By Mawlana As’ad Mahmud Makki
Translated by Shaykh Ismaeel Nakhuda
In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Jami Shari’at wa Tariqat Hadhrat Mawlana ‘Abd al-Hafeez al-Makki is one of the foremost khalifahs (deputies) and leading students of the great Mujaddid of Islam, Qutub al-Aqtab Hadhrat Shaykh al-Hadith Mawlana Muhammad Zakariyya al-Kandhalawi al-Muhajir al-Madani. Hadhrat was born in pre-partition India in 1946CE, in the city of Amritsar, Punjab. His family, originally from Kashmir, had settled in the region approximately fifty years earlier.
Hadhrat’s lineage reaches a certain Raja ‘Abd al-Salam Malik, who had accepted Islam at the hands of Amir Kabir Sayyid ‘Ali al-Hamdani — a famous fourteenth century Sufi scholar, who had arrived in Kashmir to propagate Islam. Raja ‘Abd al-Salam was the ruler of the sub-district of Kuligam, an area surrounding the town of Islamabad in Kashmir.