MĀTURĪDĪ, AL- (d. AH 333/944 CE), more fully Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd al-Samarqandī al-Māturīdī, was a Muslim theologian, jurist, and Qurʾān commentator. The name Māturīdīyah is also the eponym of a school of theology that represented an intermediate position between the Ḥanbalī traditionalists and the Muʿtazilah, advocates of religious rationalism in Islamic theology. Māturīdī was born in Māturīd, near the Central Asian city of Samarkand. Under the Persian Samanid rulers (874–999), al-Māturīdī lived in a setting of intense cultural and intellectual activity. He was trained by scholars of the Ḥanafī school of Islamic law. Not much is known of his life except that he wrote several books on theology, jurisprudence, and...