The hadīth in the thought of İmām al-Māturīdī

In the present study, the approach of Abū Mansūr Muhammad al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) to hadith and sunnah is discussed. The main purpose of the thesis is to examine the determination and description of the method of use and evaluation of the narrations attributed to the Prophet Muhammad by al-Māturīdī, the representative of the Hanafī science tradition, which is a branch of the Ahl al-Ra'y, in the fourth hijrī century. This study attempted to show the differences between the approach of the hadithists and the approach of al-Māturīdī to the narration material. The main sources of the study are al-Māturīdī's works called Ta'wīlāt al-Qur'ān and Kitāb al-Tawhīd, which have survived to the present day. In this context, his explanations on hadith and sunnah were scanned in his works, and modern researches on al-Māturīdī and Māturīdism were utilized as much as possible. According to the findings we have obtained, al-Māturīdī, unlike the hadithists, does not include the uninterrupted words of the narrations, and acts content-centered in accordance with the attitude of the ahl al-ra'y tradition in the evaluations of the narrations. al-Māturīdī does not see it necessary to stick to the wording in the narrations, and he describes such an effort as false display. These findings confirm the previous studies on al-Māturīdī and Māturīdism. One of the remarkable results of the study is the relationship that al-Māturīdī observes between mutawātir news and tafsīr in terms of expressing certainty, and between khaber al-wāhid and ta'wīl in terms of expressing suspicion. Accordingly, the conditions that al-Māturīdī put forward for accepting khabar al-wāhid and ta'wīl, the areas in which they are valid, the judgments and consequences they produce, and the expressions he uses to reject them are almost the same. al-Māturīdī's content-centered clearity criteria can be summarized as not to contradict the Qur'ān's text, sunnah, consensus, rational proofs and shar'ī principles; not to be contrary to the imagination of Allah, the prophet, the Companions; not having a content that would harm the duty of prophethood and the title of 'ismat. His extremely rare statements about the isnād (source texts that validate hadiths) are intended either to support the conclusion he reached through other evidence or to use the arguments of his interlocutors against them. Although he does not use the criticism of the isnād in practice, he considers it necessary to examine the narrators who convey the news theoretically. It has been determined that the name that al-Māturīdī criticizes the most in the context of the narrations is Imam al-Shāfi'ī (d. 204/820). For the al-Shāfi'ī criticism, al-Māturīdī uses a very harsh style and, unlike his general attitude, makes some explanations about the isnād. However, it is seen that some of these criticisms do not reflect the truth. In some narrations, which form the basis of his and Hanafī sect's views and which are not at the level of mutawātir in terms of narration technique, al-Māturīdī tries to strengthen the narration by emphasizing actions and thus to eliminate the problem in terms of methodology. According to him, it is insignificant that the issues that have been the subject of action by the society uninterruptedly since the Prophet Muhammad are weak in terms of narration technique. In fact, they don't even need to be reported orally. Basically, according to al-Māturīdī, action is the highest form of transmission. Although he uses hadith and sunnah as synonyms from time to time, in his system of thought, sunnah is superior to hadith.