I sometimes get asked about the Maturidi tradition’s equivalent to the works of Razi and Iji etc? Doesn’t it have advanced kalam texts to parallel these Ash’ari ones? Personally, I think this question misses something important in two ways: 1) These postclassical texts are mainly concerned with engaging the philosophy of Ibn Sina (classical kalam was developed in dialogue with the Mu’tazila). They are also written (in general) at a time of increasing harmonisation and synthesis between Ash’ari and Maturidi thought.

Time for a thread on epistemic justification and religion. There’s a lot of confusion over the term foundationalism among non-epistemologists. In contemporary philosophy, it usually relates to justifying empirical beliefs. So, a priori beliefs are typically discussed separately. In at least its moderate form, foundationalism claims that some beliefs are basic, that is they are self justifying. The motivation for this is to avoid a regress or circularity. Strong foundationalism claims that some basic beliefs are indubitable, i.e. they cannot be in error.

Here is a good illustration of what I mean when I say early Hadith critics were doing isnad-cum-matn analysis. A diagram I made a while ago from al-Daraqutni’s (d. 385) analysis of a hadith in Bukhari (may have some inaccuracies but the general idea is right). Look familiar? After tracing all these chains (not relying on the books that survive till today), Daraqutni still holds the version given by al-Bukhari is the best. But he sounds a note of concern over the degree of differences being cited on the authority of Abu Ishaq, i.e. the common link.

Good to see Hythem lay this out so clearly. I have been discussing it with him and others for a couple of years and IMO this is the historically viable position. Those who oppose the idea of scribal errors - and I get the controversy! - usually do so for theological reasons.

https://twitter.com/therealsidky/status/1418667335251075075

Now, I understand why theological commitment to the Arabic Qur’an as divine attribute can lead to what Hythem calls “special pleading”. But it is perfectly possible to account for these minor variations without generating any theological problem. In fact, there are multiple ways.

I need to correct a mistaken assumption. I didn't take what I'm saying from Dickinson (or Brown) at all, useful though their works are, but from actually having studied primary hadith texts with a world-class muhaddith (Dr Akram Nadwi). When I was writing the book I asked him

https://twitter.com/DrJavadTHashmi/status/1401699424980684803

for a handy reference for this point I had noticed about isnad-matn and he was a bit baffled. He said to the effect it was everything. It's very revealing that you assume Muslim tradition didn't preserve such knowledge and that it had to be "discovered" by a Western academic.

Hi @DrJavadTHashmi. You've asked me lots of questions on a bunch of threads and unfortunately I don't have spare time to discuss them all. I will try to mention the main points as I see them. I think the heart of our disagreement is that I don't think that the main Western academic proponents of Hadith studies (from Goldziher to Motzki) truly understood what Hadith critics were doing. This is obvious from reading their works and comparing with study of primary texts (not just Western secondary literature on them). Their dismissal of the enterprise,

Al-Fiqh al-akbar is probably one of the most famous theological treatises ascribed to Abu Hanifa, but there is debate around it. Wensinck argued for it being a later work and some Muslim scholars such as Shibli Nu'mani agreed. Others have argued it is genuine. Here is a thread. First of all there are two completely distinct texts called al-Fiqh al-akbar, a narration from Abu Hanifa's son Hammad (Wensinck called this al-Fiqh al-Akbar II for reasons I won't go into) and another one by his student Abu Muti' al-Balkhi which is often called Al-Fiqh al-absat.