Letters

Introduction

Ahmad Sirhindi’s “Letters” (Maktūbāt) are more than five hundred letters in Persian, written to his disciples, to Sufi masters and to nobles and officials of the Mughal empire, and collected by his followers in three volumes from 1617 onwards. They are his main work. Many letters explain the stages of the Naqshbandi path and the states the disciple passes through; the most famous develop his doctrine that the experience of the oneness of being is a stage, surpassed by the “unity of witnessing”, in which God and the world remain distinct. Others urge Mughal nobles to restore the sharia after Akbar’s policies and contain harsh statements about Hindus and Shiʿis. The letters were copied and printed widely, translated into Arabic and Turkish, and carried the Mujaddidi branch of the order to Central Asia and the Ottoman lands. Yohanan Friedmann’s study (1971) examines both their teaching and the image of Sirhindi they helped to create.