Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. Ibī Bakr Muḥammad al-Khwārazmī Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī (1160-1229) was a rhetorician and scholar most famous for his encyclopedic linguistic work Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm (Keys to the Sciences) (مفتاح العلوم). Sakkākī was a Muʿtazilī Ḥanafī scholar who hailed from the northeastern part of Iran, where he was born in 555/1160 according to most sources. He lived during the period of the Mongol conquests, and quickly made the transition from the Khwarāzmshāhs to the Mongols (as evidenced in a story featuring his magical powers where he is connected to the entourage of Chaghatay Khān near Almāligh). Details of his life are scarce. His influence was most felt in scholastic rhetoric, and he is often recognized as the founder of the “science of meanings and elucidation” (ʿilm al-maʿānī wa-l-bayān), a subdiscipline in the larger field of scholastic rhetoric (ʿilm al-balāgha). His influence on this field seems to have been cemented through the efforts of scholars a generation later, most importantly through the commentarial abridgement of the Miftāḥ by al-Khaṭīb al-Qazwīnī, titled Talkhīṣ al-miftāḥ (تلخيص المفتاح). Sakkākī died in 626/1229 in the village of al-Kindī near Almāligh in Farghāna present-day Uzbekistan.