The Human Immortality in Abū Manṣūr Maturīdī’s View

Maturidiyya is an Islamic theological school attributed to Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad Māturīdī Samarqandī (d. 333 AH/944). It is an old and widely advocated Sunni theological school, particularly supported by Hanafi Muslims. Just like other Islamic sects, Maturidiyya believe in human immortality and posthumous life, which is a fundamental theological problem. An issue concerning afterlife is the problem of immortality and its arguments. In this paper, I deploy a descriptive-analytic method and consult the theological and exegetical work of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, as the founder of the Maturidiyya school, to consider his picture of the human immortality and his arguments. Māturīdī believes in human immortality as a soul-body composite in the afterlife, and in addition to transmitted evidence, he presents rational arguments for his position, although in the theological system of Maturidiyya as a rationalist school evidence for the human immortality tends to be transmitted, rather than rational, and indeed, certain Maturidis have subsumed issues concerning afterlife under the category of “what is heard” (sam‘iyyāt). Notwithstanding this, Abū Manṣūr Māturīdī deploys a general rationalist approach in his explication and interpretation of the transmitted evidence, providing certain rational arguments or at least rationalist accounts of the transmitted evidence.