There has been an increased and lively interest recently in the broad problem of the transmission of knowledge in Islam. Considerable scholarship deals with the modes, venues and practices involved in this process.The present paper aims to contribute to this growing body of scholarship, by examining a group of Sufis in the fifteenth century and the prominence of the locale and the practice in the dissemination of their doctrines. The issue of the transmission of knowledge in Islam has always been a trans-regional one. The present study is of a similar nature: Zayn al-Din Khwafi (d. 1435), a prominent Sufi of the Timurid Herat, undertook a pilgrimage (Hajj) that covered the years 1419-1421. In the course of this, traveling through Iran, he visited Iraq, Syria and Egypt, in addition to the Hijaz region. Sufis in Anatolia and Egypt at the time, upon learning of the coming of this great shaykh from the East, set out to meet him in Jerusalem and Cairo. Some of them undertook the return trip to Herat to be his future disciples, some performed the pilgrimage with him. These included seminal scholars and Sufis like the first Ottoman mufti Molla Fenari (d. 1431), and convent-founding Sufis, eventually, of Anatolia like Abd al-Latif al-Maqdisi (d. 1452) and Abd al-Rahim al-Marzifoni (fl. 1450). In the course of a pilgrimage travel, Khwafi was able to acquire brilliant disciples who would establish his fame in lands he never been to, including the Anatolia under the then-emerging Ottoman dynasty. Also in the same while he compiled books that elaborated his doctrine to be copied and learned by students. The pilgrimage, therefore, was much more than a personal accomplishment in piety especially for a grand Sufi living in a rather remote corner of Islamdom. Contemporary historian Ibn Hajar notes how Khwafi’s fame immensely increased after this pilgrimage. In addition to highlighting the centrality of the Hajj and the sites on the Hajj route in the growth of Sufi doctrines and communities, this paper compares distant parts of Islamdom to raise questions on such issues as Islamic universalism in the fifteenth century; fluidity and loyalty within intellectual networks; and Sufis’ attitudes regarding the society around them.