KUBRĀ, NAJM AL-DĪN. Al-Kubrā, Shaykh Abū al-Jannāb Najm al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar, Khīwaqī, known as Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, was a Ṣūfī master (AHsixth–seventh centuries/twelfth–thirteenth centuries CE) and founder of the Kubrawīyah Order. Najm al-Dīn was born circa AH540/1145 CE at Khiva in Khwārizm (Khorezm, Uzbekistan), then a flourishing region of Central Asia. As a student his talent for theological disputation earned him the epithet al-Kubrā, an abbreviated form of the Qurʾanic phrase al-ḳiāmmat al-kubrā, "the greatest calamity" (84:34)

Kubrā's travels in search of religious learning—chiefly ḥadīth (prophetic tradition) and kalām (theology)—took him to Egypt, where he spent several years, and also to Iran and Asia Minor. Najm al-Dīn received initiation into Sufism in Egypt from R...