Baha' al-Din Naqshband

Early life

Baha al-Din was born in March 1318 in the village of Qasr-i Hinduvan, near Bukhara. Like the majority of the region's sedentary population, Baha al-Din was a Tajik, i.e. a speaker of Persian and a participant in its culture. According Encyclopædia Iranica, the texts that claim Baha al-Din was descended from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through Ja'far al-Sadiq (died 765), should be "treated with reserve". Early texts do not mention Baha al-Din's supposed ancestry to Muhammad, but they do imply that his teacher Amir Kulal (died 1370) was a descendant of Muhammad through Ja'far al-Sadiq, which may suggest that their genealogies were later conflated.

Annemarie Schimmel highlights the descent of Bahauddin from Hasan al-Askari, referring to Khwaja Mir Dard's family and "many nobles, from Bukhara; they led their pedigree back to Baha al-Din Naqshband, after whom the Naqshbandi order is named, and who was a descendant, in the 13th generation of the 11th imam al-Hasan al-Askari".

Three days after his birth, Baha al-Din was adopted as a spiritual son by Baba Mohammad Sammasi, a master of the Khwajagan, a Sufi order founded by Yusuf Hamadani (died 1140). Baha al-Din's paternal grandfather brought him to Sammasi, where he was the latter's murid (novice). Sammasi later entrusted Baha al-Din's training to his distinguished student Amir Kulal.