The region from Turkestan to Sindh in the late 18th and early 19th centuries underwent two parallel process: the consolidation of weak, decentralized states, and the gradual encroachment of Imperial China, Britain, and Russia. Most subsequent historiography, largely based on Great Game narratives and colonial archives – has viewed the emergent polities as politically fragmented, and culturally and intellectually isolated. This paper, focusing on Hazrat Fazl Ahmad Mujaddidi, one of the principal Sufi scholar-saints in the region, concludes that amidst the political crises, new, dynamic sources of authority emerged from within Sufi networks which transcended the state and forged transregional linkages throughout South and Central Asia. Hazrat Fazl Ahmad was a descendant of the north Indian Naqshbandi Sufi, Shaykh Ahmed Sirhindi (known as the Mujaddid, or reviver, of the Second Millennium), and had arrived in Peshawar from north India in the late 18th century. From here, he forged a network of institutions which spanned from the Punjab and Ghazni to Khoqand and Bukhara, attracting a range of adherents from ascetics and celebrated ulama, to local rulers (including Zaman Shah and Mahmud Shah Durrani, the Akhund of Swat, and the rulers of at least five khanates in Turkestan). It is often argued that Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis like Hazrat Fazl Ahmad were among the principal carriers of Sirhindi’s revivalist teachings into Central Asia, and transformed religious practice and identity in the region. However, their popular appeal and the structure of their networks are not well understood. I argue that the half century of urban renewal under the Afghan Durranis, within a decentralized and informal imperial structure, created a space which facilitated an academic and spiritual revival from Khoqand to Kazan. Through figures like Fazl Ahmad, the religio-academic milieu of Mughal Hindustan mediated through Durrani Afghanistan injected Central Asia with a new corpus of literature, epistemologies, and practices, and in the case of Bukhara, even helped engender a new model of governance and kingship reflecting Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufi ethics.