Abu Mansur al-Maturidi

Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī's epithet or nisba refers to Māturīd or Māturīt, a locality in Samarkand (today Uzbekistan).^[3] His full name was Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd and he adopted the nisba al-Māturīdī and al-Ḥanafī.^[4] he is also known by the titles Shaykh al-Islam ('Shaykh of Islam'), Imam al-Huda ('Imam of Guidance'), and Imam Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jama'a ('Imam of the People of the Prophetic Way and Community').

He studied under his teachers, Muhammad bin Muqatil al-Razi (d. 248 H/ 662 CE), Abu Nasr al-Ayadi "al-Faqih al-Samarqandi" (d. 260 H?), Nusayr bin Yahya al-Balkhi (d. 268 H/ 881 CE), and Abu Bakr al-Juzjani (d. 250 H?).^[5][6][7][8] He narrated all of Abu Hanifa's books such as Kitab al-Alim wa Mut'alim and al-Wasiyya from his teachers in authentic chains which al-Bazdawi mentions in his book Usul al-Dīn.

His chains to Abu Hanifa are given as follows:^[9][10]

1. From Muhammad bin Muqatil al-Razi (d. 248 H), from Muhammad al-Shaybani (d. 189 H), from Abu Hanifa (d. 150 H).
2. From Abu Nasr al-Ayadi (d. 260 H?),^[6] Nusayr al-Balkhi (d. 268 H) and Abu Bakr al-Juzjani (d. 250 H?),^[6] who all took from Abu Sulayman al-Juzjani (d. 200 H?),^[6] who took from both Muhammad al-Shaybani and Abu Yusuf (d. 182 H), who both took from Abu Hanifa.
3. From Muhammad bin Muqatil al-Razi and Nusayr al-Balkhi, who additionally both took from Abu Muti al-Hakam al-Balkhi (d. 199 H) and Abu Muqatil Hafs al-Samarqandi (d. 208 H), who both took from Abu Hanifa.
4. From Abu Nasr al-Ayadi, who took from Abu Ahmad bin Ishaq al-Juzjani (died mid-third century), who took directly from Muhammad al-Shaybani, who took from Abu Hanifa.

Among his students: Ali bin Said Abu al-Hasan al-Rustughfani, Abu Muhammad Abdal-Karim bin Musa bin Isa al-Bazdawi, and Abu al-Qasim al-Hakim al-Samarqandi.^[8]

Al‑Māturīdī was born at Maturid, a village or quarter in the neighbourhood of Samarkand. According to one biography, he is known to be a descendant of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. Relatively little is known about the life of al-Māturīdī, as the sources available "do not read as biographies, but rather as lists of works that have been enlarged upon by brief statements on his personage and a few words of praise."^[11] What is evident, however, is that the theologian lived the life of a pure scholar, as "nothing indicates that he held any public office, nor that he possessed more disciples, popularity, or association with the Sāmānid court of Bukhārā than anyone else."^[11] It is accepted, moreover, that al-Māturīdī had two principal teachers, namely Abū Bakr al-Jūzjānī and Abū Naṣr Aḥmad b. al-ʿAbbās al-ʿIyāḍī (d. ca. 874–892), both of whom played significant roles in the shaping of al-Māturīdī's theological views.^[11] Al-Māturīdī is said to have lived the life of an ascetic (zāhid),^[12] and various sources attribute numerous miracles (karāmāt) to him.^[12] Although he is not usually considered a mystic, it is nevertheless very possible that al-Māturīdī had some interaction with the Sufis of his area, as "Hanafite theology in the region could not always be sharply separated from mystical tendencies,"^[12] and many of the most important Hanafi jurists of the area were also Sufi mystics.^[12]

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al-Māturīdī defined faith (īmān) as taṣdīḳ bi ’l-ḳalb or "inner assent, expressed by verbal confession (ịḳrār bi ’l-lisān)."^[13] According to al-Māturīdī, moreover, Islamic actions (practices or worship) (aʿmāl) are not a part of faith.^[13] Additionally, al-Māturīdī held that "faith cannot decrease nor increase in substance, though it may be said to increase through renewal and repetition."^[13]

Al-Māturīdī supported using allegorical interpretation with respect to the anthropomorphic expressions in the Quran, though he rejected many of the interpretations the Mutazilites would reach using this method.^[3] In other instances, al-Māturīdī espoused using the traditionalist bilā kayf method of reading scripture, which insisted on "unquestioning acceptance of the revealed text."^[3] Al-Māturīdī further refuted the Mutazilites in his defense of the Attributes of God "as real and eternally subsisting" in the Essence of God (ḳāʾima bi ’l-d̲h̲āt).^[3] His chief theological divergence from Ashʿarī was that he held the attributes of essence and action to be "equally eternal and subsistent in the Divine Essence."^[3] Thus, "he insisted that the expressions 'God is eternally the Creator' and 'God has been creating from eternity (lam yazal k̲h̲āliḳan)' are equally valid, even though the created world is temporal."^[3] Furthermore, al-Māturīdī staunchly defended the notion of non-theophanic vision of God (ruʾya) against the Mutazilites, and "consistently rejected the possibility of idrāk, which he understood as grasping, of God by the eyes."^[3]

Contrary to popular assumption, al-Māturīdī was not a student of al-Ash'ari. The historian al-Bayadi (d. 1078 H) emphasised this saying, "al-Māturīdī is not Ash'ari's follower, as many people would tend to think. He had upheld Sunni Islam long before Ashari, he was a scholar to thoroughly explain and systematically develop Abu Hanifa's and his followers' school".^[5][14]

When al-Māturīdī was growing up there was an emerging reaction^[15] against some sects, notably Mu'tazilis, Qarmati, and Shi'a. Al-Māturīdī, with other two preeminent scholars,^[16] wrote especially on the creed of Islam, the other two being Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari in Iraq, and Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tahawi in Egypt.^[17]

While al-Ash'ari were Sunni together with al-Māturīdī, he constructed his own theology taking from Abu Hanifa's school and systematized it which differed from his contemporary imam al-Tahawi who affirmed the beliefs of Abu Hanifa. Regardless, both were Hanafi in their creed but with different approaches. Gimaret argued that al-Ash'ari enunciated that God creates the individual's power (qudra), will, and the actual act,^[18] which according to Hye, gives way to a fatalist school of theology, which was later put in a consolidated form by Al Ghazali.^[19] According to Encyclopædia Britannica however, al-Ashari held the doctrine of Kasb as an explanation for how free will and predestination can be reconciled.^[20] Al-Māturīdī, followed in Abu Hanifa's footsteps, and presented the "notion that God was the creator of man's acts, although man possessed his own capacity and will to act."^[21] Al-Māturīdī and al-Ash'ari also separated from each other in the issue of the attributes of God,^[22] as well as some other minor issues.

Later, with the impact of Turkic society states such as Great Seljuq Empire^[23] and Ottoman Empire,^[24] Hanafi-Maturidi school spread to greater areas where the Hanafi school of law is prevalent, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, South Asia, Balkan, Russia, China, Caucasus and Turkey.

Al-Māturīdī had immense knowledge of dualist beliefs (Sanawiyya) and of other old Persian religions. His Kitāb al-Tawḥīd in this way has become a primary source for modern researchers with its rich materials about Iranian Manicheanism (Mâniyya), a group of Brahmans (Barähima), and some controversial personalities such as Ibn al-Rawandi, Abu Isa al-Warraq, and Muhammad b. Shabib.^[25][26]

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His school became the dominant Sunni school of Islamic theology^{[3][27][28][29][30]} in Central Asia,^[3] and later enjoyed a preeminent status as the theological school of choice for both the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire.^[3]

Al-Māturīdī was known as Shaykh al-Islām and Imām al-Hudā ("Leader of Right Guidance").^[3] He was one of the two foremost Imams of the Sunni Islam in his time, along with Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī in matters of theological inquiry.^[8] In contrast al-Ashʿarī, who was a Shāfiʿī jurist, al-Māturīdī adhered to the eponymous school of jurisprudence founded by Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān, and to his creed (ʿaqīdah) as transmitted and elaborated by the Ḥanafī Muslim theologians of Balkh and Transoxania.^[3] It was this theological doctrine which al-Māturīdī codified, systematized, and used to refute not only the opinions of the Muʿtazilites, the Karramites, and other heterodox groups, but also non-Islamic theologies such as those of Chalcedonian Christianity, Miaphysitism, Manichaeanism, Marcionism, and Bardaisanism.^[31]

Although there was in the medieval period "a tendency to suppress al-Māturīdī's name and to put Ashʿarī forward as the champion of Islam against all heretics,"^[32] except in Transoxiana, Maturidism gradually "came to be widely recognised as the second orthodox Sunni theological school" besides Ashʿarīsm.^[33] It is evident from the surviving fifteenth-century accounts of al-Māturīdī's tomb in the cemetery of Jākardīza in Samarkand that the theologian's tomb was "visited ... and held in honor for a long time" throughout the medieval period.^[34] This veneration of the theologian seems to have arisen out of traditions preserved by several later scholars which detailed al-Māturīdī's wisdom and spiritual abilities. For example, Abul Muīn al-Nasafī (d. 1114) stated that Maturidi's spiritual gifts were "immeasurably plentiful"^[12] and that "God singled him out with miracles (kāramāt), gifts of grace (mawāhib), divine assistance (tawfiq), and guidance (irshād, tashdīd)."^[12]

Contemporary Salafism and Wahhabism, however, tends to be very critical of al-Māturīdī's legacy in Sunni Islam due to their aversion towards using any rational thought in matters of theology, which they deem to be heretical,^[3] despite this antagonism being a position that conflicts with the consensus of Sunnism throughout history.^[3][35] As such, it is often said that mainstream "orthodox Sunnism" constitutes the followers of the theological traditions of al-Māturīdī and Ashʿarī,^[3][36] while Salafism and Wahhabism have often been interpreted by the proponents of the two major schools to be minority splinter theological traditions opposed to the mainstream.^[3][35] Furthermore, the minor theoretical differences between the theological formulations of al-Māturīdī and Ashʿarī are often deemed by their respective followers to be superficial rather than real,^[36] whence "the two schools are equally orthodox" in traditional Sunnism.^[36] The traditional Sunni point of view is summarized in the words of the twentieth-century Islamic publisher Munīr ʿAbduh Agha, who stated: "There is not much [doctrinal] difference between the Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs, hence both groups are now called People of the Sunna and the Community."^[37]

• Kitab al-Tawhid ('Book of Monotheism')
• Ta'wilat Ahl al-Sunnah or Ta'wilat al-Qur'an ('Book of the Interpretations of the Quran')
• Kitāb Radd Awa'il al-Adilla, a refutation of a Mu'tazili book
• Radd al-Tahdhib fi al-Jadal, another refutation of a Mu'tazili book
• Kitāb Bayan Awham al-Mu'tazila ('Book of Exposition of the Errors of Mu'tazila)
• Kitāb al-Maqalat
• Ma'akhidh al-Shara'i' in Usul al-Fiqh
• Al-Jadal fi Usul al-Fiqh
• Radd al-Usul al-Khamsa, a refutation of Abu Muhammad al-Bahili's exposition of the Five Principles of the Mu'tazila
• Radd al-Imama, a refutation of the Shi'i conception of the office of Imam;
• Al-Radd 'ala Usul al-Qaramita
• Radd Wa'id al-Fussaq, a refutation of the Mu'tazili doctrine that all grave sinners will be eternally in hell fire.