On the Reception of al-Māturīdī and the Māturīdiyyah among the Deobandis

Abstract

<jats:p>This article asks how Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) and the Māturīdiyyah are received within the Deobandi milieu—whether as a tradition of kalām, as a curricular background, or as a marker in theological demarcation and explicit theological self-definition. It first reconstructs the channels through which Māturīdī patterns of reasoning were transmitted and institutionalized in South Asia, especially through Ḥanafī scholarly networks and the Naqshbandiyyah-Mujaddidiyyah. It situates these trajectories within the dars-i niẓāmī. The latter is shown to treat kalām largely as a necessary minimum embedded in a broader ma‘qūlāt-profile, rather than as an autonomous arena of sustained debate. Accordingly, the article is concerned less with reconstructing a comprehensive Deobandi kalām system than with tracing how Māturīdī belonging appears across textual legacy, teaching presence, and communal self-ascription. The core of the article then turns to Deobandi self-articulation: a reading of al-Muhannad (1907) and Qārī Muḥammad Ṭayyib’s (d. 1983) programmatic account of “Diyōbandiyyat” highlights how Deoband asserts Ḥanafī affiliation while making Māturīdī belonging especially visible in programmatic formulations of identity and the marking of Sunni belonging, rather than through sustained systematic elaboration of doctrine. In conclusion, the article argues that Māturīdī identification gains its sharpest contours where modern Salafi polemics compel explicit theological positioning.</jats:p>