to running the
ribat
. Both institutions were obliterated during the sack of
Baghdad in 1258. As a matter of fact, several members of the family, as
well as followers staying nearby, perished during the invasion. Those who
escaped with their life migrated to other regions. The few family members
who stayed behind in Baghdad formed the “moral centre” of the order,
while those who settled in other places began reduplicating the order in
new settings.
It is against the background of the conquest of Baghdad by Hulagu in
1258, the fall of Granada in 1492, and the rise of the Ottoman Empire in
1517 — the three major developments in the Islamic world — that the
Qadri Order evolved in Africa, Central Asia, and Turkestan. Hulagu’s sack
of Baghdad did away with theAbbasid Empire and erased its capital from the
cultural map of the world.This led to the emergence of regional centres of
power and the establishment of regional dynasties. The fall of Granada
closed the chapter of the Muslim history of Spain, forcing the scholars of
Andalusia to disperse in other Muslim lands, mostly North Africa and the
Middle East. The effective establishment of the Ottomans in Anatolia, the
Safavids in Iran and the Mughals in India gave impetus to new religious
developments.
The spiritual successors of ShaykhAbdul Qadir Jilani carried his teachings
to distant lands. Ali ibn Haddad is credited with spreading Qadri thought
and practice in Yemen and Muhammad al-Bata’ini of Baalbek in Syria.
Muhammad Abdus Samad furthered the interests of the order in Eygpt.
Indeed, there was a time when the entire Nile Valley was home to a large
network of Qadri centres, with Cairo as an important hub of Qadri activity.
Ismail Rumi (d.1631) introduced the order into Asia Minor and Istanbul.
He founded some forty
takiyahs
(the Turkish name for Sufi centres) in that
Th e Qa d r i Or d e r 112
