Abu Mansur al-Maturidi

Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (Persian: أَبُو مَنْصُور ٱلْمَاتُرِيدِيّ, romanized: Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī; 853–944) was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist of the Hanafi school, exegete, reformer, and speculative theologian known for being the eponymous founder of the Maturidi school of Islamic theology, which became the dominant Sunni school of Islamic theology in Central Asia, and later enjoyed a preeminent status as the theological school of choice for both the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire.

He was from a place called Māturīd or Māturīt in Samarqand (today Uzbekistan), and was known during his lifetime as Shaykh al-Islām and Imām al-Hudā ("Leader of Right Guidance"). He was one of the two foremost Imams of the Sunni Islam in his time, along with Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī in matters of theological inquiry. In contrast al-Ashʿarī, who was a Shāfiʿī jurist, al-Māturīdī adhered to the eponymous school of jurisprudence founded by Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān, and to his creed (ʿaqīdah) as transmitted and elaborated by the Ḥanafī Muslim theologians of Balkh and Transoxania. It was this theological doctrine which al-Māturīdī codified, systematized, and used to refute not only the opinions of the Muʿtazilites, the Karramites, and other heterodox groups, but also non-Islamic theologies such as those of Chalcedonian Christianity, Miaphysitism, Manichaeanism, Marcionism, and Bardaisanism.