Abū al-Majd Majdūd b. Ādam Sanāʾī Ghaznawī, also known as Ḥakīm Sanāʾī and Khātim al-Shuʿarā, was a poet active during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Persian histories give his birth at 437/1045-46. His biography is a contested matter. Persian literary tradition and hagiographical works point toward a division in his life between a career as a courtier and a radical act of renunciation following an encounter with an antinomian figure. Sanāʾī’s autobiographical notes recount that his father was a teacher. He likely spent the first part of his life in Ghazni. As a poet, his patrons included various elite members of the religious and political establishments in Ghazni, including the Ghaznavid minister of the chancellery Thiqat al-Mulk Ṭāhir b. ʿAlī, who cared for Sanāʾī’s aging father Ādam following the poet’s departure from Ghazni; the chief judge of Ghazni, ʿAbd al-Wadūd b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, and members of the Ḥaddādi family of scholars. One of Sanāʾī’s teachers in poetry was ʿUsmān Mukhtārī, who employed Sanāʾī as a scribe. Sanāʾī was also associated with other poets of the time, including Sayyid Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad Nāṣir and Masʿūd Saʿd (d. 515/1121). Sanāʾī left Ghazni to cross the Hindu Kush and reach the town of Balkh, and from there moved to Sarakhs. There, he found patronage with Imam Sayf al-Ḥaqq Abū l-Mafākhir Muḥammad Manṣūr, the chief judge of Khorasan for the Seljuks. Following the death of Imam Muḥammad Manṣūr, Sanāʾī traveled to Nishapur and Herat, where he was in contact with members of local Sufi communities, including the descendants of Pīr-i Hirāt Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089). He was then invited by the Ghaznavid ruler Fakhr al-Dawla Bahrām Shāh (d. 547/1152) to return to Ghazni and join the royal court. While Sanāʾī signaled his intention to remain detached from political-social circles, he did compose various pieces of poetry for the ruler. Ḥakīm Sanāʾī died in the twelfth century, possibly on 11 Shaʿbān 525/9 July 1131. He was buried in Ghazni, where his tomb still stands.