Mâtürîdî ve Nesefî’nin Âhiret Ahvaline Yaklaşımlarının Mukayesesi Different Approaches of Maturidi and Nasafi on the Hereafter

Abū l-Muʿīn al-Nasafī, who is considered the second great founder of the Māturīdī kalām school and was in the position of al-Bāḳillānī and al-Ghazālī from the Ashʿarī school in terms of systematizing the sect, generally kept with the line of al-Māturīdī and did not oppose him. However, in our research on al-Nasafī’s sense of the afterlife, we observed that he thought different from al-Māturīdī in some matters. In the report we prepared from this point of view, we determined the comparison of the interpretation differences of al-Māturīdī and al-Nasafī in some concepts regarding the afterlife circumstances as our research subject. Because we think that it is an important issue to determine some interpretation differences between the two important names of the al-Māturīdī school regarding the afterlife circumstances. Our research aims to reveal the interpretation differences between these two scholars through sample concepts and make al-Māturīdī’s broad perspective more apparent. In our study, we exercised the literal review method, using al-Māturīdī’s Ta'wīlāt al-Qur'ān and al-Nasafī’s Tabṣira and Baḥr al-Kalām as the main reference. We tried to find the interpretation differences by researching and comparing the concepts we discussed from the references. As a result of our research, we have determined that the two scholars had different approaches regarding the afterlife circumstances; this difference in approach is not an ordinary interpretation difference, and the broad perspective of al-Māturīdī, who was the founder of the school, was not reflected on the scholars after him, which is an issue that should be taken into account. As far as we can see, al-Nasafī had a different attitude from al-Māturīdī by crediting some concepts such as sūr, mīzān, and kawthar, which al-Māturīdī interpreted as representative expression, to the real meaning. For example, al-Māturīdī said very clearly for the sūr that “We say that blowing the sūr can be in a representative meaning, not in a real meaning,” although al-Nasafī did not state explicitly that blowing the sūr was in the apparent meaning, he did not mention al-Māturīdī’s representative expression interpretation by using expressions which have this meaning. Again, while al-Māturīdī said about the mīzān that “It was more appropriate for the verse that mentions the balance to be heavy and light”, to be in a representative meaning rather than a real meaning; al-Nasafī referred to a real balance by mentioning the rumor that “the mīzān is a balance so large that it's one pan is in the east, and the other pan is in the west”. While al-Māturīdī was making an interpretation about kawthar in response to the river interpretation mentioned in the rumors that “If the rumors are authentic, we accept what the rumors say, but if the rumors are not authentic, it sounds more believable to us that kawthar is the blessing of messengership given to the prophet and the elevation of value”; al-Nasafī made a concrete explanation of ḥawḍ and kawthar by stating as “The ḥawḍ is right on the doomsday, and the kawthar is right in the heaven”. At the end of our study, we tried to draw attention briefly to the possible reasons why al-Nasafī, unlike al-Māturīdī, preferred the literal meaning instead of the representative meaning in these concepts.