[LookSe]

Sorry just another thought came to my mind. The gaps in tasawwuf chains being acceptable can also be likened to the field of fiqh. A person can be an excellent Faqeeh of a particular school even if the individual's contemporaries are not great fuqaha, nor do they align themselves to the same school of fiqh.. likewise an individual can attain perfection and align oneself to a tareeqah. At the same time though, the chains actually came later so it's also very possible that the people within the chain had absolutely no idea they would be included in a chain. Like surely Abu Bakr (ra) didn't think so many years down the line a group of Sufis would attribute their path to him...