Māturīdī, Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Ḥanafī al-Mutakallim al-Māturīdī al-Samarḳandī is the titular head of the Māturīdite School of theology which, with the As̲h̲ʿarite School, form orthodox Sunnite Islām. The two Schools are equally orthodox, but there has always been a tendency to suppress al-Māturīdī’s name and to put al-As̲h̲ʿarī forward as the champion of Islām against all heretics except in Transoxiana (Mā warāʾ al-Nahr) where his School has been, and is, the dominant, representing the views of ahl al-sanna wa ’l-d̲j̲amāʿa. ¶ Next to nothing is known of al-Māturīdī’s life, but he died at Samarḳand in 333 (944), a contemporary of al-As̲h̲ʿarī who died a little earlier about 330 (941), while al-Ṭaḥāwī [q.v.], another contemporary, died in Egypt in 331. All three represented the movement, which must have been very widely spread, to defend orthodox Islām by the same weapons of logical argument with which the Muʿtazilites had attacked it. Māturīd or Māturīt is a locality (maḥall) in Samarḳand. Its geographical reality and the identity of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī are assured by the article Māturītī in the Ansāb of al-Samʿānī (fol. 498b, l. 4; cf. also Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion, G.M.S., p. 90, notes 9 and 10; p. 267, note 5, and the Russian references there). The books of Ḥanafite Ṭabaḳāt give the names of his teachers, but to us they are names only (see Ibn Ḳuṭlūbug̲h̲ā [ed. Flügel, N°. 173] and Flügel’s Hanefiten, p. 274, 293, 295, 298, 313). The Saiyid Murtaḍā in his little treatise on Māturīdī, inserted in his commentary on the Iḥyāʾ (ii. 5—14), complains that he has found only two biographies and that both are short (ʿala ’l-ik̲h̲liṣār). Even Yāḳūt in his Muʿd̲j̲am has no mention either of him or of Māturīd. Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn in his sketch of the origin and history of Kalām (Muḳaddima, transl. de Slane, iii. 55 sqq.; ed. Quatremère, iii. 38 sqq.) has no place for him and speaks only of As̲h̲ʿarī and the As̲h̲ʿarites. For Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456 = 1064; Fiṣal, ed. Cairo 1320, ii. 111) the orthodox opponent of al-As̲h̲ʿarī is Abū Ḥanīfa and he has no mention of al-Māturīdī. Similarly S̲h̲ahrastānī (d. 548 = 1153; Milal, transl. Haarbrücker, i., p. 159; text on margin of Ibn Ḥazm, i. 188) gives the views of Abū Ḥanīfa but does not mention Māturīdī. Abū Ḥanīfa, he says, inclined to the Murd̲j̲iʾites and his followers were even called the Murd̲j̲iʾites of the Sunna, meaning, apparently, a form of Murd̲j̲iʾism consistent with orthodoxy. Similarly the Saiyid Murtaḍā (loc. cit., p. 13 foot) says that the Muʿtazilites claimed Abū Ḥanīfa for themselves and rejected his authorship of one book because it was too flatly against their positions. The truth evidently was that Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150 = 767) was the first to adopt the methods of the Muʿtazilites and apply argument to the foundation of the Faith. Also, from the beginning, his standing was so high that it was simply impossible to call him a heretic. This status continued in the Māturīdite School.
All this goes back to the time before kalām had become a technical term and when fiḳh meant both theology and canon law, with the difference that theology was called “the greater fiḳh” (al-fiḳh al-akbar; see article kalām above, vol. ii., p. 672b). That was the title of one of Abū Ḥanīfa’s books and we have a commentary on it ascribed to Māturīdī (Ḥaidarābād 1321), the only writing assertedly by him apparently in print. This does not occur in the two exactly similar lists which we have of his books (Saiyid Murtaḍā, p. 5; Ibn Ḳuṭlūbug̲h̲ā, p. 43): 1. Kitāb al-Tawḥīd; 2. Kitāb al-Maḳālāt; 3. Kitāb Radd Awāʾil al-Adilla li ’l-Kaʿbī 4. Kitāb Bayān Wahm al-Muʿtazila; 5. Kitāb Taʾwīlāt al-Ḳurʾān. Of these only the last is given by Brockelmann, i., p. 195, 4; the biographers praise it highly. The others suggest only anti-Muʿtazilite polemic (for al-Kaʿbī see Horten, Philosophische Systeme, by index). As a matter of fact it is only in one MS. of the commentary¶ on the Fiḳh Akbar that this work is ascribed to al-Māturīdī.
How the theological school of Abū Ḥanīfa came to be known as that of al-Māturīdī we do not know. The epithet al-mutakallim, applied to al-Māturīdī, may mean that he was the theologian of the school of Abū Ḥanīfa as opposed to those who were canon lawyers (fuḳahāʾ). But the two tendencies to accept him and to suppress him still continue. The ʿAḳāʾid of one of his followers, al-Nasafī, fortified with the commentary of al-Taftāzānī, an As̲h̲ʿarite, is the theological text-book of the last two years of the Azhar course and is a final authority in Egypt. Yet when Muḥammad ʿAbdū, the late Chief Muftī of Egypt, a regenerator and reformer of Islām, put his views of the development of Muslim theology and of its final position into a course of lectures at Bairūt (Risālat al-tawḥīd: Exposé de la religion musulmane, traduite de l’Arabe… by B. Michel and Moustapha ʿAbdel Razik, Paris 1925) he showed himself a Māturīdite with no mention of al-Māturīdī.
The differences between the two Schools are commonly reckoned as thirteen in number; six, a difference in idea (maʿnawī) and seven in expression (lafẓī) (for them in detail see the Saiyid Murtaḍā, p. 8 sqq. and Abū ʿUd̲h̲ba, al-Rawḍa al-bahīya, Ḥaidarābād 1904). They have been studied by Goldziher in his Vorlesungen, p. 110 sqq., and by Horten is his Philosophische Systeme, p. 531 sqq. It is frequently said that these points of difference are slight, but that is not so. The moral position of Abū Ḥanīfa is as plain in them as in his canon law. Al-As̲h̲ʿarī was concerned only to maintain the absoluteness of Allāh’s will; that he could do anything; and that a thing was “good” because he willed it. Future rewards and punishments, therefore, had no “moral” basis. But Abū Ḥanīfa, and after him al-Māturīdī and his School, recognizes that man possesses free-will (ik̲h̲tiyārī) actions for which he is rewarded and punished. No explanation is attempted of this fundamental antinomy of predestination and free-will; they are stated side by side as equal, if contradictory, facts. Similarly, while Abū Ḥanīfa admits that evil deeds are by the will (irāda) of Allāh — otherwise they could not happen — he cannot bring himself to say that they are by the “good pleasure” (riḍwān) of Allāh. Further, the Māturīdite School admits the doctrine of “assurance of salvation” and the As̲h̲ʿarite does not. A Māturīdite may say, “I am a believer, assuredly” (ḥaḳḳan ) but an As̲h̲ʿarite must say, “I am a believer if Allāh wills”. Because, then, of this essential difference in human and moral feeling the School of al-Māturīdī has steadily penetrated the School of al-As̲h̲ʿarī and even the professed As̲h̲ʿarite at the present time is, to a greater or less extent, a Māturīdite.
(D. B. Macdonald)
Bibliography
has been given in the article. But see article kalām throughout.
Cite this page
Macdonald, D. B., “Māturīdī”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936), Edited by M. Th. Houtsma, T.W. Arnold, R. Basset, R. Hartmann.
First print edition: ISBN: 9789004082656, 1913-1936