity of each.