Sainthood is often an important point of contention between Sufis and non-Sufis in the debate over religious authority in Islam. Historically, Sufi authority has played an important role as one of the main vehicles of Sunni authority by sanctifying the position of the scholarly class of ‘ulama’. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 912 CE) is the first Sunni mystic and theologian to systematize the concept of sainthood by making use of Hanafi theology, hadith, and the ascetic-mystical ideas of his age. This paper discusses how the social and religious context of early Islamic Iran and Central Asia informed al-Tirmidhi’s concept of sainthood. Al-Tirmidhi’s discussion of sainthood is understood as a response to the demise of the social institution of clientage in the Eastern provinces of the Abbasid Empire. Clientage, wala’, serves as the foundation upon which al-Tirmidhi builds his theory of sainthood, in which the saints are the true (and superior) guides for the umma(h) as well as its elect members. Al-Tirmidhi uses the vocabulary of clientage to juxtapose the “free” saints to that of the general Muslim populace who are still “slaves” to their lower desires. The muridun, or those who seek God, are styled as the mukatabun, or slaves who have entered into an agreement with their master to free them for a fixed sum. Current studies of al-Tirmidhi’s approach to sainthood have not adequately accounted for the social and political context within which al-Tirmidhi wrote. This discussion is situated in the broader context of a struggle for religious authority during the 9th and 10th centuries CE between Ismailis, Twelver Shi’is and Sunni ulama represented as Sufis. This struggle for religious authority occurred at a time when the Abbasid Caliphs were no longer able to mediate the religious discourse in their shrinking domain. Al-Tirmidhi’s structuring of sainthood has important implications for the development of Sufi modes of authority that have lasted to this day.