The Hanafi Ontology of the Qur'an: Its Persistence in Theology and Cessation in Law

The miḥna sparked extensive discourse on the Qur’an’s ontological nature and God’s Attribute of Speech (kalām Allāh). The Māturīdis and Ashʿarīs distinguished between the pre-eternal kalām nafsī and the temporal kalām lafẓī. In parallel, the uṣūliyyūn debated the Qur’an’s essential composition. The Ahl al-Ḥadīth held that the Qur’an consists of both lafẓ and maʿnā, while the Ḥanafīs, as Omar Qureshi argues, viewed it as maʿnā alone, permitting translations as valid Qur’anic expressions. Shāfiʿī critics equated this with the Muʿtazilī Created Qur’an doctrine. Qureshi suggests that later Ḥanafīs abandoned this view, but I argue that defenses persisted, notably in Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī and Mullā Jīwan. The Ḥanafī ontology of the Qur’an aligns with the dominant mutakallimūn position, though its legal application evolved. Mustafa Sabri’s refutation of Qur’anic translations under Atatürk underscores this tension. I will explore these shifts in applied uṣūl and fiqh, and demonstrate the persistence of the original ontology.