This paper will explore traditions of hereditary and initiatic succession within a Central Asian family that sought to define itself in terms of ties to ?ak?m Ata, a saint of Khw?razm best known as a disciple of the famous Turkic Sufi shaykh A?mad Yasav? (both figures most likely lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries). It will note the range of hagiographical and folkloric traditions about ?ak?m Ata, preserved in written sources and oral accounts recorded from the 15th century to the present, but will focus primarily on a previously unstudied Persian text that outlines the history of a lineage descending from the saint down to the 18th century. The work, entitled Ris?la yi nuzdahum (reflecting its disposition in 19 chapters), survives in a unique manuscript preserved in Tashkent, and in effect follows three stages in the history of a sacred family of Khw?razm: first, a natural genealogy from the Prophet’s uncle ?Abb?s down to a disciple of ?ak?m Ata; second, a lineage combining natural descent and initiatic Sufi transmission from this disciple down to the late 16th century; and third, a hereditary lineage, from the late 16th to the early 18th century, in which members sought out other sources of Sufi initiation and training. This third phase in particular suggests important conclusions about the organizational development of what appear as ‘Sufi communities’ in the early modern era, and reflects trends evident also in other poorly studied ‘family histories’ from the 18th century; the paper will address parallels with these other family histories, and especially with two works among them that also focus on the region of Khw?razm. More broadly, the paper will consider two key issues raised by the Ris?la yi nuzdahum and these other texts: the relationship of the two succession patterns, hereditary and initiatic, which are sometimes parallel but sometimes intersect, and the question of what it was that individuals following these succession patterns were succeeding to.