Dr.
Javad Nurbakhsh became pīr of the Niʿmatullāhī Order in 1953 upon the death of his predecessor, Mūnis ʿAli Shah, known as Dhū'l-Rīyāsatayn. Dr. Nurbakhsh was bestowed with the name Nūr 'Ali Shāh Kermani for his initiation when he was 16 years old, and acknowledged as a spiritual prodigy from an early age. Mūnis ʿAli Shah soon assigned the young Javad Nurbakhsh all of the principal duties for operating and maintaining the Nimatullahi khaniqah in Tehran, before the age of twenty — a time when he was also pursuing full-time medical studies in university. His later accession as qotb initiated a period of expansion, vitality and renewal for the order that bore comparison to the revival by his 18th century predecessor and spiritual namesake, Nūr 'Ali Shāh. Within Iran, the Nimatullahi order was significantly expanded by Javad Nurbakhsh, having 60 new khaniqahs built in cities throughout the country between his accession in 1953 and 1979. During this period of growth in the 1970s, visitors to Iran from the United States and Europe were first accepted the order. In 1974, on invitation by American initiates of the Nimatullahi order, Javad Nurbakhsh went to the United States and determined a need to establish regular khaniqahs there. In 1979, Javad Nurbakhsh's leadership of the Nimatullahi order moved abroad from Tehran, as a result of the revolution in Iran. Dr. Nurbakhsh led the Nimatullahi order from United States until his permanent emigration to England in 1983. By the early 1990s there were nine Nimatullahi khaniqahs in the United States. The composition of individual Nimatullahi members in their assemblies changed and broadened over these two decades, with American khaniqahs in the East Coast — such as Boston, New York and Washington — mostly attended by Americans, while those in California were about half American and half of Iranian origins. Nimatullahi members were also accepted from a diversity of religious backgrounds on the basis of sincerity alone, not exclusively restricted to Shi'a Islam. The growth of a global Nimatullahi presence proceedes, and as of this writing, in 2022, the Nimatullahi order expanded to many parts of the world, with some 36 khaniqahs located from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, to several European nations, Russia, Western Africa, and Australia.With the death of Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh in October of 2008, succession of leadership as pīr of the Nimatullahi order passed to his son, Dr.
Alireza Nurbakhsh as sole spiritual and material heir. Keeping with the order's injunction to be a productive member of society, Alireza Nurbakhsh is a currently practicing lawyer in London. In addition to being licensed as a solicitor, he obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. Prior to his accession to leadership of the Nimatullahi, Alireza Nurbakhsh established and guided the first 20 years of the Nimatullahi Sufi journal. The Sufi Journal is responsible for much of the scholarly and artistic sponsorship by the order during those years to present time in 2022. Dr. Alireza Nurbakhsh describes his charge for the continuance and growth of the Nimatullahi practical legacy into a new century - a legacy that he's described as nothing other than the ethos of Divine Unity and Loving Kindness. ==Activities==