The library of the program.

The early creedal corpus, systematic Māturīdism, and later Ottoman expansions of the school.

• al-ʿAqīdah al-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī

  Compact early Ḥanafī creed; read in full as a Year 1 anchor.

• al-Fiqh al-Akbar, Attributed to Abū Ḥanīfah

  Foundational summary attributed to Abū Ḥanīfah.

• Baḥr al-Kalām, Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī

  Accessible early Māturīdī theological prose; idiom-building for later systematic study.

• Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī

  The cornerstone of Ḥanafī/Māturīdī kalām; studied through substantial guided selections in Year 2.

• al-Tabṣirah fī Uṣūl al-Dīn, Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī

  Systematic Māturīdism after al-Māturīdī; clarifies arguments difficult in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd.

• Tabsirat al-Adillah, Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī

  Advanced Māturīdī kalām; guided selections in class, with deeper engagement reserved for research.

• al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyyah, Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī

  Influential creedal matn of the Ottoman and Indian worlds.

• Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid (careful use), al-Taftāzānī

  Ashʿarī-inflected post-classical commentary on a Māturīdī matn; a case study in cross-school reception.

• Ishārāt al-Marām, al-Bayāḍī

  Ottoman Māturīdī systematic theology.

• al-Kawtharī (selections)

  20th-century Māturīdī revivalist scholarship.

From the early Ashʿariyyah of al-Ashʿarī and al-Juwaynī to the high scholastic summa and the later teaching tradition.

• al-Lumaʿ, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī

  Concise early Ashʿarī treatise read in full as a Year 1 anchor.

• al-Irshād (selections), al-Juwaynī

  Mature early Ashʿarī kalām; sections that mark the maturation of proof and method.

• al-Shāmil (selections), al-Juwaynī

  Larger Juwaynian compendium consulted for select passages.

• al-Iqtiṣād fī al-Iʿtiqād, al-Ghazālī

  Year 2 anchor: Ghazālī's balanced exposition of mature Ashʿarī kalām.

• al-Arbaʿīn fī Uṣūl al-Dīn, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

  Concentrated Rāzī theological method; entry to post-classical Ashʿarī dialectic.

• al-Muḥaṣṣal, al-Rāzī

  Topical post-classical summa, studied through guided selections.

• al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliyah, al-Rāzī

  Rāzī's encyclopedic project; guided selections in class, full reading at the fellowship level.

• Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid, al-Taftāzānī

  One of the two great summa of post-classical Sunni kalām; Year 3 anchor or comparative satellite.

• Sharḥ al-Mawāqif, al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī

  The companion summa; the most influential high scholastic kalām commentary in the later Islamic East.

• Jawharat al-Tawḥīd, al-Laqqānī

  Versified later Ashʿarī teaching text.

• Sharḥ Jawharat al-Tawḥīd, Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī

  Standard later Ashʿarī commentary, central to Azharī pedagogy.

• Umm al-Barāhīn / Sanūsiyyah corpus, al-Sanūsī

  North African Ashʿarī teaching tradition with its ḥukm classifications.

Genuine classical Ḥanbalī Atharism, early creed, Baghdad transmissions, the dialectical writings of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim, and Ottoman-period synthesis. Read as pre-modern Hanbalī materials, not through modern ideological reception.

• Uṣūl al-Sunnah, Imām Aḥmad

  Brief foundational creedal corpus of early Ḥanbalism.

• al-Radd ʿalā al-Zanādiqah wa-l-Jahmiyyah, Imām Aḥmad

  Early polemic engaging speculative dissenters.

• Sharḥ al-Sunnah, al-Barbahārī

  Community-oriented Hanbalī creedal text, read responsibly.

• al-Sunnah, al-Khallāl & ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad

  Early Atharī transmissions on attributes, qadar, and authority, read through selections.

• Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābilah, Ibn Abī Yaʿlā

  Biographical work preserving doctrinal statements, disputes, and institutional memory.

• al-Iʿtiqād, al-Harawī al-Anṣārī

  A Sufi-Hanbalī Atharī voice.

• al-ʿAqīdah al-Tadmuriyyah, Ibn Taymiyyah

  Compact dialectical anchor on attributes, qadar, and theological reasoning.

• al-Ibānah al-Ṣughrā, Ibn Baṭṭah

  Early Baghdad Hanbalī creed.

• al-Qawāʿid al-Nūrāniyyah (selections), Ibn Taymiyyah

  Structure of classical Hanbalī jurisprudential and theological reasoning.

• Darʾ Taʿāruḍ al-ʿAql wa-l-Naql, Ibn Taymiyyah

  Major work on the relationship between reason and revelation; guided selections in class.

• al-Jawāb al-Ṣaḥīḥ, Ibn Taymiyyah

  Engagement with Christian theology; trains comparative argument.

• Ibn al-Qayyim (selections)

  Dialectical and spiritual passages within the classical Hanbalī corpus.

• al-Durrah al-Muḍīyah, al-Safarīnī

  Versified later Ḥanbalī creed; Year 3 Ottoman-period anchor.

• Lawāmiʿ al-Anwār al-Bahiyyah, al-Safarīnī

  Major encyclopedic later Hanbalī commentary.

• Mukhtaṣar al-Ifādāt, Ibn Balbān

  Compact later Hanbalī theology.

• Aqāwīl al-Thiqāt, Marʿī al-Karmī

  Selected Ḥanbalī positions on contested theological points.

• al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Mursalah (selections), Ibn al-Qayyim

  Encyclopedic dialectic; consulted through selections.

• Madārij al-Sālikīn (selections), Ibn al-Qayyim

  Spiritual theology read as classical Hanbalī material.

Classical Islamic logic from the introductory primers through the post-classical curriculum and into modern analytic logic.

• Isāghūjī, Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī

  The classical primer of Islamic logic; foundation of later kalām reading.

• al-Sullam al-Munawraq, al-Akhḍarī

  Versified logic primer that reinforces Isāghūjī.

• al-Risālah al-Shamsiyyah, Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī

  The most influential post-classical manual of logic; Year 2 anchor.

• al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm, al-Ghazālī

  Logical structure within Qurʾānic reasoning; a bridge to kalām.

• Ādāb al-Baḥth wa-l-Munāẓarah, al-Samarqandī

  Disputation theory: manʿ, naqḍ, muʿāraḍah, ilzām, taḥqīq.

• forall x (or Hurley)

  Modern propositional and predicate logic.

• Modal logic

  Necessity, possibility, possible-worlds reasoning.

• Argument maps

  Visual reconstruction for capstone work.

Ancient, medieval, early modern, and contemporary philosophy, read as intellectual frameworks that shape modern arguments about God, knowledge, causality, morality, mind, and language.

• Plato: Meno, Theaetetus, Republic V–VII, Timaeus

  Inquiry, knowledge, the forms, and classical cosmology.

• Aristotle: Organon and Metaphysics (selections)

  Aristotelian logic and the metaphysics of substance, actuality, and the unmoved mover.

• Aquinas: De Ente et Essentia, Summa (selections)

  Medieval Latin metaphysics and natural theology.

• Descartes: Meditations

  Doubt, the cogito, and the foundationalist project.

• Spinoza & Leibniz

  Substance, necessity, and modality in early modern rationalism.

• Hume: Enquiry

  Causation and induction; the classic naturalist challenge.

• Kant: Prolegomena / first Critique (selections)

  The limits of metaphysics and the transcendental method.

• Gettier & analytic epistemology

  Justified true belief and contemporary debates over knowledge.

• Ethics and political philosophy

  Consequentialism, deontology, virtue, Rawls.

• Philosophy of religion

  Arguments for God, the problem of evil, religious epistemology, divine action.

• Philosophy of science

  Realism, theory choice, and engagement with scientism.

• Philosophy of mind

  Consciousness, intentionality, the soul.

• Philosophy of language

  Reference, meaning, and theological language.

Modern Sunni theological responses to modernity. Restricted to Sunni kalām, Sunni metaphysics, and directly relevant philosophical works.

• Mawqif al-ʿAql wa-l-ʿIlm wa-l-ʿĀlam, Muṣṭafā Ṣabrī

  The major modern Sunni response to materialism, naturalism, and reductive epistemologies.

• Risale-i Nur (selections), Said Nursi

  Theological treatises on God, prophecy, the soul, and modern doubts.

• Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam, Syed Muḥammad Naquib al-Attas

  Sustained metaphysical statement of Sunni Islamic philosophy in dialogue with modernity.

• Islam and Secularism, al-Attas

  Diagnosis of secularization as a metaphysical and epistemic problem.

• The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul, al-Attas

  Philosophical anthropology rooted in Islamic metaphysics.

• Safaruk Chowdhury and analytic Sunni kalām

  Recent analytic engagements with classical theological problems from within Sunni commitments.