English Text
Makhūl al-Nasafī (d. 318/930) represents a distinctive interstitial position in early Transoxanian scholarship: Ḥanafite in jurisprudence, but — as Ulrich Rudolph's monograph demonstrates — a follower of Ibn Karrām in theology, to a far greater extent and in a more explicit manner than previously recognized.
**Faith Definition:** Makhūl's most distinctively Karrāmite feature is his definition of faith as verbal declaration alone (qawl bi-l-lisān). He excludes not only deeds (as Ḥanafites do), but also the perception of the heart — which for Abū Ḥanīfa was an integral component of faith. For Makhūl the heart's only remaining function is to confirm what has already been declared; his justification is epistemological: we cannot in any case be aware of what goes on inside a person.
**Free Will:** Makhūl seeks a middle path between the Qadarites and Jabarites, which may initially suggest Māturīdite affinities. However, he grants people the capacity to act *before* the deed itself — a distinctly Karrāmite position that diverges from the Ḥanafite line.
**Primordial Covenant:** His emphatic argument for a primordial covenant (mīthāq) of all humanity with God is also characteristically Karrāmite; this concept, while not entirely foreign to Māturīdites, was of central importance to Ibn Karrām and his followers.
**Image of God:** Makhūl distance himself vigorously from the mushabbihūn (those who attribute hair, fingernails, and flesh to God), creating an appearance of anti-Karrāmite orthodoxy. Rudolph identifies this as a calculated rhetorical strategy: by stigmatizing anthropomorphist excesses, Makhūl shields his own position from suspicion — yet he says no word against the Karrāmite idea that God is a body or possesses hands and a face.
Rudolph concludes: Makhūl was included in the Ḥanafite ṭabaqāt literature on the basis of his fiqh, but in theology he did not follow Abū Ḥanīfa, but rather Ibn Karrām.