The ṭuruq · the orders

From the twelfth century the path organises into orders with rules, lodges, endowments and chains of authority — Qādiriyya, Naqshbandiyya, Shādhiliyya, Mevlevi — spread from Senegal to Sumatra.

The reason contact was even possible. These were not rare hermits; they were institutions on the same streets as the synagogues, in Fustat, in Cairo, in Ottoman Galilee. When Safed's Kabbalists walked to the fields on Friday afternoon, the orders were the neighbours.