Branch · as its own sources tell it
The İzzeddîniyya
The line that brought the Rifāʿī path to Istanbul in the sixteenth century, built the great lodge at Üsküdar, and in the nineteenth century carried it to the Balkans.
I. First arrivals in Anatolia
The path reached Anatolia in the thirteenth century with Sayyid Aḥmad-i Küçek and Sayyid Maḥmūd-i Ḥayrānī. Aḥmad-i Küçek came from Basra to Konya in the time of Mawlānā Rūmī; Rūmī's grandson Ulu Ârif Çelebi gave him a Mevlevī khilāfa and helped him open Rifāʿī lodges.
II. Istanbul and the Üsküdar Âsitâne
The Risale dates the order's lasting presence in Istanbul to Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥadīdī al-Rifāʿī, a khalīfa of the İzzeddînî line born in Basra. It treats an earlier Rifāʿī sheikh, Sayyid ʿAlī ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn, Şeyhülislam under Selim I, as the oldest known in the city, but notes that his chain did not continue.
Ḥadīdī held the first Rifāʿī ceremony at the Tevâşî Hasan Ağa mosque in Üsküdar, which still stands. After 1592 he left his khalīfa Sayyid Muḥammad al-Masānī in Istanbul and went to Damascus, where he is buried. A later sheikh of that chain, Sheikh Yâsin, built the lodge across from the mosque that became the Üsküdar Rifâî Âsitânesi, the central lodge.
The khalīfas of Sheikh Muḥammad Ṭāhir Efendi, called Paşa Baba, held the Âsitâne's seat until 1925. The last of them was Sheikh Ahmed Ziyaeddin Efendi. After him the council of sheikhs appointed Sheikh Hüseyin Hüsnü Sarıer Ceyhun — from the Sayyâdî line of the Arap Şeyh — the last to hold the seat. A second centre of the line was the Yeşil Tulumba lodge of Abdülhalîm Efendi at Unkapanı.
The Risale lists fifty-five Rifāʿī lodges in Istanbul up to 1925, from the Âsitâne at Üsküdar to Kasımpaşa, Fatih, Eyüp and Erenköy.
III. To the Balkans
Through Sheikh Mūsā Muṣliḥ al-Dīn, a khalīfa of the Unkapanı line, the path reached the Balkans in the nineteenth century. He held the lodge built in 1870 at Gjakova (Yakova) until his death in 1917. His son Sheikh Âdem Nuri received the khirqa at Unkapanı, returned to Gjakova, and later went to Berat and Shkodra in Albania, where he died in 1938 and is buried in the lodge he built.
Âdem Nuri's khalīfa Sheikh Hüseyin Hilmi held the lodge at Prizren in Kosovo, passing it in 1953 to his son Sheikh Jamālī Jamāladdīn, who took the seat in 1969.
When the ʿulamāʾ of Yugoslavia petitioned to turn the lodges into mosques, Sheikh Jamālī gathered thirty-eight sheikhs, who chose him as Sheikh of Sheikhs of the Balkans. Together they explained the place of the ṭarīqa in religion, and the government extended legal protection to the lodges. He also edited a monthly, the Derviş Mecmuası. He died on 7 December 2004.
The line's lodges in Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania today: The Rufai tekkes of the Balkans.