Burhan al-Din Muhaqqiq al-Tirmidhi

Sayyid Burhan al-Din al-Husayn Muhaqqiq al-Tirmidhi, also called Sayyid Husayn or Sayyid Sirdan, was a Sufi master of the thirteenth century. He was a disciple of Baha al-Din Walad and the spiritual master of his son Jalal al-Din Rumi. ¹ The Encyclopaedia of Islam places him in the first half of the seventh century AH, the thirteenth century CE, and says plainly that his date of birth is unknown. ¹

He came from the town of Tirmidh on the Oxus, where he already had a circle of disciples. He became the disciple and then the successor of Baha al-Din Walad. ¹ When he travelled to join his master at Konya, Baha al-Din had died a year earlier, in 628/1231, and Baha al-Din's son Jalal al-Din had taken over the teaching of the religious sciences. ² The Rumi article gives the same sequence and calls him an old pupil of Baha al-Din who came to Konya to visit his former master. ³

According to the Encyclopaedia, Burhan al-Din took charge of Jalal al-Din's education and became his spiritual master, and Rumi studied under him for nine years. ² The Rumi article adds, on the authority of Aflaki, that after Burhan al-Din arrived Rumi went to Aleppo and Damascus to complete his studies, and that Burhan al-Din is supposed to have made him aware that his father possessed a kind of knowledge won not by study but by inner experience. ⁴ The two travelled towards Syria together, but Burhan al-Din settled at Kayseri while Rumi went on to Aleppo. ²

Burhan al-Din is said to have retired to Kayseri and to have been there at the time of the Mongol invasion of Anatolia. The Seljuk governor of the city, Shams al-Din Isfahani, was at once his protector and his disciple. ² The sources do not agree on the year of his death. One article says it is possible that he died in 638/1240 and that, according to Jami, he was buried at Kayseri, while a tomb traditionally called his also exists at Konya. ² The Rumi article says he withdrew to Kayseri after some time and died there, probably in 637/1239-40, and that his tomb is in Kayseri. ⁴ The museum records both years and does not choose between them.

A large Persian work, the Maqalat of Sayyid Burhan al-Din Muhaqqiq-i Tirmidhi, is attributed to him. The article reads it as evidence of the breadth of his knowledge of the theological sciences and of the currents of thought in his time. ² In it he quotes mystical poems, among them those of Sana'i, whom he loved as much as Rumi later loved Shams-i Tabrizi, and he discusses questions of Sufi mysticism, including Isma'ili doctrines, the topic of the Mahdi and theological problems. ² The article reports that for him the Malamatiyya stood at the highest rank of the mystics, while the philosophical scholars did not reach the real truth. ²

The article gives no birth date, no teacher before Baha al-Din Walad, and no firm year of death. It describes the Maqalat as attributed to him and does not say how it was compiled. The fullest older accounts it points to are Aflaki's Manaqib al-arifin, Jami's Nafahat al-uns and the studies of Furuzanfar and Golpinarli. ²