al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi أبو عبد الله محمد بن علي الحكيم الترمذي

Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi rahimahullah was a ninth-century Islamic mystic, theologian, and prolific author writing in Arabic, who lived in Central Asia. He was born during the decade between 820 and 830 AD. His father was a scholar of Hadith and a jurist of the Hanafi school, which was dominant in the eastern territories of Islam at the time, and al-Tirmidhi received an early education firmly rooted in Hadith and fiqh. He did not study the non-Islamic sciences such as Greek natural philosophy, though he later showed familiarity with the astrolabe, implying some knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. Al-Tirmidhi developed an influential and distinctive doctrine of sainthood (wilaya) that was reportedly considered heterodox by contemporaries, leading to his reputed exile. Despite these controversies, modern scholars have recovered his writings and recognized them as foundational contributions to early Sufism. His output is copious and significant for the period generally understood in terms of the formation of classical Sufi thought.