Al-Māturīdiyyah

The two secure works of al-Māturīdī

Any reconstruction of al-Māturīdī’s own doctrine must begin with two surviving works: Kitāb al-Tawḥīd and Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān. They differ in genre but continually illuminate one another. Kitāb al-Tawḥīd is a sustained theological investigation arranged through questions, objections, proofs, and replies. Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān is a complete commentary in which the same principles are applied verse by verse. Where the theological treatise states a doctrine in concentrated dialectical form, the commentary often shows how it arises from the language and argumentative movement of revelation. Where the commentary offers several possible interpretations, the treatise may disclose the metaphysical principle controlling the choice.

Kitāb al-Tawḥīd survived precariously. Modern scholarship has worked from a single known manuscript, Cambridge University Library Add. 3651, rather than from a broad family of witnesses. This fact should produce both gratitude and caution: gratitude that so substantial a work survived at all, and caution because a unique manuscript leaves fewer independent witnesses with which to repair scribal corruption. Fatḥ Allāh Khulayf produced the first widely used modern edition in 1970. A later critical edition by Bekir Topaloğlu and Muḥammad Aruçi became the standard reference for much recent scholarship; the current İSAM publication record lists a revised issue in 2022. Page references across studies therefore vary considerably, and any quotation should identify the edition used rather than cite the title and page alone.[^35]

The work’s difficult Arabic has long been noticed. Al-Māturīdī’s sentences are compressed, pronoun references can be demanding, opponents’ positions may be interwoven with replies, and the surviving text is not always secure. Abū al-Yusr al-Pazdawī, though he regarded the book as sufficient in substance, said that its style made a more accessible presentation necessary. Modern readers must therefore resist extracting a sentence from a searchable transcription without checking whether al-Māturīdī is stating his own position, reporting an opponent, posing an objection, or answering it. In this corpus, a misplaced pronoun can turn refutation into confession.

The Qurʾānic commentary is best cited as Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān. Manuscripts and later sources also call it Taʾwīlāt Ahl al-Sunna, Taʾwīlāt al-Māturīdiyya, and similar titles, but the presence of “Ahl al-Sunna” in the title is probably secondary: the phrase does not appear as an authorial title in the surviving work. The attribution to al-Māturīdī is nevertheless strong. Early Māturīdī authorities knew the commentary; its style, methods, recurring formulas, and arguments correspond to Kitāb al-Tawḥīd; and some discussions, including the treatment of the vision of Allah in Qurʾān 7:143, substantially overlap.[^36]

The commentary appears to preserve teaching delivered to students, which helps explain both its scope and occasional variations of expression. Its manuscript transmission is far richer than that of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd: the TDV study records thirty-five manuscript copies known to its author. A multi-volume critical edition was produced under the general direction of Bekir Topaloğlu, beginning with Ahmet Vanlıoğlu’s edition of the first volume in Istanbul in 2005 and continuing through a team of editors. The abundance of witnesses does not remove every textual problem, but it gives the commentary a much broader basis for critical comparison.[^37]

The two works should be read together without forcing them into artificial uniformity. A commentary follows the order of verses and may revisit one doctrine in several contexts; a theological treatise organizes problems by controversy. One may preserve a tentative range of interpretations where the other pursues a formal demonstration. Correspondence strengthens attribution and clarifies doctrine, but apparent verbal difference does not by itself prove development or contradiction.

Lost works and the breadth of the original corpus

Classical bibliographies attribute a much larger corpus to al-Māturīdī. Titles include refutations of al-Kaʿbī and other Muʿtazilīs, works against the Qarmaṭians and other Bāṭinī currents, a book on sects and doctrines, discussions of the imamate, and writings in legal theory such as Maʾākhidh al-sharāʾiʿ and Kitāb al-Jadal. Most are lost or have not been securely identified. Their titles matter because they show the breadth of al-Māturīdī’s activity: he was not only the author of a generic creed but a participant in specific controversies of Transoxiana and the wider Islamic world.[^38]

Lost titles cannot, however, bear detailed doctrinal claims. A title such as “Refutation of the Five Principles” shows engagement with Muʿtazilī doctrine; it does not tell us the exact argument used on every point. Later authors may preserve fragments or summaries, but those must be identified as reports and weighed against the surviving corpus. The absence of a work is an invitation to historical caution, not to imaginative reconstruction.

Al-Māturīdī was also a jurist and legal theorist. Later Ḥanafī uṣūl works associate him with an approach in which legal theory is integrated with the doctrinal and practical reasoning of the jurists. Because his independent works in legal theory are lost, his contribution must be reconstructed through quotations, later reports, and the legal reasoning within Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān. This evidence confirms a serious juristic mind, but it does not permit a complete recovery of his original uṣūl system.

Attribution must be earned

The prestige of great Imāms encouraged later works to circulate under their names. In the Māturīdī field, attribution problems arise especially with brief creeds ascribed to Abū Ḥanīfa and with texts or commentaries printed under al-Māturīdī’s name. These works may be old, influential, and faithful to important parts of the Ḥanafī tradition without being direct authorial compositions in their extant form.

The correct procedure is neither indiscriminate acceptance nor indiscriminate dismissal. One asks: How early is the attribution? How many manuscript families preserve it? Do early disciples quote the work? Does its vocabulary fit the alleged date? Does it presuppose controversies or terminology that arose later? Does its doctrine agree with secure works in a way too specific to be accidental? Has the text changed across recensions? A document can preserve early material while reaching us through later editorial formation.

This matters because the school’s history is distorted when a late textbook formula is placed in the mouth of Abū Ḥanīfa or al-Māturīdī and then used to prove that no doctrinal development occurred. Transmission is not betrayal. Later scholars were entitled to define, distinguish, and defend inherited truths in new vocabulary. Their work should be honored as their work.

A frequently cited Sharḥ al-Fiqh al-Akbar printed under al-Māturīdī’s name illustrates the danger. Its attribution is not secure enough to serve as primary evidence for the Imām whenever Kitāb al-Tawḥīd or Taʾwīlāt is available. Likewise, the several recensions of texts attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa must be studied as a transmission dossier rather than treated as though a signed autograph had survived. The relied-upon doctrine may still be ancient; the route by which it reached the page must be separately established.[^39]

The immediate Samarqandian circle

Al-Māturīdī’s direct and near-direct circle preserved his teaching locally, but the transmission was not simply a chain of books bearing his name. Abū al-Ḥasan al-Rustughfanī, Abū Aḥmad al-ʿIyāḍī, and ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Pazdawī appear among the pupils associated with him. The anonymous commentary on Abū Salama al-Samarqandī’s Jumal uṣūl al-dīn, composed by a student of al-Rustughfanī, preserves early Samarqandian recollections and descriptions. Such texts are especially valuable because the later school’s fame can otherwise obscure the smaller circles through which doctrine was first taught.[^40]

The early transmission was not uniform on every point. Samarqandian authorities could disagree over the precise status of the imitator’s faith, the analysis of capacity, particular exegetical questions, or the language appropriate to divine action. A school is not made unreal by internal disagreement. Its identity lies in shared principles, authorities, questions, and argumentative habits, together with a recognized range of acceptable answers.

Al-Māturīdī’s limited visibility in early Arabic biographical literature also affected transmission. He lived far from Baghdad, wrote in a difficult style, and belonged to a regional Ḥanafī culture whose theological achievements were not immediately integrated into the central chronicles. Even within Transoxiana, later authors complained that his works had not received the attention they deserved. His eventual status was produced not by uninterrupted fame but by recovery, systematization, and institutional teaching.

Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī: the great systematizer

No figure after the founder was more important to the classical formation of Māturīdism than Abū al-Muʿīn Maymūn ibn Muḥammad al-Nasafī. His Tabṣirat al-adilla fī uṣūl al-dīn is the school’s great expansive summa: it develops proofs, records earlier Samarqandian authorities, compares rival positions, and transmits precious biographical information about al-Māturīdī. His al-Tamhīd li-qawāʿid al-tawḥīd presents a more compact account suitable for teaching. A shorter work, Baḥr al-kalām, circulates under his name in differing forms, but its recension and attribution history require more care than is often shown in popular citation.[^41]

Abū al-Muʿīn does more than repeat Kitāb al-Tawḥīd. He makes the tradition legible as a school. He names predecessors, organizes questions, defines terms, and positions the Samarqandian Ḥanafīs against Ashʿarīs, Muʿtazilīs, Karrāmīs, philosophers, and others. His work is therefore both doctrinal and historiographical. Much of what later generations knew about al-Māturīdī’s rank and immediate environment passed through him.

His systematization also reveals development. Concepts that are dense or fluid in al-Māturīdī become more formally distinguished. School boundaries are clearer. Engagement with rival Sunnī theology is more direct. The resulting Māturīdism is genuinely continuous with the founder, but it is a classical school rather than a frozen tenth-century vocabulary.

The creed of Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī

Najm al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Nasafī’s al-ʿAqāʾid achieved a different kind of influence. It compressed the mature doctrinal structure into a short Arabic creed that could be memorized, copied, commented upon, and taught across regions. Its opening epistemology, account of the originated world, doctrine of the attributes, takwīn, vision, human acts, faith, prophecy, eschatology, sainthood, Companions, and imamate gave students a map before they entered extended proof.

The creed’s manuscript transmission was broad; a catalogued copy at Dokuz Eylül University, for example, preserves the work on folios 120b–122b under Najm al-Dīn’s name. The existence of manuscripts matters because online transcriptions, however useful, are not substitutes for the textual witnesses from which editions are made.[^42]

Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyya turned the concise creed into one of the most influential theological textbooks of the later Islamic world. Al-Taftāzānī drew heavily upon Ashʿarī as well as Māturīdī kalām and cannot be reduced without qualification to a party label. His commentary’s curricular success encouraged a shared post-classical theological language in which students from different Sunnī affiliations studied many of the same arguments, logical tools, and objections. Māturīdī identity persisted within this common learned culture, especially through particular doctrinal preferences, commentaries, glosses, and supplementary works.[^43]

The textbook tradition produced layers: creed, commentary, gloss, supercommentary, marginal note, disputation, and oral explanation. Modern readers sometimes dismiss these layers as repetition. In fact, they were a mechanism for preserving precision across generations. A gloss could identify an ambiguity in a commentator, compare Ashʿarī and Māturīdī analyses, introduce a philosophical objection, or explain why an apparently small grammatical choice carried doctrinal consequences.

Other classical and post-classical authorities

A complete history cannot be reduced to three names. Abū al-Yusr al-Pazdawī’s Uṣūl al-dīn presented the doctrine in a more accessible manner and preserved early material. Abū al-Thanāʾ al-Lāmishī’s al-Tamhīd li-qawāʿid al-tawḥīd belongs to the classical consolidation of Transoxianan theology. Nūr al-Dīn al-Ṣābūnī’s al-Bidāya fī uṣūl al-dīn and al-Kifāya offered clear accounts of mature doctrine and the differences from other schools. These works show that Māturīdism was not the product of one later compiler but a network of related teaching traditions.[^44]

As Ḥanafī scholarship moved west, figures such as Akmal al-Dīn al-Bābartī, Kamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-Humām, and later Ottoman authors integrated Māturīdī commitments into new intellectual settings. Ibn al-Humām’s al-Musāyara and Ibn Abī Sharīf’s commentary became important vehicles for advanced theology. Aḥmad al-Bayāḍī’s Ishārāt al-marām gathered and defended doctrinal material attributed to the early Ḥanafīs. Ottoman scholars produced commentaries on Abū Ḥanīfa’s creeds, on al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyya, and on later manuals, often setting Māturīdī positions beside Ashʿarī alternatives.

In South Asia, the Ḥanafī madrasa curriculum transmitted the same broad scholastic library. Māturīdī positions appeared in commentaries, creeds, fatwā collections, and debates even when the author’s principal textbook was shared with Ashʿarī readers. In some settings, the label itself was less prominent than the doctrines. A scholar could defend the eternity of takwīn, the Māturīdī account of moral reason, or the Ḥanafī definition of faith without making school nomenclature the center of his identity.

Naqshbandī networks also assisted transmission across Central Asia, the Ottoman lands, and South Asia. This relationship should not be romanticized into identity: Māturīdism is a theological school and the Naqshbandiyya a Sufi path, and neither requires every adherent to belong to the other. Historically, however, shared Ḥanafī institutions and scholarly lineages often allowed the two to travel together.[^45]

How to read the transmission responsibly

The school’s books fall into several evidentiary levels. Secure works of al-Māturīdī establish his explicit positions. Early disciples and near-contemporary Samarqandian texts disclose reception. Abū al-Muʿīn and the classical authors define the mature school. Later manuals show how that school was taught, revised, and combined with a broader Sunnī scholastic culture. Modern studies help locate manuscripts and reconstruct development, but they do not replace the primary texts.

This layered reading prevents two opposite mistakes. One is to assume that every later Māturīdī view must appear word for word in the founder. The other is to treat every development as corruption simply because it uses later terminology. Intellectual traditions remain alive by faithful reformulation. The relevant question is whether a later doctrine follows the school’s principles, solves a recognized problem, and remains accountable to revelation and earlier authority.

For website readers seeking a practical route into the tradition, the order of study should follow difficulty rather than chronology. Begin with a reliable translation or guided reading of al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyya, accompanied by explanations that identify where al-Taftāzānī speaks in a shared or Ashʿarī-inflected idiom. Then read a clear classical manual such as al-Ṣābūnī’s al-Bidāya or Abū al-Muʿīn’s al-Tamhīd. Only after acquiring the vocabulary should one enter Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, whose depth is matched by its compressed style. Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān should be consulted throughout, because it shows theology functioning inside the interpretation of revelation rather than hovering above it.

The result of this transmission is not a single book but a library: founder’s texts, early Samarqandian witnesses, systematic summae, concise creeds, commentaries, glosses, legal-theological syntheses, and regional curricula. The library’s unity lies in a recognizable set of questions and commitments; its vitality lies in the fact that later authors continued to argue rather than merely copy.