The events of the miḥna resulted in a variety of discourse surrounding the ontological nature of the Qur’an and God’s Attribute of Speech (kalām Allāh). The mutakallimūn, namely the Māturīdis and the Ashʿarīs, adopted a dichotomous view of kalām Allah, distinguishing its pre-eternal aspect, kalām nafsī, from its temporal aspect, kalām lafẓī. Parallel to this, the uṣūliyyūn were having a similar discussion about the essential composition of the Qur’an and its definition. The popular opinion among the Ahl al-Hadīth was that the Qur’an consists in both lafẓ and maʿnā. The exclusion of one or the other would compromise it from being considered Qur’an. Omar Qureshi, in his paper “The Shifting Ontology of the Qur’an in Hanafism,” has shown that the Ahl al-Ra’y, namely the Ḥanafīs, argued that the Qur’an consisted only in maʿnā, and its expression in Arabic is not an essential component. This was the cause, they argued, of Abū Ḥanīfa’s infamous Persian Qur’an position. Any accurate expression of the maʿnā in any language was considered Qur’an according to the Ḥanafīs, and prayer would not be nullified by it, although they agreed that a translation would be distinct from the revealed expression (munazzal). Shāfiʿīs such as al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī and Abū Bakr al-Qaffāl al-Ṣaghīr viciously criticized the early Ḥanafī uṣūliyyūn for this framing of the essential composition of the Qur’an, likening it to the Created Qur’an doctrine of the Muʿtazila. Qureshi convincingly argues that the increasing critique against Abū Ḥanīfa’s position led later Ḥanafīs to lean strongly on a dubious attribution to Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam, a student of Abū Ḥanīfa who claimed that the latter retracted from his Persian Qur’an position.
Qureshi then argues that this reframing of Abū Ḥanīfa’s position leads to a shift of the ontology of the Qur’an in Ḥanafism. He claims that “by the eighth/fourteenth century, Ḥanafīs had exclusively accepted the Unified Qur’an position.” In my paper, I hope to argue that this is not as clear cut as Qureshi makes it out to be. There were undoubtedly dissenting positions from within the Ḥanafī school beginning from al-Bazdawī. However, we find defenses of Abū Ḥanīfa’s position well into the ninth/fifteenth century in the arguments of Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī (d. 855 AH), and even as late as the twelfth/eighteenth century from Mullā Jīwan (d. 1130 AH). It is true, that the Ḥanafī uṣūliyyūn began to adopt the language of their former critics with regard to the definition of the Qur’an, i.e. that the Qur’an is both lafẓ and maʿnā, but they never explicitly agree that that Qur’an ontologically consists in the lafẓ. Quite the contrary, I argue that the
Ḥanafī ontology of the Qur’an actually emerges victorious in the debate, albeit quietly, in the discussions of the mutakallimūn.
Above, I stated that two discourses were happening parallel to one another, that of the mutakallimūn and the uṣūliyyūn. These two realms were not often in conversation with each other. The early Ḥanafīs, however, did not have separate discussions on kalām or theology, but rather, those ideas were embedded within their discourse on uṣūl al-fiqh. Among the mutakallimūn, the overwhelmingly dominant position is that the essential part of the pre-eternal attribute of God’s Speech is kalām nafsī, i.e. God’s internal Speech which subsists in His Essence and is uncreated. The temporal expression of that speech in created language, kalām nafsī, cannot be an essential part of God's Speech due to its createdness. This, I argue, is identical to the Ḥanafī uṣūl framework of the Qur’an, framed in different technical language. The Ḥanafīs, understanding the implications of this theological framing, articulated those implications in terms of legal theory, and finally applied practice. They displayed a level of consistency across the realms of kalām, uṣūl, and fiqh that was not maintained by others who still agreed with them on the kalām position. Contrary to Qureshi’s theory of ontological shift, al-ʿAynī argues in the 9th century AH in his commentary on al-Marghīnānī’s al-Hidaya that even al-Shaybānī and Abū Yūsuf, Abū Ḥanīfa’s two students, agreed with their teacher on the ontological nature of the Qur’an consisting only in maʿnā despite their legal verdict against the Persian Qur’an position. He says that their allowance of the Persian Qur’an for the one incapable of reciting in Arabic is proof that they consider the Persian to be Qur’an, for “incapacity does not render something that was not the Qur’an into Qur’an.” This demonstrates that the original ontology persisted among Ḥanafīs later than Qureshi suggests.
I will argue that it is not the ontology of the Qur’an that significantly shifts among the Ḥanafīs, but rather the application of that ontology into legal theory and practice. Whereas, early Ḥanafīs such as al-Karkhī (d. 340 AH) would have required ritual purity for touching a translation of the Qur’an, later scholars such as Zafar Ahmad Usmani would not. Additionally, I would like to focus closely on the figure of Mustafa Sabri, who lived in an era in which Atatürk had enforced that all Islamic ritual practices be done in Turkish as opposed to Arabic. Mustafa Sabri authored Mas’alat Tarjamat al-Qur’ān, in which he argues against the practice and its defense by two Azhari modernists, Muhammad Mustafa al-Marāghī and Farid Wajdi. Sabri, troubled by the use of the Ḥanafī school to justify the practice, also writes a lengthy refutation of al-Kāsānī (d. 587 AH) in his work. I hope to briefly analyze Sabri’s project in the context of his own socio-political environment while the ideas of his own school were used against him. Finally, I hope to demonstrate that even early defenders of the early Ḥanafī position on the ontology of the Qur’an, such as al-Sarakhsī (d. 483), by agreeing with the theological and theoretical positions, were not necessarily endorsing it in application.
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.