Branch · as its own sources tell it
The Sayyâdiyya
The line of the Pîr's grandson, the “second Pîr” Sayyid Aḥmad ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Ṣayyādī. In the sources at hand it runs from Syria and the Hijaz to Sivas and Istanbul, and from there to two communities in North America.
I. The second Pîr
Sayyid Aḥmad ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Ṣayyādī was the son of the Pîr's daughter Sayyida Zaynab, born in 574. As the Pîr lay dying he called the four-year-old boy and gave him khilāfa. He is called a Pîr-i Sânî — one who holds to the Pîr's way and also renews it.
He travelled to Egypt, Yemen and Damascus, founded lodges in Damascus and Ḥimṣ, and settled at Matkīn near Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān. He died in 670 at the age of ninety-nine and is buried at Sayyād in Syria.
Samarrâî confirms the family link: Zaynab married her cousin ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, and among their sons was ʿIzz al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Ṣayyādī, whose descendants spread to Syria, Iraq, Egypt and the Hijaz.
II. The Hāshimī house and the Arap Şeyh
A family descended from al-Ṣayyādī, the Hāshimīs of Mecca and Medina, kept the Sayyâdī line in the Hijaz. From it came Sayyid Abdullah al-Hāshimī al-Makkī, known in Türkiye as the Arap Şeyh. He spread the path in Afghanistan and Anatolia and settled in Sivas, where Sultan Abdülhamid II named him Şeyhü'l-Ekber and Nakîbü'l-Eşraf. His dates are disputed by some thirty-five years; see his page.
III. To Istanbul: the Anṣārī sheikhs
Sayyid Muḥammad al-Anṣārī, born in Baghdad in 1860 to a Qādirī family, received Sayyâdī khilāfa from the Arap Şeyh at Sivas and was sent on to Istanbul. There his family rebuilt the Ayn-i Ali Baba lodge at Kasımpaşa, and he became known as the Arab Sheikh. He died on 14 October 1939.
His son Sayyid Muḥyiddīn al-Anṣārī was seated at the Rifāʿī lodge of Bartın at twenty-one and held it until the lodges were closed in 1925. He then served as an army officer, rebuilt his father's lodge in the 1950s, and died on 9 January 1978.
IV. Two American lines from one Istanbul sheikh
Two communities in North America trace their authority to Sayyid Muḥyiddīn al-Anṣārī, each in its own publication.
In 1976 Muḥyiddīn al-Anṣārī gave Rifāʿī-Sayyâdī and Qādirī khilāfa to Sheikh Jamālī Jamāladdīn of Prizren, already a sheikh of the İzzeddînî line. In Chicago on 9 July 1999 Sheikh Jamālī passed both lines to the sheikh of the community that wrote the Risale.
Taner Ansari writes that he was initiated into the Qadiri Rifai path in Istanbul under Shaykh Muhyiddin Ansari, received his licence to teach from him, and took leadership of the Qadiri Rifai Tariqa of the Americas after the death of Shaykh Muhyiddin's successor, Shaykh Nuruddin Ozal.
Taner Ansari died on 27 August 2023, and Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari, who founded the order with him, now leads it from New York. The Ansari network today.
Living teachers are named here only as their own publications name them. This site does not publish profiles of living masters until they have agreed — see our policy.