Mystical systems
Tariqa
Direct answer
Tariqa: A tariqa, Arabic for path, is a Sufi order: a community that follows the method of a founding master, handed down through a chain of teachers, with its own form of remembrance and rule of life.
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At a glance
- Also called
- sufi order, tarikat, sufi brotherhood, sufi path
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Sufism, Dhikr, Fana, Sama
A tariqa, Arabic for path, is a Sufi order: a community that follows the method of a founding master, handed down through a chain of teachers, with its own form of remembrance and rule of life.
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What is a tariqa?
Tariqa means path or way. It names both the inward road a Sufi travels and the order that teaches it. Each order traces a chain of masters, the silsila, back through its founder to the Prophet Muhammad, and a pupil enters by giving allegiance to a living shaykh, who assigns the practices and watches over the pupil's progress.
The orders differ in style. The Qadiri and the Chishti are known for open gatherings and, among the Chishti, for music; the Naqshbandi for silent remembrance; the Mevlevi for the turning ceremony. They have run lodges, kitchens for the poor and schools, and in many countries they remain a large part of ordinary Muslim life.
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What sets Tariqa apart
A tariqa is recognisable by three things: a founder whose method it follows, a chain of authorised teachers, and a litany of its own recited by members. Entry is by a handclasp of allegiance with the shaykh. Orders have been town guilds, frontier missions, reform movements and political forces: the Sanusi built a state in Libya, and the Naqshbandi shaped politics from Central Asia to Turkey. Membership often runs in families, and a person may belong to more than one.
- Plural: turuq in Arabic; tarikat in Turkish
- Head: a shaykh; in Persian a pir
- Lodge: zawiya, khanqah or tekke, by region
- Chain of masters: the silsila, recited back to the Prophet
- Oldest great order: the Qadiri, from Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, died 1166
Often mistaken for something else: Sharia is the law every Muslim keeps; tariqa is the further discipline some take up within it, and Sufi writers picture the law as a circle and the path as a line drawn inward from it.
The story behind Tariqa
Circles gathered round teachers from the ninth century, and from the twelfth they became lasting orders named for their founders: the Qadiri for Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, who died in 1166, the Suhrawardi, the Chishti in India, the Shadhili in North Africa, the Naqshbandi in Central Asia, and the Mevlevi, organised after Rumi's death in 1273. Turkey closed its lodges by law in 1925, and the orders there continued in private.
Why Tariqa matters
Tariqa shows that Sufism is taught in communities with rules, teachers and histories, and is not a private mood or a set of loose sayings.
How to read Tariqa
Historians name a Sufi by order as well as by century, since the order tells which practices and which line of teachers shaped that person.
Tariqa in practice: an example
A traveller in Konya sees a kitchen and cells round a courtyard and learns that this was the lodge of a tariqa, where novices served for a thousand and one days.
Where readings of Tariqa go wrong
Joining an order is a commitment within Islam, made to a teacher. The house describes the orders and recommends no particular one.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- sufi order, tariqah, tarikat, sufi brotherhood, sufi path
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is a tariqa?
It is a Sufi order: a community that follows the method of a founding master and passes it on through a chain of teachers. The word is Arabic for path, and also means the inward road itself.
How many Sufi orders are there?
There is no fixed count. A few dozen major orders, such as the Qadiri, Naqshbandi, Chishti, Shadhili and Mevlevi, have many branches, and new branches have formed in every century.
What is a silsila?
It is the chain of masters through which an order traces its teaching back, teacher by teacher, to the Prophet Muhammad. Each shaykh holds authority by a place in that chain.
