CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Khufiyya

Sufist order of Chinese Islam

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ1740691
Source-derived summary

Khufiyya (Arabic: الخفية, romanized: Khufiyya or Khafiyya, lit. 'the silent ones'; borrowed as Chinese: 虎夫耶; pinyin: Hǔfūyé) is a tariqa (Sufi order) of Chinese Islam. It was the first tariqa to be established in China and, along with the Jahriyya, Qadiriyya, and Kubrawiyyah, is acknowledged as one of the four orders of Chinese Sufism.

Khufis dwell mainly in Northwest China, especially Gansu. The order follows the Hanafi school in terms of jurisprudence. Traditional beliefs within the order claim the originator of Khufiyya to be Abu Bakr. In addition, the doctrines of Khufiyya are influenced by a Confucian approach to expounding Muslim sacred texts known as Yiru Quanjing (Chinese: 以儒詮經).

History

The origin of Khufiyya can be traced to the Naqshbandis of Central Asia, a Sunni spiritual order of Sufism, which in turn has its roots in Sham. Their missions gave rise to the prosperity of Sufis in Bukhara and Samarkand. Makhdumi Azam, a 17th-century Naqshbandi leader, settled in Kashgar where his offspring promoted and cemented his teachings. Descendants of Azam were known as Miskiya and Ishaqis.

Editorial summary

“Khufiyya” enters the record as sufist order of Chinese Islam. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Khufiyya, Sufist and order can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 176-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Khufiyya, Sufist and order.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Khufiyya” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Khufiyya, Sufist and order provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1740691. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. 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.

How to read it

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.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Khufiyya”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Khufiyya primary sources, Khufiyya archive and Khufiyya research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Khufiyya”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Khufiyya” 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.