Abu Mansur al-Maturidi

Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Maturidi came from Maturid (or Maturit), a quarter on the edge of Samarkand that gave him his nisba. His year of birth is not recorded: Uzbekistan dates it to about 870, and marked the 1130th anniversary of his birth in 2000, while some scholars place it in the mid-ninth century. He lived when the Samanids ruled Transoxiana and Samarkand was one of the main centres of Hanafi learning.

He studied law and theology in Samarkand with teachers whose line of learning went back to Abu Hanifa and his pupil Muhammad al-Shaybani. The sources name among them Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Ishaq al-Juzjani, Nusayr ibn Yahya al-Balkhi and Muhammad ibn Muqatil al-Razi, the qadi of Rayy. He completed his training under Abu Nasr al-Iyadi, the head of the Samarkand scholars, who taught at the Dar al-Juzjaniyya.

Al-Maturidi lived as a scholar and nothing else: there is no record of his holding any office, and in his writings he condemned closeness to unjust rulers. He taught law and theology in Samarkand; his pupils included Abu Ahmad al-Iyadi, Ali ibn Sa'id al-Rustughfani and Abd al-Karim ibn Musa al-Pazdawi. His contemporary, the jurist and ascetic al-Hakim al-Samarqandi, was a close friend.

Thirteen works are attributed to him, and two have survived complete. “The Book of Monotheism” (Kitab al-Tawhid) is one of the earliest surviving systematic accounts of Sunni theology: it discusses the sources of knowledge (the senses, transmitted reports and reason), the createdness of the world, the existence and attributes of God, prophecy and human acts. His commentary on the Qur'an, the Ta'wilat al-Qur'an, grew out of his lessons and is rich in theological and legal argument. His refutations of the Mu'tazili Abu al-Qasim al-Ka'bi, of the Qarmatians and of the Shi'i doctrine of the imamate, and his works on legal theory, are known only by their titles and from quotations by later authors.

For al-Maturidi, faith is inner assent of the heart confirmed by the tongue, and deeds are not part of it. He held that God's attributes of action, including creating, are as eternal as the attributes of His essence, which is his main difference from his Iraqi contemporary Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari. Human acts, in his view, are created by God, yet chosen by man, who has his own capacity and will. Besides the Mu'tazila, the Karramiyya and the Qarmatians, he examined the teachings of the Manichaeans and other dualists, so that “The Book of Monotheism” is also a valuable source on the history of these movements.

He died in Samarkand in 333 AH (944) and was buried in the city's Chokardiza cemetery; his friend al-Hakim al-Samarqandi had words about a life devoted to learning carved on his tombstone. The grave was venerated for centuries: the orientalist Vasily Bartold saw the mausoleum in 1920, but in Soviet times houses were built over the cemetery. In 2000 a new mausoleum and memorial complex were raised over the grave.

His line of thought took shape as a distinct school of theology only later, in the early twelfth century, in the works of Abu al-Mu'in al-Nasafi, who regarded him as its head. Maturidism spread among Hanafis from Transoxiana to the Ottoman and Mughal empires and is recognised, alongside Ash'arism, as one of the two main schools of Sunni theology. In 2020 an international conference on his legacy was held in Samarkand, and the Imam Maturidi International Scientific Research Center was founded.