From Baku to Cairo: how the Azerbaijan-born Khalwatiyya became a Great Egyptian Sufi Order

become shaykh of al-Azhar University, set in motion a spectacular spread of the order among Egyptians throughout the country, with a stronghold along the Nile Valley. This expansion, that would continue far into the XIX century, was so unprecedented that historians of Sufism described it as a revival or renewal of the Khalwatiyya in the Arab world at a time when the order was starting to decline in the Balkans and Anatolia. It is in the context of the creation of a vast empire by the Ottomans that the Khalwatiyya, born in Azerbaijan, became a great Sufi order of the Islamic world and of Egypt in particular.