Najm al-dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Luqmān al-Nasafī al-Samarqandī (b. 461/1068 – d.537/1142). He is a jurist of Ḥanafī school of Muslim jurisprudence and Māturdī school of sunnī theology. 1
This website is dedicated to his short work al-ʿaqīda al-nasafiyya (Nasafī Creed) which is work of Muslim philosophical theology of 1336 words in Arabic. Here we are presenting it in 19 sections and a total of 51 paragraphs of unequal length to facilitate its study in detail. Each paragraph is presented with the Arabic and our preferred translation and notes were deemed necessary.
Saʿd al-dīn al-Taftāzānī and ʿUmar al-Nasafī are forever joined around their work on the creed. Saʿd al-dīn al-Taftāzānī wrote a commentary on Nasafī’s work. The website will focus on these two texts and the corpus that has since formed around these two central works. We have found a list of the various commentaries, super commentaries, glosses, super glosses, versification, etc. that is included here in handy format.
Saʿd al-dīn Abū Saʿīd Masʿūd b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbdullāh al-Taftāzānī (b. 722/1322 – d.791/1389). He is a jurist of Shāfiʿī school of Muslim jurisprudence and Ashʿarī school of sunnī theology. 2
Many scholars took al-Taftāzānī’s work as a starting point and wrote super / marginal commentaries on it. These commentaries themselves have become works that stand up on their own with original contributions. Whereas there are many other commentaries that are important marginal notes others are full commentaries where just about every word that al-Taftāzānī wrote is commented on in detail. Many of the schools (madrasas and seminaries) have al-Taftāzānī’s work on their curriculum. The two authors come from two different philosophical theology backgrounds, namely Māturīdī and Ashʿarī respectively. Some scholars are of the opinion that al-Taftāzānī respected al-Nasafī’s Māturīdī school and wrote his commentary inline with the Māturīdi school’s opinions. One example that is often cited is that when al-Taftāzānī mentions “our scholars” he is referring to Māturīdi scholars and not Ashʿarī scholar’s opinions. Other scholars maintained otherwise. In either case, both Māturīdī and Ashʿarī seemed to agree on the work enough to use it as standard part of their school’s theology curriculum.
The website has many of the published editions that are available in PDF format. Others that are in print we provide full bibliographic information. There are also several English translations that are available as well that we believe fall short.