AL-HAKIM AT-TERMIZI

His full name was Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ali ibn al-Hasan ibn Bashir al-Hakim at-Termizi. Information concerning his biography is presented in a number of sources written by the historians in the Middle Ages such as Tajiddin as-Subki, Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, as-Sullami, as well as his own autobiographic book “Bad’usha’ni Abu Abdullah” (The Beginning of the Works of Abu Abdullah).

His full name is also given in the titles or in the introductions of his books like “Navadirul-usul fi ma’rifatakhbarar-Rasul” (Rare Methods of Receiving Information about the Messenger of Allah), “Um al-Avliya” (The Science of Saints), “Khatm, al-Avliya” (The Seal of Saints) and “Nazair al-Qur’an” (Lessons of Qur’an). As to his date of birth, we also come across different information in different sources.

It is usual in the written sources of the Middle Ages to show only the date of death of a person. A famous historian from Egypt Abdulfattah Abdullah Baraka, who studied the life and activities of al-Hakim at-Termizi, wrote that he was born in 205/820 in Termez and lived a long life and died in 320/932 at the age of 112. Thus, we can conclude that further investigations of al-Hakim at-Termizi’s life and career will give possibilities for defining the data about his date and place of birth. His mausoleum is erected near Termez on the banks of the river Amudarya.

The works written by al-Hakim at-Termizi can be classified into different groups. The first group constitutes the lectures and textbooks delivered for his students and followers, another group of his writings includes his monographic researches and answers to the questions given to him during debates and discussions, or descrip­tions of difficult problems discussed among scholars of his time, as well as his letters to his friends, colleagues and followers.

Thus, we can suppose that materials of this group had been developed during his whole life step by step.

 Taking the content of the works written by al-Hakim at-Termizi into consideration, it is rather difficult to relate them to a definite branch of science, either to Sufism or to the science of Hadiths or Muslim law.

This fact gives us another notion — al-Hakim at-Termizi had his own way of treatment of the events and social surroundings of his time so that he could form his own way of vision of the social life.

  This idea is supported by some other specialists who studied al-Hakim at-Termizi’s creative activity. The approach to reality chosen by al-Hakim at-Termizi spread even far away regions of his time. Some Arabic scholars called his teachings as “mazhab”[1]. If to take into consideration the fact that the religion was treated differently by different scholars and there appeared various trends in religion contradicting each other in views, we can say that al-Hakim at-Termizi’s teachings and ideas were the only right way of approaching the reality in the fields of the Islamic sciences which played an important role in the further formation of new theories in this respect.

️ Farrux Saydullaev

International scientific research

centre of Imam Termizi Head

of International Relations