al-Kawthari

Muhammad Zahid ibn Hasan al-Kawthari (1296-1371 AH / 1879-1952 CE) was a Circassian-Turkish Hanafi-Maturidi scholar who served as the Adjunct to the last Shaykh al-Islam of the Ottoman Caliphate. Born in Duzce (in modern Turkey), he received a thorough traditional Ottoman-Hanafi education and rose to senior positions in the Ottoman religious establishment.

After the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, al-Kawthari emigrated to Egypt, where he spent the rest of his life as a scholar and writer. He became one of the most prolific and outspoken defenders of the Hanafi-Maturidi scholarly tradition and one of the most pointed critics of what he viewed as the unqualified application of Salafi hadith methodology and the Wahabi theological approach.

His most important scholarly contribution is his extensive editing and annotation of classical Hanafi texts. He published critical editions of numerous works in Hanafi jurisprudence, hadith, and theology. He also wrote Ta'nib al-Khatib (A Rebuke to al-Khatib), a sharp critique of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi's treatment of certain narrators — which in turn provoked the detailed rebuttal at-Tankil by al-Mu'allimi.

Al-Kawthari's Maqalat al-Kawthari collects many of his shorter essays and introductions. His defense of the Hanafi madhhab and Maturidi theology, and his polemical writing against those he opposed, have made him a controversial but significant figure in modern Islamic scholarly discourse. He passed away in Cairo in 1952.