One of the outstanding creative thinkers of Islamic mysticism, Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn al-Hussain al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi was driven out of his native town of Termedh and took refuge in Nishapur, where he was preaching in 285 (898). His psychological writings influenced al-Ghazali, whilst his startling theory of sainthood was taken over and developed by Ibn ‘Arabi. A copious author, many of his books, including an autobiographical sketch, have been preserved and a number have been published.

The training of Hakim-e Tirmidhi

At the beginning of his career, Muhammad ibn Ali-e Tirmidhi arranged with two students to set out with them in quest of knowledge. When they were just ready to leave, his mother became very sorrowful.

“Soul of your mother,” she addressed her son, “I am a feeble woman, and have no one in the world. You look after my affairs. To whom will you leave me, alone and feeble as I am?”

Her words pained Tirmidhi, and he abandoned his journey while his two friends went off in quest of knowledge. Some time elapsed. Then one day he was sitting in the cemetery, weeping bitterly.

“Here am I left here, neglected and ignorant. My friends will come back, perfectly trained scholars.”

Suddenly there appeared a luminous elder who addressed him.

“My son, why do you weep?”

Tirmidhi told him his tale.

“Would you like me to teach you a lesson daily, so that you will soon outstrip them?” he asked.

“I would,” Tirmidhi replied.

“So,” Tirmidhi recalled, “every day he taught me a lesson, till three years had gone by. Then I realized that he was Khizr, and that I had attained this felicity because I pleased my mother.”

Every Sunday (so Abu Bakr-e Warraq reports) Khizr would visit Tirmidhi and they would converse on every matter. One day he said to me, “Today I will take you somewhere.”

“The master knows best,” I replied.

I set out with him, and within a little while I espied an arduous and harsh desert, in the midst of which a golden throne was set under a verdant tree by a spring of water. Someone apparelled in beautiful raiment was seated on the throne. The Shaykh approached him, whereupon this person rose up and set Tirmidhi on the throne. In a little while a company gathered from all directions, until forty persons were assembled. They made a signal to heaven and food appeared, and they ate. The Shaykh asked that person questions which he answered, but in such language that I did not understand a single word. After a time Tirmidhi begged leave to go, and took his departure.

“Go,” he said to me. “You have been blessed.”

In a while we were back in Termedh. I then questioned the Shaykh.

“What was all that? What place was it, and who was that man?”

“It was the wilderness of the Children of Israel,” Tirmidhi replied. “That man was the Pole.”

“How was it that we went and returned in such a short time?” I asked.

“O Abu Bakr,” he answered, “when He conveys, one is able to arrive! What business is it of yours to know the why and wherefore? To arrive is your task, not to ask!”

“However hard I strove to keep my carnal soul in subjection,” Tirmidhi related, “I could not prevail over it. In my despair I said, ‘Haply Almighty God has created this soul for Hell. Why nurture a creature doomed to Hell?’ Proceeding to the banks of the Oxus, I begged a man to bind me hand and foot. He left me thus, and I rolled over and flung myself into the water, hoping to drown myself. The impact of the water freed my hands; then a wave came and cast me up on the bank. Despairing of myself, I cried, ‘Glory be to Thee, O God, who hast created a soul that is not proper either for Heaven or Hell!’ In the very moment of my self-despair, by the blessing of that cry my secret heart was opened and I saw what was necessary for me. In that selfsame hour I vanished from myself. So long as I have lived, I have lived by the blessing of that hour.”

Abu Bakr-e Warraq also relates the following.

One day Tirmidhi handed over to me many volumes of his writings to cast into the Oxus. I examined them and found they were replete with mystic subtleties and truths. I could not bring myself to carry out his instructions, and instead stored them in my room. I then told him that I had thrown them in.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“You did not throw them in,” he concluded. “Go and do so.”

“I see two problems,” I said to myself. “First, why does he want them flung into the water? And second, what visible proof will there be?”

However, I went back and threw the books into the Oxus. I saw the river open up, and an open chest appeared; the volumes fell into it, then the lid closed and the river subsided. I was astonished.

“Did you throw them in this time?” Tirmidhi questioned me when I returned to him.

“Master, by God’s glory,” I cried, “tell me the secret behind this.”

“I had composed something on the science of the Sufis, the disclosing of the verification of which was difficult for human minds to grasp,” he replied. “My brother Khizr entreated me. The chest was brought by a fish at his bidding, and Almighty God commanded the waters to convey it to him.”

Anecdotes of Tirmidhi

In Tirmidhi’s time lived a great ascetic who was always criticizing him. Now in all the world Tirmidhi possessed nothing but a cabin. When he returned from his journey to Hejaz, a dog had whelped in that cabin, which had no door. Tirmidhi did not wish to drive the dog out, and he went and came eighty times in the hope that the dog would have of its own free will carried its puppies out.

That same night the ascetic saw the Prophet in a dream.

“Sirrah, you put yourself up against a man who eighty times brought succour to a dog,” the Prophet said. “If you desire eternal happiness, go, bind up your loins and serve him.”

The ascetic, too ashamed to answer Tirmidhi’s greetings, thereafter spent the rest of his life in his service.

“When the master is angry with you, do you know?” someone asked Tirmidhi’s family.

“We know,” they replied. “Whenever he is vexed with us, that day he is even kinder to us than usual. He takes neither bread nor water, and weeps and supplicates, saying, ‘O God, in what did I vex Thee, that Thou hast provoked them against me? O God, I repent; restore them to rectitude.’ So we know, and repent, to deliver the master out of his affliction.”

For a while Tirmidhi did not see Khizr. Then one day a maidservant had washed the baby’s clothes, filling a basin with the baby’s excreta. Meanwhile the Shaykh, dressed in clean robes and with a spotless turban, was proceeding to the mosque. The girl, flying into a rage over some trifle, emptied the basin over the Shaykh’s head. Tirmidhi said nothing, and swallowed his anger. Immediately he rediscovered Khizr.

In his youth a certain lovely woman invited Tirmidhi to take her, but he refused. Then one day the woman, learning that he was in a garden, arrayed herself and proceeded thither. As soon as the Shaykh became aware of her approach, he fled. The woman ran after him, screaming that he was after her blood. Tirmidhi took no notice, but climbed a high wall and flung himself over.

One day in his old age Tirmidhi was reviewing his acts and sayings, and remembered that incident. The thought entered his mind, “What would it have mattered if I had gratified that woman’s need? After all, I was young, and I could afterwards have repented.” When he perceived this thought in his mind, he was filled with anguish.

“Foul and rebellious soul!” he exclaimed. “Forty years ago, in the first flush of youth, this thought did not occur to you. Now in old age, after so many struggles, whence has come this repining over a sin not committed?”

Very sorrowful, for three days he sat in mourning for this thought. After three days he saw the Prophet in a dream.

“Muhammad, do not grieve,” said the Prophet to him. “What happened was not due to a lapse on your part. This thought occurred to you because forty years more had passed since my death. The period of my leaving the world had become that much longer, and I was withdrawn further away. It is no sin of yours, no shortcoming in your spiritual progress. What you experienced was due to the long extension of the period of my departure from the world, not to any deficiency in your character.”