أحمد خطيب بن عبد الغفار السمباسي

Ahmad Khatib Sambas (RH)

Ahmad Khatib ibn 'Abd al-Ghaffar al-Sambasi

Also known as: Ahmad Khatib al-Sambasi, Syekh Ahmad Khatib Sambas, Syeikh Ahmad Khatib Sambas

1217–1292 AH · 1803–1875 CE

Sufism & Theology Shafi'i Sufism Fiqh

Borneo-born Sufi master in Makkah who joined the Qadiriyya and Naqshbandiyya into one order, now among the largest in Indonesia.

Ahmad Khatib was born in 1803 in Sambas in west Borneo. As a young man he went to Makkah, where he spent the rest of his life. He studied fiqh, hadith and Sufism with the scholars of the Haram, among them Dawud al-Fatani, and was initiated into both the Qadiriyya and the Naqshbandiyya, reaching the rank of master in each.

He joined the practices of the two orders into a single path, the Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya, combining the spoken remembrance of God taught by the Qadiris with the silent remembrance of the Naqshbandis. Many pilgrims and students from Java, Sumatra, Borneo and the Malay Peninsula took the path from him in Makkah, among them Nawawi al-Bantani, 'Abd al-Karim of Banten, who succeeded him as head of the order, Talhah of Cirebon and Ahmad Hasbullah of Madura. Through them it spread across the archipelago, and it remains one of the largest Sufi orders in Indonesia. Its practice is set out in Fath al-'Arifin, a short treatise written down by one of his students. He died in Makkah around 1875.

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