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Mashrabaمشربة

Atlas

Chains of transmission from the Prophet, read as the sources give them.
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.

Change chain set

Rifāʿiyya الرفاعية

Sufi orders · Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī · c. 1100s · Umm ʿAbīda (Baṭāʾiḥ) · 36 routes to the Prophet recorded

Named for Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī (d. 578/1182), also called Aḥmadiyya and Baṭāʾiḥiyya. It grew from the Baṭāʾiḥ lodges of southern Iraq into some two dozen branches, among them the Sayyādiyya, and spread to Syria, Egypt, Anatolia, Istanbul and the Balkans.

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).
Route 1 of 36, the best-sourced: other routes (35)

Routes are ordered by how many steps rest on two sources, then by how few rest on the community's own account or on another chain set's record, then by length. The best-sourced opens first.

Dates are given where the sources give them. Years are CE; the Hijri year is in each name's detail.

  • two sources
  • one source
  • the community's own account
  • names omitted
  • sources differ
  1. 632

  2. two sources · this step is recorded in Qirāʾāt: the ten canonical readings, not in Rifāʿiyya

    661

  3. one source · omits: the Imams from al-Ḥusayn to ʿAlī al-Riḍā, Maʿrūf al-Karkhī, Sarī al-Saqaṭī (Trimingham App. A chart).

    909

  4. two sources

    946

  5. the community's own account

  6. the community's own account

    934

  7. the community's own account

  8. the community's own account

  9. two sources

    1182

Named for Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī (d. 578/1182), also called Aḥmadiyya and Baṭāʾiḥiyya. It grew from the Baṭāʾiḥ lodges of southern Iraq into some two dozen branches, among them the Sayyādiyya, and spread to Syria, Egypt, Anatolia, Istanbul and the Balkans.

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).

Branches (4)

Each opens as a side-chain from the founder, with the same marks.

Sayyādiyyaالصياديةfounder d. 670/1271 · Umm ʿAbīda (Baṭāʾiḥ) · 2 names
  1. أحمد الرفاعي1182

  2. one source

    عز الدين أحمد الصياد1271
Ḥarīriyyaالحريريةfounder Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ḥarīrī d. 620/1223 (TDV); the later Ḥarīrī of Busra d. 645/1247-48 · Damascus · 3 names
  1. أحمد الرفاعي1182

  2. one source

    أبو الحسن علي الحريري1223

  3. the community's own account

    أبو محمد علي الحريري البصروي1247
Ottoman and Balkan Rifāʿī lodgesevidence from 1257 (Anatolia); Istanbul lodges from the late 16th c. · Istanbul

No chain is recorded for this branch in the sources read.

Kenan Rifâî line20th c. · Istanbul · 4 names
  1. السيد حمزة الرفاعي

  2. the community's own account

    كنعان الرفاعي1950

  3. one source

    سامية آيوردي

  4. the community's own account

    جمال نور سارغوت

Living today

Public roles only, as the communities and the press report them, dated.

  • Teacher, Kenan Rifâî line · as of Oct 2026 · two sources

    Teacher of Mesnevî, Fuṣūṣ and Qur'an; president of the Kerim Foundation. Wikipedia calls her a leader of the Rifāʿī order; her order affiliation is uncertain and no head of the Kenan line is publicly declared in the sources found

    the community's own account: Cemalnur Sargut's own pages (cemalnur.org) (order-own)Wikipedia, 'Cemalnur Sargut' (secondary)

  • Teacher · as of Oct 2026 · two sources

    Presented in Egyptian press (al-Dustūr, coverage of the Mawlid of al-Rifāʿī, undated) as shaykh of the Rifāʿiyya in Egypt; a University of Religions page names 'Tariq Yassin al-Refaie' as current sheikh of the Rifaiyah. Both sources undated; not tied to the Sayyādī line

How to cite

Mashraba Reader, Atlas of transmission, “Rifāʿiyya”, https://www.mashraba.org/atlas/rifaiyya (data of 31 October 2026).

Not yet confirmed (12)

These links are told by an order or a secondary source and still have to be read against a primary or reference source.

  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's first shaykh, as TDV gives it: Shiblī → ʿAlī al-ʿAjamī.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's first shaykh, as TDV gives it: al-ʿAjamī → Abū ʿAlī al-Rūdhbārī.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's first shaykh, as TDV gives it: al-Rūdhbārī → Ghulām b. Turkān.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's first shaykh, as TDV gives it: Ghulām b. Turkān → Abū l-Faḍl al-Wāsiṭī.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's uncle, as TDV gives it: Ruwaym → al-Sundūsī.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's uncle, as TDV gives it: al-Sundūsī → al-Karmazī.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's uncle, as TDV gives it: al-Karmazī → Abū Saʿīd al-Najjār.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's uncle, as TDV gives it: Abū Saʿīd al-Najjār → Abū Manṣūr al-Ṭayyib.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) Chain via Aḥmad's uncle, as TDV gives it: Abū Manṣūr al-Ṭayyib → Manṣūr al-Baṭāʾiḥī.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) TDV (Rifâiyye, branch 1): Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ḥarīrī b. Abī l-Ḥasan is listed among the disciples of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ḥarīrī. Recorded separately because the sources distinguish the two men.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) TDV: Seyyid Hamza er-Rifâî in Medina, a descendant of Aḥmad, granted Kenan Rifâî icazet and hilafet.
  • (Rifāʿiyya) She began Qur'an and Mesnevî study at Ayverdi's wish and never met Rifâî herself (Sargut foundation pages).
Where the sources differ (4)
  • (Rifāʿiyya)
    • Jāmī (Nafaḥāt, pp. 105–108): Ruwaym is called a companion and peer of al-Junayd, though he presented himself as his pupil; Anṣārī ranks him above al-Junayd.
  • (Rifāʿiyya)
    • Shaʿrānī (Ṭabaqāt, Lawāqiḥ al-anwār, l.5788–5790) makes Muḥammad al-Shunbukī the shaykh of Manṣūr al-Baṭāʾiḥī; Trimingham (1971, p. 263, summarising al-Wāsiṭī's Tiryāq) lists Manṣūr's silsilas as: hereditary to al-Junayd; via Maʿrūf al-Karkhī and the ʿAlid line; and via Abū Bakr al-Hawāzanī al-Baṭāʾiḥī to Sahl al-Tustarī, Dhū l-Nūn, Isrāfīl and ʿAlī. The Ruwaym → Sundūsī → Karmazī → Najjār → Ṭayyib route of the first pass is not in either.
  • (Rifāʿiyya)
    • Ibn Khallikan (Wafayāt al-aʿyān, entry Ibn al-Rifāʿī) says Aḥmad had no offspring (ʿaqib) and that the descendants who inherit the shaykhdom are his brother's; Trimingham (1971, p. 38) repeats this and adds that Aḥmad's sister's son ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān succeeded him. TDV and Trimingham's Appendix H both call al-Ṣayyād a grandson (ḥafīd) of Aḥmad.
  • (Rifāʿiyya)
    • Two men of the same name are in the record. TDV (Rifâiyye, branch 1) separates Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Ḥarīrī (d. 620/1223, a grandson of Aḥmad through a daughter, founder of the Ḥarīriyya) from his disciple Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ḥarīrī b. Abī l-Ḥasan (d. 645/1247), and says some authors mixed them up. Trimingham (1971, p. 39 and App. H) knows only the second, d. Busra 645/1248, and states no kinship. The first pass gave the second man's role under the first man's dates.