Imam Maturidi's interpretation of the verses of ahkam in the context of Surah An-Nur

One of the pioneering figures among Ḥanafī scholars, Imām al-Māturīdī was born in the village of Māturīd near Samarkand—located in present-day Uzbekistan—around the middle of the third century AH. He became known as "al-Māturīdī" in reference to this village. Although he is primarily associated with the discipline of Kalām due to his role as the founder of the Māturīdī school, he is also known to have produced works in the fields of tafsīr, fiqh, uṣūl al-fiqh, the history of Islamic sects, and Qurʾānic recitation. Of his many works in these disciplines, only Kitāb al-Tawḥīd and Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān have survived to the present day. Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān, the work that serves as the basis of this study, is considered the first tafsīr of the dirāyah type in which the sūrahs are interpreted in the order in which they appear in the muṣḥaf. In his exegesis, al-Māturīdī primarily referred to transmitted texts (naṣṣ), and in verses that contain legal rulings, he opted to interpret them from a Ḥanafī perspective. In cases of scholarly disagreement, he defended the views of his school and presented arguments to critique opposing positions. Sūrat al-Nūr is a Madinan sūrah that addresses proper codes of conduct in social relations and supports moral life through legal rulings. Among these rulings, zinā (fornication), qaḏf (false accusation), and liʿān (mutual imprecation) are directly related and are mentioned successively in the first nine verses. The offenses of zinā and qaḏf are subject to ḥadd punishments, while accusations of zinā between spouses are resolved through the rulings of liʿān. Al-Māturīdī devotes extensive attention to Sūrat al-Nūr in Taʾwīlāt, addressing the legal verses in detail, explaining the issues using both transmitted and rational evidences, and striving not only to emphasize their jurisprudential dimensions but also to clarify the wisdom underlying the messages conveyed. In his interpretation of the legal verses, it is noteworthy that while defending the positions held by his school, al-Māturīdī at times criticizes Imām al-Shāfiʿī without explicitly naming him, refers to the Muʿtazila, and—despite being a close follower of Abū Ḥanīfa—occasionally offers divergent views and even remains isolated in some of his legal preferences.