İmam Mâtürîdî'nin Varlık Görüşü Hakkındaki Çalışmalara Dair Bir Değerlendirme
An Evaluation of the Studies on Imām Māturīdī 's Views of Existence

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to evaluate the current research focusing on Imām Māturīdī's (d. 333/944) view of existence. The research studies in the chapter about existence in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd by al-Māturīdī have drawn four different conclusions regarding his cosmological thought. These are al-Māturīdī’s not “promoting any theory of the universe", his being an "atomist", "naturalist" and "accidentalist". The present study mainly aims to examine the findings of the studies on al-Māturīdī's view of existence, along with discussing why different results have been obtained on this issue. It is interesting and remarkable that four different results have been obtained by the studies on this same work. Therefore, the reasons for these different perspectives must be unearthed. In our evaluation, the types of methods followed in these studies are identified, and the studies are categorized based on the results they obtained about al-Māturīdī's view of cosmology. Moreover, the results are presented in tables. An examination of the studies reveals that most conclusions have been drawn based on the chapter about the existence of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd. Additionally, these studies also incorporate al-Nasafī’s (d. 508/1115) interpretations of Tabshirat al-Adillah on al-Māturīdī's view of existence. However, different perspectives have emerged. In some studies, it has been noted that such differences in perspectives may have been due to the concepts preferred by Bekir Topaloğlu (May Allah have mercy on him) while studying and translating the previous chapter in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd. For example, in his work called “A Criticism of the Turkish Translation of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd,” Ömer Türker offered translationoriented suggestions about some excerpts in the work, including the chapter about the notion of existence. Similarly, Tahir Uluç also has a study titled "Some Considerations on the Edited Publication and Annotated Translation of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd,” which focuses on the proofreading and translation of the work. In addition, he endeavored to translate Kitāb alTawḥīd by taking into account the philosophical literature and the author's perspectives. This translation was published in 2021 with footnotes including Topaloğlu's criticisms of the use of various concepts. However, acceptably, it would not be right to attribute such different evaluations solely to the problems of proofreading and translation. The difficulty in understanding the language of Kitāb al-Tawḥīd and al-Māturīdī’s use of expressions that evoke other theories of the universe are also among the reasons. As a matter of fact, in his article "al-Māturīdī and Atomism", Mehmet Bulgen, who thinks that he is likely to be an atomist, notes that there are some difficulties in appreciating al-Māturīdī's view of cosmology, coupled with the fact that his view of existence is not systematic. He states that al-Māturīdī uses concepts such as substance (jawhar), accident (ʿaraḍ), and body (jism) ambiguously. This makes it difficult to reach a clear conclusion about what theories of naturalism and atomism al-Māturīdī adopt. This is because he uses different theories of the universe and concepts related to these theories by integrating them into his theological system and thus adopts a more flexible approach. Therefore, it can be said that, due to such reasons, researchers working on Kitāb al-Tawḥīd’s chapter about existence have obtained different results.

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