Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad al-Māturīdī

Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad al-Māturīdī (died 944, Samarkand) was the eponymous figurehead of the Māturīdiyyah school of theology that arose in Transoxania, which came to be one of the most important foundations of Islamic doctrine.

Except for the place and time of Māturīdī’s death, almost nothing is known about the details of his life. He lived during a time when the Muʿtazilites, a Muslim sect, were using the techniques of Greek dialectic (logical argumentation) to attack what had come to be accepted as orthodox Muslim theology. Māturīdī seized the offensive by using these same arguments as a means of defending orthodox theology in the tradition of Abū Ḥanīfah (died 767). In fact, such use of logic was widespread, and it is not clear that Māturīdī made any unique contribution to its application. Rather, it appears that the Transoxanian school of theology was identified with him only centuries later, after it began competing with the Ashʿarī school in Iran and Syria. The promulgaters of the Transoxanian school celebrated Māturīdī’s oeuvre as a brilliant expression of the incoming theological reasoning. His works were noted in part for their emphasis on the morality of human responsibility, which contributed to the “humanization” of orthodoxy as Muʿtazilite influence declined.