An Early Work from the School of al-Māturīdī

Extract

The British Museum has a manuscript (Or. 12781), a long pamphlet of 82 folios, octavo size; folio 1r carries the title and 82v is blank. The page has 13 lines of big writing with 10 or 11 words to the line. It is modern with no author's name or indication of source; the title is “The book of refutation of the heretics, entitled al-sawād al-a‘zam according to the doctrine of the most great imām, Abū Ḥanīfa”. The author is Abu'l-Qāsim Isḥāq b. Muḥammad al-Māturīdī († 342). He may have been a brother of the more celebrated al-Māturīdī who was the founder of the school; at any rate, he studied. fiqh including theology under him; he “took taṣawwuf” from Abū Bakr al-Warrāq (Muḥammad b. ‘Umar al-Ḥakīm) and others. It is a popular work addressed to a wide audience; some passages suggest the hedge-preacher rather than the scholar. At the Judgment there will be a bridge in seven divisions, all more slippery than a mirror and darker than night and each with three sections, every one a thousand years long, being climb, descent, and level. On them seven questions will be asked about faith, prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimage, ablutions, and duty to parents (30r). When Muḥammad went up to heaven God commanded him to fast six months in the year; on the advice of Moses this was cut down to one month (76r). One who has killed 100,000 Muslims and had illicit intercourse with 100,000 Muslim women is still a believer if he repents (1Ov, cf. 80v). The aṣḥāb al-kahf lived 80 years after Jesus (38v); another story is that they met one of His disciples.