Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī c. 470/1077–78 — 561/1166 Life, teaching, earliest texts, manuscript trail, and the making of the Qādirī legacy Executive summary ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī was one of twelfth-century Baghdad’s most influential Ḥanbalī jurists, public preachers, ascetics, and spiritual teachers. He was born in Gīlān, south of the Caspian Sea, around 470/1077–78; reached Baghdad in 488/1095; studied law, ḥadīth, Arabic, and ascetic discipline; assumed a teaching and preaching role at Bāb al-Azaj in the 520s/1120s; and died in Rabīʿ II 561/February 1166. Contemporary and near-contemporary testimony securely establishes his legal learning, austere piety, large audiences, school and ribāṭ, hospitality to students, and moral authority. It does not securely establish the full genealogy tracing his descent from the Prophet, childhood miracle cycle, precise twenty-five-year wilderness retreat, spectacular conversion totals, or a transregional order founded during his lifetime. His importanc...