Jān-i Jānān, Maẓhar - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Weismann, Itzchak
Leiden
Brill
(960 words)
Maẓhar Jān-i Jānān (1111-95/1699-1781), a leading Naqshbandī-Mujaddidī Ṣūfī shaykh in Mughal Delhi, was born into a noble family of Afghan extraction that served in the Mughal administration. He received military as well as religious education, especially in ḥadīth studies, but decided at the age of eighteen to give up that official vocation in favour of the Ṣūfī quest. Moving to Delhi, he followed the path under a succession of masters of the Muajaddidī offshoot of the Naqshbandiyya (whose eponymous founder, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, died