Beyond the Land, Beyond the River

The Muʿtazilī problem also reached, or at least its echoes reached, the Mā warāʾ al-Nahr area, which lies further north, above Iran today: north of Iran, in Uzbekistan. That whole area is called Transoxiana, Mā warāʾ al-Nahr: beyond the land, beyond the river. This was another centre of learning. Many of the Ḥanafī ʿulamāʾ came from that area. In fact, Imam al-Bukhārī is from that area, from Bukhara. Imam al-Tirmidhī is from that area, from Tirmidh, and both of these cities are in Uzbekistan today. Samarkand too; all of these. Nishapur is further south; it is in Iran today.

Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī stood up to defend the faith there. Though the two were working in different areas, a lot of the conclusions they reached were the same, because they were drawing from the orthodox sources: from the Sharīʿah, from the Qur'an and the Sunnah.

The methodology, though, was sometimes different. The Māturīdīs were willing to use ʿaql as well, as long as it did not mean compromising the naql, compromising the transmitted sources. They would use the ʿaql simply to help understanding. The Ashʿarīs would do so as well, but a lot more restrictively.

So they were not like another group at the time, the hadith scholars. These were specifically called the hadith scholars because that was their main focus. They were very, very much against using any kind of logical argument beyond qāla Allāh, qāla al-Rasūl, beyond plain quotation from the Sharīʿah. Obviously, when there is a problem, it has to be answered at that level, in order to convince people and bring them back from the fitnah. That is what these two were doing.

So the hadith scholars could be said to stand on one side, being extremely restricted in this: they would not use ʿaql at all; they would only quote. Then came the Ashʿarīs and the Māturīdīs, somewhere in the middle. But the Ashʿarīs were closer to that side, while the Māturīdīs were a little more willing, as long as they did not compromise any of the sources of Sharīʿah, and only to help understanding.

So one was Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, and one was Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī. Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī passed away in 324 Hijrī, which is about 935 CE. Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī passed away in 333, just ten years or so afterwards, in 944 CE.