al-Hakīm at-Tirmidhī

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The tomb mausoleum of al-Hakīm at-Tirmidhī in Termiz

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muhammad ibn ʿAlī al-Hakīm at-Tirmidhī ( Arabic ابو عبد الله محمد بن علي الحكيم الترمذي, DMG Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmiḏī born. between 820 and 830 in Tirmidh , died between 905 and 930) was an Islamic mystical thinker and writer in Khorasan . In his numerous works, which he wrote in Arabic, he dealt with various questions about the relationship between God, the cosmos and the moral perfection of man. In addition, he left a description of his mystical path, which is the first ever autobiography of an Islamic mystic. At-Tirmidhī was particularly influential with his theory of “ friendship with God ” ( wilāyat Allāh ). Even if later scholars described him as a Sufi , he himself was outside of the Sufik .

Life

Al-Hakīm at-Tirmidhī was born into a family of theologians between 820 and 830. As he reports in his autobiography, at the age of eight he received lessons in law ( ʿilm ar-raʾy ) and traditional science ( ʿilm al-āṯār ). Most likely his father ʿAlī ibn al-Hasan was his most important teacher. He most often mentions him as his source in the hadith .

At-Tirmidhī only developed a tendency towards mysticism when he went on a pilgrimage at the age of 28 . After returning to his hometown, he heard of people called "people of knowledge" ( ahl al-maʿrifa ) and he came across a book by the Syrian ascetic Ahmad ibn ʿAmr al-Antākī from which he read something about the training of engines soul ( riyāḍat an-nafs ) learned. In the following years at-Tirmidhī experienced numerous dreams in which he thought he felt God's presence. After he had even written several works on Islamic mysticism, it denounced by about 870 scholars of the city the governor ( wali ) of Balch he about God's love ( Hubb perish) speak, people, heretical innovations introductory and prophethood ( nubūwa ) claim. He was then ordered to Balch and had to assure in writing that from now on he would no longer talk about love. According to adh-Dhahabī , his two writings Ḫatm al- auliyāʾ and ʿIlal aš-šarīʿa formed the basis for the indictment.

At-Tirmidhī held disputes about friendship with God with the well-known Sufi preacher Yahyā ibn Muʿādh ar-Rāzī (st. 871) from Rey and was in correspondence with the two Malāmatīya sheikhs Abū ʿUthmān al-Hīrī (st. 910) in Nishapur and Muhammad ibn al-Fadl (st. 931) in Samarkand.

As at-Tirmidhī tells in his autobiography, his wife had a dream on the 21st Dhū l-Qaʿda 269 dH (= June 1, 883 AD), which led him to believe that he was forty “ Arch-righteous ”( ṣiddīqūn ). For at-Tirmidhī, the forty arch-righteous were the true successors of the Prophet, who also have a cosmological meaning because only through them the earth will endure.

According to Tādsch ad-Dīn as-Subkī , at-Tirmidhī still taught Hadith in Nishapur in the year 325 dH (= 898 AD) . After this date, no further events from his life are known.

The information about at-Tirmidhī's death date is confused. According to Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalānī , he was still alive in 930. Yves Marquet considers a date between 936 and 938 to be the most likely time of death. In his monograph, Radtke puts the death at-Tirmidhīs between 907 and 922, but gives different dates in other places. Geneviève Gobillot said in 1994 that a consensus had been reached that at-Tirmidhī died in 930.

Works

A total of 80 works have survived from at-Tirmidhī. Of these, the following have received special attention:

  • Kitāb Ḫatm al-auliyāʾ ("Book on the Seal of Friends of God"), his main work, which at the end contains a series of 162 questions. Muhyī d-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī wrote a commentary on this work in which he answered the questions at-Tirmidhīs. The book was considered lost for a long time until ʿUthmān Yahyā discovered two manuscripts of it in Istanbul and edited them together with Ibn ʿArabī's commentary in 1965. Bernd Radtke created a new edition of the text in 1992 under the title Kitāb Sīrat al-Auliyāʾ ("Book on the Life of Friends of God"), in which he considered two other manuscripts, but omitted the commentary Ibn ʿArabī.
  • Al-Farq baina l-āyāt wa-l-karāmāt , a treatise on the difference between the miraculous signs of the prophets and the miracles of the friends of God.
  • Iṯbāt al-ʿilal (" Establishing the Reasons"). In this writing, which is also known under the titles ʿIlal aš-šarīʿa ("The Reasons for Sharia ") and ʿIlal al-ʿubūdīya ("The Reasons for Worship"), at-Tirmidhī tried the ritual rules of Islam to explain rationally. This is said to have been one of the reasons for his expulsion from Tirmidh. The text was edited by Ḫālid Zahrī in Rabat in 1998. Digitized
  • Kitāb al-Akyās al-muġtarrīn ("Book of the Blinded Cunning"), a book with occupational examples of deceptions in religious matters, which denounces the various forms of hypocrisy and combats the hiyal of the casuists .
  • Kitāb Riyāḍat an-nafs (“Book about the taming of the instinctual soul”), treatise on questions of anthropology and the mystical path. It was edited in Cairo in 1947 by AJ Arberry and ʿAbd al-Qādir.
  • Nawādir al-uṣūl fī maʿrifat aḫbār ar-rasūl (“Rare basic texts for knowledge of the news about the Messenger of God”), at-Tirmidhī's most extensive work, which presents and mystically commented on relevant hadiths in 291 thematic chapters.
  • Bayān al-farq baina ṣ-ṣadr wa-l-qalb , psychological treatise on the difference between the chest ( ṣadr ), the heart ( qalb ), the inner heart ( fuʾād ) and the intellect ( lubb ).
  • Ġaur al-umūr (“The depth of things”), treatise on spiritual anthropology, the pre-existence of souls , the knowledge of God and the concept of true love, in which a separate theory of Fitra is drafted. Accordingly, the Fitra is composed of five elements: understanding ( fahm ), reason ( ḏihn ), cunning ( ḏakāʾ ), memory ( ḥifẓ ) and knowledge ( ʿilm ). God is said to have deposited these gifts in man when he created Adam at the beginning of time and breathed spirit into him. The book was edited by Geneviève Gobillot and translated into French. According to Bernd Radtke, the statements in this work are in stark contrast to the teachings that at-Tirmidhī represents in his other works. Because of this and because of various anachronisms in the isnads , he suspects that the work does not actually come from at-Tirmidhī, but was only ascribed to him afterwards.
  • Badʾ šaʾn Abī ʿAbdallāh (“The beginning of the affair of Abū ʿAbdallāh”), autobiography that has only survived in a single manuscript in Ankara. It was discovered in 1950 by Hellmut Ritter , first edited by ʿUthmān Yahyā in 1965 and translated into German and commented on in 1994 by Bernd Radtke. The text contains numerous dream reports.
  • In Leipzig there is also a manuscript with statements at-Tirmidhīs on 132 issues ( masāʾil ). This manuscript Ms. Leipzig 212 has been handed down under the title ad-Durr al-maknūn fī asʾilat mā kān wa-mā yakūn ("The hidden pearl on questions of the past and future") and also contains individual letters from at-Tirmidhīs as well as fragments other of his works.

All works at-Tirmidhīs are written in Arabic, but in some places he uses Persian expressions.

Teaching

The teaching of the friends of God

At-Tirmidhī worked out the concept of "friendship with God" in his two books Kitāb Ḫatm al-Auliyāʾ and al-Farq baina l-āyāt wa-l-karāmāt . The friends of God ( auliyāʾ Allāh ) are mentioned in the writings of the Baghdad Sufi Abū Saʿīd al-Charrāz (dated before 899) and the traditionalist Ibn Abī Dunyā (dated 894), but at-Tirmidhī dealt with the concept for the first time in systematic way. In Ḫatm al-Auliyāʾ he lists a total of seven signs by which the friends of God can be recognized:

  1. They are people who, when they are seen, make one think of God.
  2. They have the “power of divine truth” ( sulṭān al-ḥaqq ) so that no one can resist them.
  3. They have clairvoyance ( firāsa ).
  4. They have the gift of inspiration ( ilhām ).
  5. The person who is their enemy is thrown to the ground and suffers an evil fate.
  6. They are praised by all people except those who are jealous.
  7. Their prayer is answered and they can perform miraculous signs such as shortening space and time, walking on the water and speaking to al-Kidr .

At-Tirmidhī also designates the miraculous signs by which one can recognize “friends of God” as karāmāt (“indications of favor, honors”). He contrasts these with the prophetic miracles , which are called mu mizāt . He accuses those who reject karāmāt , God's favors for friends of God, of lack of faith. To prove that God can also mark non-prophets with miracles, he invokes the Koranic model of Mary as well as of "the one who had knowledge from the Scriptures" ( Sura 27:40 ) and King Solomon miraculously the throne brought by Bilqīs queen of Sheba .

According to at-Tirmidhīs, al-Chidr , "who walks over the earth, over its land and sea, over its plains and mountains, in order to seek his equals, out of longing for such", is in a particularly close relationship with the friends of God. In his opinion, this is the real reason for his continued existence. So he writes:

“In relation to them (sc. The friends of God) there is a strange story about Chidr. For he had already seen at the very beginning (of creation), when the shares of fate were distributed, how they should be. Then the desire arose in him to still experience her work on earth. He was granted a long life that he will gather with this fellowship for the resurrection. "

After Hudschwīrī and Fariduddin Attar , at-Tirmidhī also had contact with Chidr himself. Hudschwīrī tells, referring to at-Tirmidhī's disciple Abū Bakr al-Warrāq, that Chidr at-Tirmidhī visited every Sunday and they then had conversations with each other. Attar tells in his Tadhkirat al-Auliya that Chidr at-Tirmidhī visited for three years in his youth and gave him private lessons. In his own writings, at-Tirmidhī does not mention such an approach to Chidr.

At-Tirmidhī assigned himself the rank of "seal of friendship with God" ( ḫatm al-wilāya ). By this he understood the highest spiritual successor of Muhammad , “top and end point of the hierarchy of saints”. This idea was later adopted by Muhyī d-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī and other Sufis. In the early 19th century, for example, the North African Sufi Ahmad at-Tijānī claimed to be the "seal of friends of God" ( ḫatm al-auliyāʾ ).

Confrontation with the Malāmatīya

At-Tirmidhī was critical of the introspective methods of self-education as introduced by al-Muhāsibī (781-857) and corresponded about it with Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī (st. 910), who was from about 883 to 910 the most important sheikh of the so-called Malāmatīya movement in Nishapur. He wrote to him in a letter: “Your letters have reached me, my friend, letter after letter, and you are constantly writing about the mistakes of the I in the knowledge of God. But if it is possible for you not to bother with the faults of the ego - because all of this is something that is not God - then do that! ”In his criticism of the concentration on the weaknesses of the ego, at-Tirmidhī was the Sufi Abū Bakr al-Wāsitī (st. 932) close, who described such introspection as “pure polytheism”.

at-Tirmidhī, the "wise"

Some later Sufi authors like Abū ʿAbd ar-Rahmān as-Sulamī (st. 1021) attributed at-Tirmidhī to the Sufis , but the word Sufi and its derivatives ( taṣauwuf, mutaṣauwifa, ṣūfīya ) do not appear in at-Tirmidhī's own writings and contemporaries did not regard him as a Sufi either. The Sufi Jafar al-Chuldī (st. 959), for example, is said to have replied to the question whether he was collecting the books of at-Tirmidhīs that he did not do so because he did not attribute at-Tirmidhī to the Sufis. Rather, he belongs to the group of so-called Ḥukamāʾ , “wise men” in Khorasan and Transoxania , who cultivated the knowledge of Hanafi jurisprudence , the Kalām , the Koran exegesis and the Hadith as well as their own spiritual experiences. At-Tirmidhī's nickname al-Ḥakīm (“the wise”) also indicates belonging to this group . Bernd Radtke , who is one of the most important researchers of at-Tirmidhī's writings, translates this term as theosophist . Other contemporary scholars who used this surname were Abū Bakr al-Warrāq al-Hakīm (st. 893) in Balch and Abū l-Qāsim Ishāq al-Hakīm (st. 953) in Samarkand .

The Persian Sufi Hudschwīrī, who revered at-Tirmidhī, speaks in his work Kašf al-maḥǧūb of a "school" at-Tirmidhīs, whose members referred to themselves in Persian as ḥākimiyān after his nickname .

literature

Persian and Arabic sources
Secondary literature
  • Abdurrahman Aliy: Nawādir al-Uṣūl des al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmiḏī: A contribution to the mystical commentary on the hadith . Inaugural dissertation at the University of Bochum 2003. Digitized
  • Arthur John Arberry : “Notes on a Tirmidhî's manuscript” in Rivista degli Studi Orientali 18 (1940) 315–327.
  • Geneviève Gobillot: "Un penseur de l'Amour (Hubb) le mystique khurāsānien al-Hakīm al-Tirmidhī (m. 318/930)" in Studia Islamica 73 (1991) 25-44.
  • G. Gobillot: “La solution mystique d'Al-Hakim Al-Tirmidhi (m. 318/930) au probème de la toute-puissance de Dieu” in Mélanges de sciences religieuses 53 (1996) 81-105.
  • Muḥammad Ibrāhīm al-Ǧuyūšī: al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmiḏī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī at-Tirmiḏī 320h; dirāsa li-āṯārihī wa-afkārihī . Dār an-Nahḍa al-ʿArabīya, Cairo, ca.1980.
  • NL Heer: “Some Biographical and Bibliographical Notes on al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmidhī” in The World of Islam, Studies in honor of Philip K. Hitti. London 1959. pp. 121-134.
  • Ahmet T. Karamustafa: Sufism. The formative period. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007. pp. 44-48.
  • Y. Marquet: Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmiḏī et le neoplatonisme de son temps ”in Annales de la Faculté des Lettes et Sciences Humaines, Dakar 4 (1976) 263-306, 7 (1977) 151-181.
  • Y. Marquet: Art. "Al-Tirmi dh ī" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. X, pp. 544a-546b.
  • Muhammad Khalid Masud: "Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmi dh ī’s Buduww Sh a'n" in Islamic Studies 4 (1965) 315–343.
  • P. Nwyia: “al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmi dh ī” in Mélanges de la Faculté orientale de l'Université St. Joseph 44 (1968) 741-65.
  • Bernd Radtke (a): Al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmiḏi. An Islamic theosophist of the 3rd / 9th centuries Century . Schwarz Verlag, Freiburg 1980. Digitized
  • Bernd Radtke (b): “The mystic al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmiḏī” in Der Islam 57 (1980) 237–245.
  • Bernd Radtke: "A Forerunner of Ibn al-Arabi: Hakim Tirmidhi on Sainthood," in Journal of the Ibn Arabi Society 8 (1989) 42-49. Online version
  • Bernd Radtke: Three writings of the Theosophist of Tirmiḏ. Part I: the Arabic texts, Beirut-Stuttgart 1992. - Part II translation and commentary. Beirut-Stuttgart 1996. Digitized
  • Bernd Radtke: "Tirmiḏiana minora" in Oriens 34 (1994) 242–298.
  • Bernd Radtke: “Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi on miracles” in Denise Aigle (ed.) Miracle et Karama: saints et leurs miracles à travers l'hagiographie chrétienne et islamique IVe-XVe siècles. Brepols, Turnhout 2000. pp. 287-99.
  • Bernd Radtke: "Some recent research on al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī" in Der Islam 83 (2006) 39-89.
  • Hellmut Ritter : “Philologika XIII: Arabic Manuscripts in Anatolia and İstanbul (continued)” in Oriens 3 (1950) 31–107.
  • Fuat Sezgin : History of Arabic Literature . Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill 1967. pp. 653-659.
  • Sara Sviri: “Ḥakīm Tirmidhī and the Malāmatī Movement in Early Sufism” in Leonard Lewisohn (ed.): Classical Persian Sufism: from its Origins to Rumi . Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, London, 1993. pp. 583-613.
  • Osman Yahya, "L'Oeuvre de Tirmiḏī (Essai bibliographique)" in Melanges Louis Massignon Vol. 3. Institut Français de Damas, Damascus, 1957. pp. 411-478.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Radtke 1994, 243.
  2. ↑ See Radtke 1989 and 1996, 1.
  3. ↑ See Radtke 1980a, 1.
  4. ↑ See Radtke 1996, 1.
  5. ↑ Cf. Radtke 1980a, 2 and Radtke 2006, 65.
  6. ↑ See e.g. Radtke 1994, 248.
  7. ↑ See Radtke 1994, 249.
  8. ↑ Cf. Gobillot 1991, 29 and Masud 317.
  9. ↑ See Radtke 1996, 103 and Radtke 2006, 63f.
  10. ↑ One letter to al-Hīrī and two to Ibn al-Fadl have survived, cf. the translation in Radtke 1980a, 117-126 and the review in Sviri 1993, 609-613. The letter to al-Hīrī is edited in Radtke 1992, 190-192.
  11. ↑ See Radtke 1980b, 238; Marquet / EI 544a.
  12. ↑ Cf. Radtke 1980a, 90 f.
  13. ↑ See Masud 318.
  14. ↑ See Sezgin 654.
  15. ↑ See Marquet / EI 544a.
  16. ↑ See Radtke 1980a, 38.
  17. ↑ See Radtke 1980b, 238 (around 900), Radtke 1992, 1 (between 905 and 910), Radtke 1994 (around 910).
  18. ↑ See Radtke 2006, 51.
  19. ↑ See the list in Sezgin.
  20. ↑ Cf. on the questions Radtke 1994, 282-294.
  21. ↑ See Radtke 1994, 277f.
  22. ↑ See Sezgin 657, no.32.
  23. ↑ Cf. Radtke: Drei Schriften des Theosophen von Tirmiḏ. 1992, p. 2f.
  24. ↑ See Sezgin 654.
  25. ↑ Cf. Radtke 1980a, 41 and Radtke 1996, 3.
  26. ↑ See the dissertation by Aliy and Radtke 1996, 2.
  27. ↑ See the translation by N. Heer: "A Ṣūfī psychological treatise" in The Muslim World, 51 (1961) 25-36.
  28. ↑ Cf. Genviève Gobillot: La conception originelle: ses interprétations et fonctions chez les penseurs musulmans. Inst. Français d'Archéologie Orientale, Cairo, 2000, pp. 53–56.
  29. ↑ G. Gobillot: Édition de Tirmidhi. Le Livre de la Profondeur des Choses. In: Bulletin des études islamiques 28 (1994)
  30. ↑ G. Gobillot: Le livre de la profondeur des choses. Presses universitaires du Septentrion, Villeneuve d'Ascq 1996.
  31. ↑ See Radtke 2006.
  32. ↑ See Yahya 414.
  33. ↑ See Radtke 1994, 242-277.
  34. ↑ See Radtke 1980a, 48.
  35. ↑ See the list in Radtke 1980a, 137f and Radtke 1994, 266.
  36. ↑ Cf. Karamustafa 44 f.
  37. ↑ So at-Tirmidhī: Sīrat al-Auliyāʾ , ed. By B. Radtke 1992, p. 57.
  38. ↑ See Radtke 2000.
  39. ↑ Cf. al-Ǧuyūšī 111.
  40. ↑ So at-Tirmidhī in the same place.
  41. ↑ At-Tirmidhī in Radtke 1992, 57 f.
  42. ↑ Huǧwīrī 141.
  43. ↑ Cf. Patrick Franke: Encounter with Khidr. Source studies on the imaginary in traditional Islam. Beirut / Stuttgart 2000, pp. 78, 98.
  44. ↑ See Gobillot 1991, 26.
  45. ↑ See Radtke 1994, 249.
  46. ^ So Radtke 1994, 267.
  47. ↑ See Radtke 1989.
  48. ↑ See Radtke 1980b, 242 f.
  49. ↑ See Sviri 1993, 592, 598.
  50. ↑ Quoted from Radtke 1980b, 243.
  51. ↑ See Radtke 1980b, 243.
  52. ↑ See Radtke 1980a 94 and Radtke 1980b, 244 f.
  53. ↑ See Karamustafa 47.
  54. ↑ See Masud 315.
  55. ↑ See Huǧwīrī 141 and Radtke 1992, 2.
personal data
SURNAME Al-Hakīm at-Tirmidhī
BRIEF DESCRIPTION islamic mystic writer
DATE OF BIRTH between 820 and 830
PLACE OF BIRTH Tirmidh
DATE OF DEATH between 905 and 930