The Wali's Wife: Gender, the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya, and the Ottoman Empire during the Nineteenth Century This paper proposes to study the role of women in the doctrines and success of the nineteenth-century Sufi saint (or Wali), Shaykh Khalid (1776-1827), and his brotherhood, the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya. Though women are almost completely absent from scholarship on Shaykh Khalid's life, women were instrumental in the dissemination of his brotherhood and served as teachers, administrators, financiers, and political leaders. One of Khalid's daughters, Fatima, was a prominent teacher, while the largest contributor to Khalid's properties in Baghdad was a woman. Even more impressive is the case of Khadija, one of Khalid's wives. She oversaw his properties and pious endowment after his death and forged close ties with the elites of the Ottoman Empire. By analyzing the writings of Shaykh Khalid and his followers, court records and ferman, I will illustrate the role of women in the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. I will argue that the prominence of these women should come as no surprise, since there is nothing intrinsic to Shaykh Khalid's teachings or the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya's devotional practices which precludes women from participating in the order or in political life generally. Just as there is a silsila, or formal chain of spiritual descent, from Khalid to his contemporary male disciples, there is an active silsila of female shaykhs that dates back to his lifetime. I will also focus on how Khadija assumed close control over Khalid's properties after his death, won exemptions from military services and financial privileges for Khalid's family, and forged ties with Ottoman elites, including female members of the Ottoman royal family. When Khadija died at the remarkable age of 101 in 1891, Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876-1909) asked a leading Istanbul intellectual to compose a poem eulogizing his decision to uphold her request to rebuild Khalid's tomb. Finally, I hope that my paper will begin a process of reframing how scholars look at Sufi orders during the nineteenth century. While there is scholarship on the role of women in Sufism generally, there remains little work on Sufism and women in the nineteenth century and how leading Sufi figures viewed women and their proper place in society. Ultimately, this type of work will help us better understand the development of Muslim societies during a critical period in the modern history of the Middle East.