The Story of the Transmission of Imām al-Māturīdī's Kitāb al-Tawḥīd to the Western Ḥanafī Geography Based on His Citations

Abstract

Imām al-Māturīdī wrote many works, but only al-Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān and Kitāb al-Tawḥīd have survived until today. Some Māturīdī theologians have quoted some of his works that have or have not survived us. Who among the later Ḥanafī-Māturīdī scholars in the Western Ḥanafī geography (Ayyūbids, Mamlūks and Ottoman Geography) made use of these two works of al-Māturīdī and how they accessed them is a problem that needs to be clarified. Those who have analyzed the Taʾwīlāt and those who have done independent research on it have tried to illuminate some of the dark points regarding the circulation of this work in the Ottoman period. However, unfortunately, no serious research has yet been conducted on how much the Western Ḥanafī scholars of the Mamlūk and Ottoman periods were aware of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd and whether they directly or indirectly transmitted his views from it. Among the Ḥanafī-Māturīdī scholars who lived in Syria, Baghdād, Ḥijāz, Anatolia and Egypt, Abū al-Barakāt Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd al-Nasafī (d. 710/1310), Qiwām al-Dīn Amīr Kātib b. Abī Amīr ʿUmar b. Amīr Ghāzī al-Fārābī al-Itqānī al-Otrārī (758/1357), Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd b. Aḥmad al-Qonawī (d. 770/1369), Abū ʿAbd Allāh Akmal al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Bābartī (d. 786/1384), Abū al-Ḥasan Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ṣultān Muḥammad al-Qārī al-Harawī (d. 1014/1605), Kāfī Ḥasan Efendi al-Aqḥiṣārī (d. 1024/1615), Bayāḍīzāda (d. 1098/1687), Shaykhzāda ʿAbd al-Rahīm b. ʿAlī (d. after 1133/1720) and others were the ones of the first to refer to Imām al-Māturīdī's Kitāb al-Tawḥīd directly or indirectly. When the quotations made on Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī's name or his work are analyzed, it is understood that two different copies of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd were in circulation in Iraq, Damascus, Anatolia and Ḥijāz. Moreover, the scholars who came to the West from Turkistan and the scholars who grew up in this region refer to the work either directly to the text of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd/fī al-Tawḥīd or through what is quoted in Tabṣ