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Chishti Order

Sufi order

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ137111 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Chishti order (Persian: چشتیه, romanized: Čištiya) is a Sufi order of Sunni Islam named after the town of Chisht, Afghanistan, where it was initiated by Abu Ishaq Shami. The order was brought to Herat and later spread across South Asia by Mu'in al-Din Chishti in the city of Ajmer.

The Chishti order is known for its emphasis on love, tolerance, and openness. The Chishti order is primarily followed in Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent. The Chishti order was the first of the four main Sufi orders that became well-established in South Asia, which are the Qadiri, Chishti, Naqshbandi and Suhrawardi Sufi orders. Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti introduced the Chishti Order in Ajmer (Rajasthan, India) sometime in the middle of the 12th century. He was eighth in the line of succession from the founder of the Chishti Order, Abu Ishaq Shami. There are now several branches of the order, which has been the most prominent South Asian Sufi brotherhood since the 12th century.

In the 20th century, the order has spread outside Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent. Chishti teachers have established centers in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, Eastern and Southern Africa.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Chishti Order” is sufi order. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chishti, Order and Sufi, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 193-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Chishti, Order and Sufi is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “sufi order” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137111. VIAF identifies the subject as 209957415. The Library of Congress control number is sh85024485. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Chishti Order” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.