Rifa'iyya
A living tradition within Sufism. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Rifa'iyya is a living tradition within Sufism. Also written Rifa'i order, Rifa'iyah.
Origin
Founder named in the sources: Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Rifa'i (d. 1182) - named by the sources as the figure the order is named for. No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. Maysam J. Al Faruqi, Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, verbatim: 'Within the Arab tradition, the Rifa'iyya (Ahmad al-Rifa'i, d. 1182), became know for some wild practices and spread widely until overtaken in the fifteenth century by the Qadiriyya'. An unsigned Gale reference article gives the founder more fully as Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Rifa'i, d. 1182, corroborating the death year. NO FOUNDING YEAR IS GIVEN BY ANY SOURCE READ.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Rifa'iyya.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-rifaiyya.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-rifaiyya-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Rifa'iyya},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-rifaiyya},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.