Living branch · United States and worldwide

The Ansari Qadiri Rifai network

A combined Qādirī and Rifāʿī order, brought from Istanbul to the United States by a Turkish couple, Taner and Muzeyyen Ansari. It now has centres or representatives on five continents and is the most visible Rifāʿī-connected community in English.

I. From Istanbul to America

Taner Mustafa Ansari was born in Tarsus, in southern Türkiye, to a family of sayyids. He studied at university in Michigan, where he helped found the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada. His spiritual line also includes the Naqshbandī, Mevlevī and Bektashī orders, and the order's book of stories honours the Naqshbandī teachers of his home town — Haji Hamza Ramazanoğlu (1872–1952), Sabri Hoca and Ali Baba of Tarsus.

The order's Istanbul home was the Ayni Ali Baba tekke, where Muḥyiddīn al-Anṣārī (1897–1978) was murshid of the Qādirī-Rifāʿī order. His successor, Nureddin Özal (1930–1993), was a car mechanic and poet. The order tells how, as a young dervish, Özal carried water a mile to the lodge, which had no running water, and scrubbed its floor three times at his sheikh's word.

The order names its own chain each time its healers begin work: ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī, Abdullah al-Hāshimī, Muḥammad al-Anṣārī, Muḥyiddīn al-Anṣārī, Nureddin Özal and Taner Ansari. This matches, link for link, the Sayyâdī chain that the Chicago community gives independently through the Arap Şeyh of Sivas — so the two American lines, the Ansari order and the publishers of the Risale-i Rifaiyye, are cousins. The Sayyâdiyya page sets out both accounts.

Taner Ansari translated the Qur'an and works of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī and Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī. He died on 27 August 2023, aged 81. Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari, who founded the order with him and was trained to succeed him, leads it from New York.

II. Practice

As Shaykha Muzeyyen describes it in 2026, the order's practice includes zikr, reciting and studying the Qur'an, reading ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, meditation and contemplation, a walking practice called “Adam's walk”, Sufi breathing, and service — a weekly soup kitchen and support for local people and children's schooling. The order presents Sufism in modern language, speaking of energy and vibration. The couple also founded the Ansari Holistic Healing Institute and Ansari Publications.

Healing has a special place. The Rifāʿī tradition holds that a gift of healing given to the Pîr passes down within his order, and the Ansari books stand in that line. Taner Ansari's manual of 2007 sets Qur'anic verses and divine Names for illness and trouble. It insists that everything depends on the healer's connection to a true shaykh and to the chain — the healer begins by calling on each master in turn — and it tells healers to warn patients in chemotherapy about their weakened immunity. This site describes these teachings; it does not reproduce the remedies or make medical claims.

Stories are the order's other way of teaching. Its book of 101 Sufi stories gathers tales of the prophets and saints, of the Naqshbandī teachers of Tarsus, and of its own Qādirī-Rifāʿī sheikhs, each followed by a “point of contemplation”. Among them is the order's telling of how ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī sent a dervish to ask his cousin Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī “what is love?”, and the Pîr rose and whirled, saying “Love is fire.”

III. Around the world

The order has its headquarters in New York and centres or representatives in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, Tanzania and Australia.

• LondonUnited Kingdom

  A registered charity since 2017, holding a weekly zikr on Tuesday evenings near Notting Hill Gate.

• Sydney and MelbourneAustralia

  The Ansari Sufi Order of the Southern Hemisphere, under Shaykh Ibrahim al-Ansari, made shaykh by Taner Ansari in 1995, with zikr evenings in Melbourne.

• Mexico and BrazilLatin America

  Teaching in Spanish and Portuguese.