Atlas
About this atlas
The atlas holds the chains of transmission from the Prophet as the standard references and the classical sources record them: the Sufi orders, the chains of Qurʾān recitation, the teachers of the schools of law and ḥadīth, and the lines of the Prophet's family, with the places they spread and the living houses and teachers who carry them today. Every link shows its sources; where they differ, both readings are shown, and we do not rule on any community's claims. Ibn ʿArabī's own life, teachers and readers are on their own page.
أحمد يسوي
Aḥmad Yasawī
Eponym of the Yasawiyya; named in the Bektāshī tradition as Ḥājjī Bektāsh's spiritual forebear (see the link's readings)
Sources for this person
The chain up to the Prophet
No chain up to the Prophet is recorded for this person in the sources read.
How to read the marks
- Two sources: a solid rule. Two independent references give the same link.
- One source: a lighter rule, so labelled.
- The community's own account: a dotted rule. The order tells it; we have not yet read it against a reference source.
- A gap in the rule: the sources omit names between the two. The label says which.
- The sources differ: tap the ≠ to read each reading with its source.
- A ring: a spiritual link, without a meeting (uwaysī).
Who received from Aḥmad Yasawī
1 recorded, each with the chain set it belongs to.
- Ḥājjī Bektāsh Walī (Hacı Bektaş-ı Velî)حاجي بكتاش وليc. 1271
two sourcesin Bektāshiyyaomits: the sources themselves put Yasawī over half a century before Bektāsh, so no direct initiation is attested in the sources readsources differ
gave the khirqa · Aḥmad Yasawī to Ḥājjī Bektāsh Walī (Hacı Bektaş-ı Velî) · Two independent sources
The Vilâyetnâme (the community's hagiography) presents Hacı Bektaş as a direct khalīfa of Aḥmad Yasawī, after training under Lokmān-ı Perende; Trimingham likewise records the Bektāsh khirqa as deriving from Yasawī.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Hacı Bektâş-ı VelîTrimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (1971), local .txt, BektashiyyaChecked against
- TDV, Hacı Bektâş-ı Velî, Silsila claims · agreesRecords the Yasawī claim as the Vilâyetnâme's; notes Bektāsh lived over half a century after Yasawī's death.
- Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (1971), local .txt, trimingham_sufi-orders-in-islam_1971.txt#L4717 · agreesKhirqa Bektash 'deriving from Ahmad al-Yasavi' (as one of the mythical-symbol lineages).
- Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (1971), local .txt, trimingham_sufi-orders-in-islam_1971.txt#L3393 · agreesYasavi as prototype of Turkish Sufis; Hajji Bektash derives from him as 'a kind of mythical symbol'.
Where the sources differ, side by side. We do not rule between them.
- TDV: earlier sources (Elvan Çelebi, Eflākī, Aşıkpaşazade) show him as a khalīfa of the Vefāʾī leader Baba İlyas of the 1239-40 Babaî revolt; TDV argues he probably did not found the order that bears his name.TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Hacı Bektâş-ı Velî
- Trimingham: relation of Hājjī Bektāsh to the order named for him is 'tenuous'; the Bektāshī system proper derives from Balım Sultan.Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (1971), local .txt, Bektashiyya
How to cite
Mashraba Reader, Atlas of transmission, “Aḥmad Yasawī”, https://www.mashraba.org/atlas/figure/ahmad-yasawi (data of 31 October 2026).