English Text
Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933), a leading representative of the Ḥanafite kalām tradition, composed the *al-ʿAqīdat al-Ṭaḥāwiyyah* — a brief but enormously influential creed. The chapter "Tahawism" in M. M. Sharif's *A History of Muslim Philosophy* (1963) analyses al-Ṭaḥāwī's theology comparatively with al-Māturīdī.
**Definition of faith:** Imam Abū Ḥanīfa ascribed three elements to faith: knowledge (maʿrifah), belief (taṣdīq), and confession (iqrār). Al-Māturīdī continued this line, treating knowledge as the cognitive basis of faith and confession as merely an external indicator (ʿalāmah) of inner belief. Al-Ṭaḥāwī, however, removed knowledge from his definition, holding that faith consists in "believing by the heart and confessing by the tongue." According to Sharif, this move reflects al-Ṭaḥāwī's traditionalist refusal to ground faith in philosophical reasoning. His system is therefore characterized as "dogmatic," while al-Māturīdī's is "critical" — both belong to the same Ḥanafite school but diverge sharply in method and orientation.
**The concept of ahl al-qiblah:** Al-Ṭaḥāwī substitutes the phrase *ahl al-qiblah* for *muʾmin* and *Muslim*, a move Sharif explains as an effort to sidestep ongoing theological controversy and to widen the boundaries of the Muslim community in a practically oriented way. In al-Ṭaḥāwī's formulation, no member of the ahl al-qiblah may be expelled from the community of faith on account of a sin, as long as he does not declare that sin lawful.
**Major sins and intercession:** Al-Ṭaḥāwī maintains that a believer guilty of mortal sins who dies unrepentant will not remain in hell forever; divine mercy and the intercession of the righteous may secure his deliverance. This position marks a middle path between the Khārijite-Muʿtazilite emphasis on threats (*waʿīd*) and the Murjiʾite emphasis on promise (*waʿd*): "We do not declare anyone of the people of Qiblah an infidel on account of a sin... nor do we drive them into despair."