Different Interpretations of Abū ？anīfa: the ？anafī Jurists and the ？anafī Theologians

Since the spread of Islam in Transoxiana (Mā-warā？ al-Nahr), religious understanding based on the opinions of Abū ？anīfa (d. 150/767) have always been dominant in the region. Therefore, it was not possible for other perspectives, which may run counter to Abū ？anīfa’s opinions, to be influential in the region. That Najjāriyya and Karrāmiyya could not be perennial in the region may be an example of this case. Similarly, Māturīdiyya, which benefited from Abū ？anīfa’s treatises of creed and his rational method, could not get adequate support from people at the time of Abū Man？ūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) and Abū l-Mu？īn al-Nasafī (d. 508/1114) because the school was seen as an opposite approach to the prevailing imaginations about Abū ？anīfa. Moreover, the ？anafī jurists (？anafī fuqahā？), who were influential in not only people but also bureaucracy, and the ？anafī theologians (？anafī mutakallimūn), who followed al-Māturīdī’s theological method, did not come to terms on their interpretations of Abū ？anīfa. The ？anafī jurists who benefited mostly from juridical sources and manāqibworks were thinking different from the ？anafī theologians who relied on the treatises of Abū ？anīfa on such issues as the legitimacy of Kalām as a scholarly discipline, the responsibility of people of fatra(ahl al-fatra: people having no access to the message of Islam), and the creation of faith (īmān). The ？anafī jurists took a different stance on various issues and argued that faith is not created; the informative (khabarī) attributes of God (？ifāt Allāh) mentioned in the Qur？ān cannot be interpreted (ta？wīl); no one can be held accountable for faith based on intellect alone unless the message of the Prophet reaches to her or him; the people of fatracannot be responsible for faith. They also stated that Abū ？anīfa broke his relationship with the theological (kalāmī) issues in the last years of his life. Although these jurists accepted Abū ？anīfa’s distinction between faith and deeds and his view of the stability of one’s faith without increasing or decreasing, they condemned theological discussions on these issues by going beyond the limits of the treatise of creed. While the ？anafī theologians known as the ？anafī scholars of Samarqand, who adopted the religious views of Imām al-Māturīdī of Samarqand acknowledged the intellect and considered it as an independent source in religion, the ？anafī jurists known asthe ？anafī scholars of Bukhārāauthorized the intellect only in understanding the transmission (naql) and its interpretation. The different opinions of the two groups can be seen