Two Roads Back to the Prophet

Nearly every Sufi order traces its authority through a silsila, a chain of teachers reaching back link by link to the Prophet Muhammad, and the tradition recognizes that this chain runs by one of two principal routes. Some orders trace their silsila through Abu Bakr, the first caliph, emphasizing his standing as the Prophet's closest companion and the outward transmission of authority that followed him. A larger number of the major orders instead trace their chain through Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's cousin and son in law, on the understanding that Ali received not only the Prophet's outward teaching but an inward, esoteric instruction alongside it, passed privately from teacher to disciple down the generations. Orders as different in region and practice as the Qadiriyya, the Chishti, the Mevlevi and the Rifa'i all claim descent through this Ali line in some part of their transmission, even while remaining firmly within Sunni Islam in doctrine and law. The chain is not treated as a mere historical curiosity; a Sufi master's authority to initiate new disciples and transmit the order's practices rests on being able to show an unbroken silsila back through this line to the Prophet himself.