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 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.

The Ḥanbalī theological tradition studied through its relied-upon creed manuals, its record of internal disagreement, its selectively rational kalām, the meta-kalām of Ibn Taymiyyah, and the fiqh chapters that discipline sensitive theological-legal questions.

• Lumʿat al-Iʿtiqād al-Hādī ilā Sabīl al-Rashād, Ibn Qudāmah

  Year 1 anchor: a widely relied-upon Ḥanbalī creed manual: attributes, the Qurʾān as the speech of Allah, qadar, the Hereafter, and the rank of the Companions, without speculative excess.

• Nihāyat al-Mubtadiʾīn fī Uṣūl al-Dīn, Ibn Ḥamdān

  A concise but substantial Ḥanbalī creed manual that presents the school's uṣūl al-dīn in structured pedagogical form; studied in guided selections in Year 1.

• al-Durrah al-Muḍiyyah (al-Safāriṇiyyah), al-Safārīnī

  Didactic creed poem introduced in Year 1 as a synthesis of later Ḥanbalī doctrine; commented on in Year 2.

• Uṣūl al-Sunnah (attributed to Imām Aḥmad)

  Short early creed statement showing the early grammar of Ḥanbalī theological identity.

• Dhamm al-Taʾwīl, Ibn Qudāmah

  Clarifies Ibn Qudāmah's concern with excessive figurative reinterpretation, alongside Lumʿat al-Iʿtiqād.

• Taḥrīm al-Naẓar fī Kutub Ahl al-Kalām, Ibn Qudāmah

  A critique of speculative theology as a mode of inquiry, not a denial of reason; revisited in Year 2.

• Tuḥfat al-Wuṣūl ilā ʿIlm al-Uṣūl, Ibn al-Mubarrad

  Year 2 satellite: an advanced text for mapping internal discussions and distinguishing relied-upon positions from individual preference.

• Aqāwīl al-Thiqāt fī Taʾwīl al-Asmāʾ wa-l-Ṣifāt, Marʿī al-Karmī

  Central Year 2 anchor on divine names and attributes, taʾwīl, and muḥkam and mutashābih; trains precision in theological speech.

• Lawāmiʿ al-Anwār al-Bahiyyah, al-Safārīnī

  Al-Safārīnī's major commentary on his creed poem; a broad late Ḥanbalī synthesis of the school's doctrine and authorities.

• al-Muʿtamad fī Uṣūl al-Dīn (selections), Abū Yaʿlā

  Systematic theological writing within the Ḥanbalī school; complicates the assumption that the school is only report-based.

• Ibṭāl al-Taʾwīlāt li-Akhbār al-Ṣifāt (selections), Abū Yaʿlā

  A forceful attribute-report work read in curated passages to display one strong Ḥanbalī defense of transmitted reports.

• al-Wāḍiḥ fī Uṣūl al-Fiqh and al-Funūn (selections), Ibn ʿAqīl

  The intellectually expansive edge of the Ḥanbalī tradition: uṣūl, dialectic, disputation, and rational inquiry.

• al-Īḍāḥ fī Uṣūl al-Dīn (selections), Ibn al-Zāghūnī

  A further example of systematic theological writing within the Ḥanbalī orbit; supports the study of Ḥanbalī kalām proper.

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

  Year 3 anchor: meta-kalām on reason and revelation, studied slowly with attention to argument structure and genre.

• Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyyah (selections), Ibn Taymiyyah

  Advanced treatment of divine attributes and critique of theological and philosophical categories.

• al-Radd ʿalā al-Manṭiqiyyīn / Naqd al-Manṭiq (selections), Ibn Taymiyyah

  Critique of Aristotelian definition, syllogism, universals, and certainty; the epistemological face of the Taymiyyan project.

• al-ʿAqīdah al-Wāsiṭiyyah, Ibn Taymiyyah

  Concise creed statement studied as one text within his wider corpus and compared with the Ḥanbalī creed manuals.

• al-Tadmuriyyah, Ibn Taymiyyah

  Analytical treatise on divine attributes and qadar; frames the avoidance of taʿṭīl and tamthīl.

• al-Ḥamawiyyah, Ibn Taymiyyah

  Studied as a responsum: shows Ibn Taymiyyah's method in a specific polemical context and teaches genre awareness.

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

  A major later development of Taymiyyan critique on taʾwīl, transmitted language, and polemic; read in curated selections.

• Ḥanbalī Fiqh on Riddah, Takfīr, and Legal Consequences

  Guided reading packet from al-Mughnī (Ibn Qudāmah), al-Inṣāf (al-Mardāwī), and Kashshāf al-Qināʿ (al-Buhūtī): disciplines theological judgment through the method of the fuqahāʾ.

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

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

  The major modern 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 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 kalām

  Recent analytic engagements with classical theological problems from within commitments of ʿaqīdah and kalām.