Imam al-Tirmidhi Mausoleum

Abu Isa al-Tirmidhi

Abu Isa Muhammad ibn Isa al-Tirmidhi was born in 824 in the village of Bugh near Termez. He took up the study of hadith at twenty, travelled to learn in Khorasan, Iraq and the Hijaz, and was a pupil of al-Bukhari. His al-Jami, better known as Jami (or Sunan) al-Tirmidhi, is one of the six canonical hadith collections of Sunni Islam, and his al-Shamail, a portrait of the Prophet’s appearance and character, is still widely read. Blind in his last years, he died in his home village in 892.

The mausoleum and complex

The tomb over his grave dates from the 11th–12th centuries. It is a single block of arch-linked rooms measuring 4.3 × 4.5 m: the burial chamber holds a three-tiered marble cenotaph carved with muqarnas, ornament and inscriptions, and a narrow passage leads to a domed khanqah with a mihrab. The building was first described by D. N. Logofet in his travel sketches and measured by V. L. Voronina in 1945.

Restored in 1990 and turned into a place of pilgrimage, it had its cenotaph and carved ganch window grilles reinstated in 1996. During the 2000–2001 restoration the Khivan master Sohibnazar Shomurodov carved the inscriptions, and Hamdam Ahrorkhoja of Navoi made a new marble cenotaph modelled on late Timurid and Shaybanid tombstones. In 2016–2017 the complex gained a 450-seat mosque, an ablutions house, a kitchen, five ayvans and three gateways, plus a second pilgrims’ building beside the mausoleum.