Some Reflections on the Critical Edition and Turkish Transla-tion of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd by Imām al-Māturīdī

Abstract

Despite Kitāb al-Tawḥīd’s great importance for Islamic thought in general and for the Māturīdī tradition of theology in particular, only one single manuscript of it has been discovered so far and Fatḥullāh Khulaif relied on it to edit and publish the text in 1970. With a view to eliminating various shortcomings of the edition, Bekir Topaloğlu and Muhammed Aruçi produced a new critical edition of the text by relying on Khulaif’s edition and the manuscript in 2003; Topaloğlu also produced a Turkish translation of the text by relying on his own critical edition in 2002. During my study of the critique of philosophers by Imām al-Māturīdī concerning the debates over the pre-eternity or createdness of the world, I have used the critical edition and Turkish translation produced by Topaloğlu. During my readings, I have written down some points that I have considered to be problematic in the metaphysic chapter of the Arabic edition and Turkish translation. This study is intended to present these points to the scholars of the field with a hope of producing a more complete edition and translation of the text.