Nūrbakhshīy(y)a

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Nūrbakhshīy(y)a. Religious movement in Islam, named after its founder, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, who was known as Nūrbakhsh (‘gift of light’), and who lived 1393–1465 (AH 795–869). He was proclaimed caliph (khalīfa) and al-Mahdī by his followers. He maintained a Sūfī understanding of the world as manifestation of God, and a Shiʿite insistence on the necessity for the true Imām to be a descendant of ʿAlī.

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