THE DEBATES BETWEEN ASH’ARISM AND MĀTURĪDISM IN OTTOMAN RELIGIOUS SCHOLARSHIP: A HISTORICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDY BY Yahya Raad Haidar March, 2016 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Australian National University © Yahya Raad Haidar 2016 All Rights Reserved DISCLAIMER I hereby declare that this dissertation is my own original work and has not been submitted before to any institution for assessment purposes. Further, I have acknowledged all sources used and have cited these in the reference section. …………………………….. …………………………… Yahya Raad Haidar Date ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all members of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Australian National University), in particular: the Centre’s director, Professor Amin Saikal, for his support and encouragement; Dr. Kirill Nourzhanov who has been my primary academic and administrative guide throughout my candidature; my supervisor Dr. Minerva Nasser-Eddine for comments and feedback on my writing. Special gratitude goes to Professor Mehmed Mehdi Ilhan who was my first point of contact at the ANU and who championed my proposal to pursue a PhD in the history of ‘Ilm al-Kalām. I also thank Dr. Tony Street of the University of Cambridge for acting as external advisor and giving me invaluable guidance on my research. To Ni’mat Bizhan, Adel Abd al-Ghafar, Aminat Chokobaeva, Hammad Khan, Kate Quenzer, Heather Yeates, and all other PhD Scholars at CAIS with whom I shared office-space, had coffee, and exchanged ideas: thank you for your kindness and empathy. To the late Jacky Sutton: your sudden death was a shock to the Centre; I will remember our chats about Iraq, living in Canberra, and the challenges of Eurocentrism. Heartfelt appreciation goes to Aly Zaman, who has been a brother and a friend in the true sense of the word. Thank you for your insightful feedback on my ideas, and for the warmth and graciousness which you and your family have shown towards me and my family. I would also like to thank Sa’id Tehrani-Nasab for the generosity and stimulating discussions. Of the staff at CAIS, I especially thank Anita Mack for the kindness, big-heartedness and for being a great listener. I also thank Leila Kouatly for her unwavering help in the terra incognita of administrative red-tape. Needless to mention my gratitude to the languages team at CAIS: my Persian language teacher, Dr. Zahra Taheri, and Ms. Huda al-Tamimi, convener of the Arabic language program, who gave me the opportunity to tutor courses in Arabic. Last but not least, I wish to thank the staff at the various libraries and centres I visited during my candidature and which have provided me with copies of books and manuscripts, including: Jum’a al-Majid Centre for Culture and Heritage in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), the Turkish Religious Foundation’s Centre for Islamic Studies (ISAM), Süleymaniye Library, Konya Provincial Manuscripts Library (Konya Bölge Yazma Eserler Kütüphane Müdürlüğü), the National Library of Turkey in Ankara (Milli Kütüphane), and İrşad Kitābevi in Istanbul. Finally, thank you to everyone who helped and supported me in this research and whose name is not acknowledged above. iii ABSTRACT The intellectual life during the Ottoman Empire – which came to dominate large parts of the Muslim world from the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century CE – has received relatively limited attention in modern scholarship. This study is a historical investigation of an intellectual debate between the two major schools of Islamic theology (Ash‛arism and Māturīdism) which by the eighteenth century had become a prominent theme in Ottoman scholarly literature. Māturīdism is one of two schools that dominated Islamic theology after the disintegration of the rationalist school of the Mu‛tazilah. The other school, Ash‛arism, eventually became the common doctrine among followers of the Shāfi‛ī and Mālikī schools of law, while Māturīdism became, almost exclusively, the theology of the Ḥanafis. Both schools wrote in the name of Sunnī orthodoxy (ahl al- Sunna wa al-jama‛a) and took a middle course between the doctrines of the Mu‛tazilah and the literalists, attempting to achieve a balance between reason (‛aql) and revelation (naql). Despite the sheer similarity between the two schools in terms of overall objectives, pioneers of Māturīdism during the school’s formative period (ninth – thirteenth century) methodically objected to Ash‛arī positions over a number of problems – including, the conception of faith (imān), doctrine of predestination (qadar), the punishment of sins, and God’s active attributes (ṣifāt al-‘af‛āl). By the end of the fourteenth century, Ash‛arism was recognized as the universal authority on mainstream theological discourses – having attracted the greater number of followers, and produced extensive and systematic theological canon which addressed problems from philosophy, logic and natural science. Based on extensive historical and bibliographical research – including a number of previously unpublished manuscripts – this study traces Ottoman scholars’ attitude towards the school of Ash‛arī in three phases. The first is the classical Ottoman phase (mid. fourteenth – end of fifteenth century) which saw the persistence of the Ash‛arī paradigm in Ottoman theological scholarship; this study found that – although Ḥanafism was the common and officially-sanctioned school of Law – early Ottoman Ḥanafī theological treatises display greater inclines to Ash‛arism rather than Ḥanafism’s traditional doctrine of Māturīdī. The second phase covers the sixteenth century which witnessed a growing interest among Ottoman theologians to affirm the ‘sound’ doctrine of Sunnism in strict concord with the theology of Abū Ḥanīfa as presented in classical Māturīdī texts. The disputes with Ash‛arī were also brought into attention. But, in the absence of a new appraisal of theological problems from an exclusively Māturīdī perspective, on the disputes with Ash‛arī, Ottoman theologians remained largely within the radius of Ash‛arism. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, this situation is inverted at the hand of Istanbul-based scholar Aḥmad Bayāḍīzādah who produced his influential Ishārāt al-marām – an extensive theological treatise which sought to defend Māturīdism over fifty disputed problems with Ash‛arism and to restore the status of Abū Manṣūr al- Māturīdī as the foremost theologian of Islam. The third phase covers the period between the early seventeenth century, towards the final years of the empire in the end of the nineteenth century whereby Ottoman scholars produced numerous works – varying in size and scope – with Ash‛arī- Māturīdī debates as their primary subject-matter. This study begins with a comparative historical background of the emergence of Ash‛arism and Māturīdism, followed by a discussion of key theological disputes as presented in authoritative pre-Ottoman texts. It then attempts to examine the extent to which Ash‛arism influenced early Ottoman theological discourses, and the intellectual context which saw the emergence of a late Ottoman Māturīdī canon. Finally, the study documents nearly forty works on Ash‛arī-Māturīdī disputations that were produced between the seventeenth and late nineteenth century, amounting to the establishment of a novel genre of later Islamic theological literature. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DISCLAIMER………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………..…………………...…..ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………..…………….……………………….……..…..…………..…… iii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………….……….…….………….……..….......….…..…....iv TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………………………………..…...…………………..………..v INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………...…………… 1 I. Topic and Scope II. The Problem III. Methodological Issues IV. Primary Sources V. Literature Review VI. Note on Terminology, Citation, Transliteration, and Dates PART I CHAPTER ONE: PRELIMINARY HISTORICAL DISCUSSIONS 1.1 Historical Origins …………………………………………………….……..……………………………………..………….……..……22 1.1.1 Early Ḥanafism and the Science of Kalām 1.1.1.1 Baghdād 1.1.1.2 Al-Maghreb and Egypt 1.1.1.3 Al-Shām and Northern Regions 1.1.1.4 Al-Rayy 1.1.1.5 Khorāsān 1.1.1.6 Bukhārā 1.1.2 Traditionalism Triumphant 1.1.2.1 Māturīdism at Samarqand 1.1.2.2 Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ash‛arī in Baghdād 1.2 Classical Ash‛arism and Ḥanafī Theology: Early Encounters ………………………………..……….…...…..…… 38 1.2.1 Fourth/Tenth Century 1.2.2 Fifth/Eleventh Century 1.2.3 Sixth/Twelfth Century 1.3 The Later Kalām Tradition ………………………………………………….…………………………………………..……..…….. 50 1.3.1 History of ‛Ilm al-Kalām and the Question of Periodization 1.3.1.2 Doctrinal Affiliation and the Later Kalām tradition 1.3.2 Ash‛arī-Māturīdī Disputations: Early Prototypes 1.3.2.1 Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) 1.3.2.2 Najm al-Dīn al-Ṭarasūsi (d. 758/1357) 1.3.2.3 Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370) 1.3.2.4 Taqī al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442) 1.4 Conclusion: An Unequal Rivalry ……………………………………….…..…………………………………………….…….…. 58 v CHAPTER TWO: OUTLINE OF KEY THEOLOGICAL DISPUTES AS PRESENTED IN CLASSICAL MĀTURĪDĪ TEXTS 2.1 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………….…………….………………….. 61 2.2 Knowledge of God and the Role of Reason …………………………………………………………………………….……… 62 2.2.1 Rational Necessity of Knowledge of God 2.2.2 Validity of the Emulator’s Faith 2.2.3 Rational Recognition of Good and Evil 2.3 Wisdom and the Acts of God ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 71 2.3.1 Does God Pardon Disbelief? 2.3.2 Is the Will of God Indicative of His Love and Pleasure? 2.4 Predestination and