Al-Maturidi

Al-Maturidi

This article is about a person. For the school that takes the person's name, please see the article on Maturidism.

Al-Maturidi, or by his full name Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Maturidi al-Samarqandi (Arabic: الماتريدي; b. 863, Maturid, Samarkand – d. 944, Samarkand), was an Islamic scholar who was the founder of the Maturidi school — one of the two creedal schools of the Islamic religion — and who is regarded as the creedal imam of the adherents of the Hanafi school.

Life

He was born in the village of Maturid near the city of Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. Al-Maturidi's full name is Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Maturidi al-Samarqandi.

Although little information is found about the life of al-Maturidi and it is not known with certainty, various views have been put forward regarding his date of birth. According to one of these views, since he studied under Muhammad ibn Muqatil al-Razi, who died around the year 862, and considering that the minimum age at which he could have studied under him was around ten, he may have been born around 852. Starting from his date of death, 944, and considering that he lived about a hundred years, it is also suggested that he may have been born in 844. Vehbi Ecer, for his part, claims that his birth is estimated to be in the year 863. The brothers İbrahim and Seyyid Avazayn, who studied Imam al-Maturidi's Ta'wilat, claimed in the preface they wrote to their study that Imam al-Maturidi was born in the time of the Abbasid caliph Ja'far al-Mutawakkil, that is, between the years 232 and 247 AH.

There are views that al-Maturidi may have been of Turkic origin, because Turks were the majority in the place where he lived; that he may have been of Arab origin, on the grounds that his lineage extends to Abu Ayyub al-Ansari; and that he may have been of Persian origin, because in some accounts he used Persian in daily life.

Imam al-Maturidi lived in an age that could be called the period of independent principalities, when the power of the Abbasid caliphate had weakened, in the era when the Samanids held sway over Transoxiana. Although the sources do not provide sufficient information about the kind of education Imam al-Maturidi received, as far as we have been able to determine, among his teachers are Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Ishaq ibn Salih al-Juzjani (mid-3rd century AH), Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn al-Abbas al-Iyadi (d. early 4th century AH), Muhammad ibn Muqatil al-Razi (d. 862), Nusayr ibn Yahya al-Balkhi (d. 881), and Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Raja al-Juzjani. Again, according to information obtained from the sources, his students appear to be Abu'l-Qasim Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Hakim al-Samarqandi (d. 951), Abu'l-Hasan Ali Sa'id al-Rustughfani (d. 956), Abu Ahmad ibn Abi Nasr Ahmad ibn Abbas al-Iyadi (d. ?), and Abu Muhammad Abd al-Karim ibn Musa al-Pazdawi (d. 1000).

Regarding al-Ash'ari

The other of the two widespread creedal schools is Ash'arism. Under the influence of the attitude of the Arabs, arising from their tendency to look down on non-Arab Muslims, it has been observed that they tried to bring al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (d. 324 AH / 935 CE) to the fore and to overshadow al-Maturidi. Fathullah Khulayf, one of the professors of the University of Alexandria, in the preface he wrote to the Kitab al-Tawhid, uttered the following sentences regarding whether al-Maturidi's contemporary al-Hasan al-Ash'ari was a greater scholar than al-Maturidi: "... Nevertheless, al-Maturidi has a superiority over al-Ash'ari in the matter of assisting the Ahl al-Sunna wa'l-Jama'a."

Al-Maturidi's various epithets

Imam al-Huda, that is, "Leader of Right Guidance."

Alam al-Huda, that is, "Torch of Right Guidance."

Imam al-Mutakallimin, that is, "Leader of the Theologians (Mutakallimun)."

His method regarding creed

Al-Maturidi's most comprehensive work concerning the principles of belief (creed) is the Kitab al-Tawhid. According to this work, the "means" to be resorted to in learning religion "are two: one is transmission (naql), the other reason (aql)." What is meant by transmission is the Qur'an and the Sunna, that is, the hadiths. The Qur'an comes first, and on the subject of understanding the Qur'an, al-Maturidi has a method that differs from the Salafiyya, the Mu'tazila and the philosophers. The Salafiyya place transmission before reason and allow the Qur'an to be explained only in the light of hadith, not permitting philosophical or ta'wil-based interpretation. The Mu'tazila take reason as the basis if transmission and reason contradict one another. According to the philosophers, truth is known and found by reason alone, and the Qur'an is generally interpreted according to rational data. As stated before, according to al-Maturidi one must rely equally on transmission (the Qur'an) and reason as the source of religion. Al-Maturidi expounds religion with an embracing rather than a repelling approach, in a way that does not harm the universality of Islam. For this reason, al-Maturidi tolerates differences of opinion that do not concern the "essence" of religion and does not regard those who hold them as having left the religion. He does not coerce those who do not share his view. He uses "reason" and "transmission" in a balanced manner. Reason is one of the sources of knowledge, a divine trust given to man. Through their reason, people recognize beauty and ugliness and understand their own superiority. The servant's committing of faults is due to his failure to use his reason. "God's commands are addressed to the one who possesses reason." Those who do not have the level of reason to understand God's commands remain outside the divine commands and are not held responsible.

According to al-Maturidi, man "was created endowed with reason together with a physiological structure; he has been distinguished by the ability to govern created beings (creatures), and has been made superior by bringing reason into play in order to endure and overcome all kinds of difficulties. For reason is the most powerful weapon of the faculty of discernment."

His method regarding fiqh

Al-Maturidi adopted the path and method of Abu Hanifa (d. 767), who is regarded as the "master of the Iraqi school of fiqh." According to Abu Hanifa, fiqh is "ma'rifat al-nafs ma laha wa ma alayha." Its meaning is that everything that is for or against a person falls within the science of fiqh. Both a person's matters of belief and his actions form the subject of fiqh. For this reason Abu Hanifa gave his book of kalam (theology) the title al-Fiqh al-Akbar. Al-Maturidi, who is regarded as a student of Abu Hanifa, likewise considers within fiqh both the aspects of belief (iman) and theology and the aspects of human actions (amal). For this reason "al-Maturidi" belongs to the group that gives importance to reason and analogy (qiyas) in fiqh and is called Ahl al-Ra'y in the history of fiqh. Later on, fiqh became the name of the branch of science covering the knowledge and rulings pertaining to the secondary matters of religion (those of secondary importance), to practical life (the actions performed in the world).

In the field of fiqh al-Maturidi is not an independently acting mujtahid but a scholar of the Hanafi school, and he always fit his views into this framework. As with Abu Hanifa, for him too the ways of acquiring knowledge are transmission, the senses and reason. The sources of fiqh are the Book (that is, the Qur'an), the Sunna, hadith, consensus (ijma), analogy (qiyas), juristic preference (istihsan), previous revealed law (shari'a), and the "sayings of the Companions."

His work as an exegete

Al-Maturidi has a detailed work on tafsir. Katip Çelebi (Hajji Khalifa) gives the name of this work as "Ta'wilat al-Maturidiyya fi Bayan Usul Ahl al-Sunna wa Usul al-Tawhid." Some also refer to his work by the name Ta'wilat Ahl al-Sunna.

We will use the short name "Ta'wilat" and dwell on its principal features.

According to al-Maturidi, in learning religion "the means to be resorted to are two: one is transmission, the other reason." At the head of "transmission" comes the Qur'an. We have said that al-Maturidi has a method, differing from the Salafiyya, the Mu'tazila and the philosophers, concerning the knowledge of religion from the Qur'an. For the philosophers, truth is known and found by reason. In his tafsir book titled Ta'wilat al-Qur'an, which he left to us concerning the exegesis of the Qur'an, al-Maturidi used the diraya (reason-based) method for the first time. However, in this Qur'anic exegesis al-Maturidi used not the word tafsir but the word ta'wil. According to him, tafsir is to give a definitive ruling about what is intended by the speech of God. But ta'wil is to prefer one of the possibilities of the word (the wording). Here there is no room for calling God to witness or for supposing one's own views to be God's intent. Fundamentally it is a matter not of absoluteness but of relativity.

Sources

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