From ‘Failed States’ to ‘Hidden Caliphs’: How Muslim Scholar-Saints became Pillars of Social Order

In this episode we’ll explore the history of a ‘hidden caliphate’ through which scholar-saints of the Naqshbandi Sufi order provided social stability during times of tremendous political upheaval. The Sufis in question were followers of Ahmad Sirhindi, who in the years after his death in 1624 – or 1034 in the Muslim calendar – designated him as the ‘Renewer of the Second Millennium.’ In the following centuries, his network expanded from northern India through Afghanistan to Central Asia, Russia and China, bringing his teachings to men and women from every rank of society. We’ll explore the doctrines, both moral and mystical, practical and spiritual, that enabled these ‘scholar-saints’ to maintain social order and justice after the tumultuous collapse of the Mughal Empire. Nile Green talks to Waleed Ziad, the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard University Press, 2021).