Al-Māturīdīyya are those who followed the teachings of Abū Mānṣūr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Māturīdī who was in his turn a follower of the Īmān Abū Ḥanīfa. The school of al-Māturīdī, along with that of al-Ashʻarī, made a great impact on Islamic thought and together they upheld and defended Sunnism from the 4/10 century onwards. In the first part of this thesis, an endeavour will be made to get to know this scholar and other topics to be studied will include the period during which this school emerged, the position of Samarqand as the headquarters of the Māturīdītes, the teachers of al-Māturīdī and the students who studied directly under him and their contribution to Islamic thought. The second part of the thesis will be devoted to an introduction to al-Ḥakīm as-Samarqandī's work, As-Sawād al-aʻẓam. Al-Ḥakīm was the first student to study under al-Māturīdī and together they planted the first seeds of this school. In another section of this part a comparison between the teacher al-Māturīdī and the student al-Ḥakīm will be presented and this part will be ended by a translation of As-Sawād al-aʻẓam which embodies the early dogmatic thinking of the Māturīdīte school. The last part of the thesis is an appendix which deals with a mas'ala ascribed to Abū-l-Layth as-Samarqandī entitled: Is Īmān created or uncreated, Hal al-Īmām Makhlūg aw Ghayr Makhlūq?