Skip to content
Silk Road Sufi Atlas
Central Asian Sufi Houses
c. 1200 CE — Khwarazm

Kubrawiyya

Visionary light and the science of coloured lights

Overview

Founded in Khwarazm by the martyr-saint Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, the Kubrawiyya is renowned for its refined mystical psychology, its doctrine of photisms and coloured lights witnessed on the path, and its expansive lineage which later reached Kashmir and China.

Core teachings

  • ◆The science of luminous visions (photisms)
  • ◆Suhbat with the shaykh as mirror of the soul
  • ◆Purification through the ten principles of the path

Practices

  • ◆Silent and vocal dhikr
  • ◆Forty-day retreat (chilla)
  • ◆Contemplation of coloured lights

Key texts

  • Fawāʾiḥ al-Jamāl wa Fawātiḥ al-Jalāl
    Najm al-Dīn Kubrā
  • Miṣbāḥ al-Hidāya
    ʿIzz al-Dīn Kāshānī

Living legacy

The Kubrawī contemplative psychology deeply influenced later Persianate Sufism and, through Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, shaped the Islamic culture of Kashmir.

Scholarly note

Ibn ʿArabī referred to Najm al-Dīn Kubrā as the 'shaykh who fashions saints'. His martyrdom at the hands of the Mongols (1221) is preserved in the collective memory of Central Asia.