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A Hanafi law manual in the vernacular: Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Turkish verse adaptation of the Hidāya-Wiqāya textual tradition for the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (824/1424)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2017

Sara Nur Yıldız
Sara Nur Yıldız*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews/Koç University ANAMED
*
saranuryildiz@gmail.com
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Abstract

This study examines how Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s versified Hanafi law manual, written in Anatolian Turkish and dedicated to the Ottoman sultan Murad II (d. 855/1451), engages in a complex relationship between the nascent vernacular, Anatolian Turkish, and the Classical Arabic religious textual tradition. Devletoğlu Yūsuf's work, Manẓūm fıḳıh, is a Turkish paraphrase of the Wiqāya, a popular abridgement of the major Hanafi law handbook, the Hidāya, in the form of a mathnawī (verse work of rhymed couplets). Several passages from the “Book on the Affairs of the Qadi” in Devletoğlu Yūsuf's work are analysed in order to gain insight into how the work functions as a normative text in the Classical Hanafi tradition set within a localized context. Furthermore, this study explores how the work expounds upon the benefits of transmitting religious knowledge in the vernacular and justifies the use of Turkish for religious texts by drawing on Hanafi-approved Persian language practices of religious devotion. Of particular interest is how Devletoğlu Yūsuf grounds his argumentation on the rhetorical theories of the Classical Arabic grammarian, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī.

Keywords

Islamic lawHanafi lawEarly Ottoman legal textsVernacularizationIslamizationWiqayaArabic grammar and rhetoricʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī

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Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 283 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2017 

Introduction

Religious texts comprise the bulk of works composed in the newly emerging literary language of Anatolian Turkish in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. These texts have been studied primarily by Turcologists interested in philological and lexical data, but have seldom been examined in the context of the wider Islamic tradition, or with attention to larger historical, socio-cultural, intellectual and institutional developments. The use of the Turkish vernacular by the authors of these texts was motivated by the growing need among Turcophone Muslims for basic literacy in the Islamic textual tradition. In addition to the corpus of mystically oriented works, such as hagiographies of celebrated Sufis, mystical verse and rhymed couplets (mathnawīs), and guides for Sufis, texts of religious learning in the Anatolian Turkish vernacular sought to introduce to Turcophone audiences the meaning of the Quran and basic Islamic tenets, beliefs and practices. Many of these early Turkish works are translations and/or adaptations of authoritative Arabic texts, presented in a variety of formats and genres: interlinear translations of the Quran (Arabic text with Turkish word-by-word glosses),Footnote 2 Quran commentaries,Footnote 3 explanations of ḥadīth, and handbooks of law. Turkish translations and adaptations of authoritative Arabic Islamic religious texts often reshaped the original works upon which they were based according to the concerns and perspectives of their Turcophone audience. Vernacularizing and adapting Arabic religious texts according to the needs of their audience constituted an important element in the process of the Islamization of Anatolia and the neighbouring Balkan regions under Ottoman rule.

Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s verse Hanafi law manual, written in Anatolian Turkish, is a striking example of the vernacularization of classical Islamic learning in the early fifteenth-century Ottoman realm. Dedicated to the Ottoman sultan Murad II (r. 823–848/1421–44, 850–855/1446–51), the work reduces the contents of the Wiqāya, a major epitome of the well-known Hanafi manual of substantive law, the Hidāya, to a simplified, easily memorizable verse format of rhymed couplets (mathnawī) in the Turkish idiom. In this study, I argue that Devletoğlu Yūsuf's work is a pragmatic religious text that engages in a complex relationship with the Classical Arabic sacred textual tradition. Often described as a translation of the Wiqāya, in fact, the text loosely paraphrases the Wiqāya tradition, conveying the essentials of Hanafi law. I examine several passages from one section of Devletoğlu Yūsuf's work, the “Book on Judicial Procedure” (Kitābu'l-Ḳażāʾ)Footnote 4 with special attention to the inclusion of new material. The author locates the work at the centre of the Ottoman Empire by adding a theoretical law case set in the Thracian towns of Yanbolu and Edirne. I also analyse Devletoğlu Yūsuf's extensive prologue, the sebeb-i telīf, or “reason for composition”, in which he discusses the benefits of transmitting religious knowledge in the vernacular and justifies the use of the Turkish vernacular for Islamic learning by drawing on Hanafi-approved Persian practices of religious devotion and notions of rhetoric and grammar elaborated by the eleventh-century Classical Arabic grammarian ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. c. 471–474/1078–81).Footnote 5

Devletoğlu Yūsuf's law manual and the Hidāya-Wiqāya tradition

We know almost nothing about Devletoğlu Yūsuf other than the information he provides in his Turkish law manual. At the age of 28 in the year 827/1424, he composed the work and dedicated it to Murad II in an effort to gain favour at court.Footnote 6 Curiously, since Devletoğlu Yūsuf did not specify a title for his work, it has been given a variety of titles by Ottoman copyists, readers and librarians, e.g. Terceme-i Viḳāye, Viḳāye tercümesi, Kitābu'l-beyān, Murād-nāme and Manẓūm fıḳıh;Footnote 7 for convenience, I refer to it as Manẓūm fıḳıh (versified fiqh). The work survives in at least 70 manuscript copies, which suggests a fairly wide readership. Despite its common designation as Terceme-i Viḳāye or Viḳāye tercümesi (translation of the Wiḳāya), Devletoğlu Yūsuf does not refer to his work as a translation nor does he make any reference to the Wiqāya.Footnote 8 Indeed, the Manẓūm fıḳıh greatly resembles the Wiqāya, employing the same standard organizational format (see Table 1) and imparting more or less the same legal information. It nevertheless includes passages not found in the Wiqāya, suggesting that Devletoğlu Yūsuf was more an author-compiler than translator.Footnote 9

Table 1.

Chapter headings of the Hidāya, Wiqāya, and Manẓūm fıḳıh

Devletoğlu Yūsuf's Manẓūm fıḳıh may be situated within an authoritative Hanafi tradition of law that had developed over several centuries in Transoxania, standardized in Burhān al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Farghānī al-Marghīnānī’s (d. 593/1197) al-Hidāya fī Sharḥ al-Bidāya (Guidance in the Commentary of the Bidāya).Footnote 10 A basic manual of Hanafi rites, observances, and law, the Hidāya has remained a central legal text for Hanafis until the present.Footnote 11 The Hidāya was widely commented upon,Footnote 12 and its reception in the Ottoman empire is well attested. According to the seventeenth-century Ottoman bibliophile Hājjī Khalīfa (Kātib Çelebī, d. 1067/1657), the Hidāya should serve as the Muslim's principle guide through life.Footnote 13

The Hidāya is a fairly concise fiqh text, comprising two to four large volumes in modern printed editions.Footnote 14 For reasons of economy and utility, lower-level madrasa students needed brief synopses and radically abridged versions of the work, shorn of jurisprudential discussions and chiselled down to a set of laws suitable for memorization and easy reference – hence, the great popularity of Burhān al-Sharīʿa Maḥmūd's Wiqāya al-riwāya min masāʾil al-Hidāya (The Trusted Narrative on Issues in the Guidance)Footnote 15 which, in turn, spurred a large number of commentaries and glosses.Footnote 16 Composed in the thirteenth century by the Bukharan scholar, Burhān al-Sharīʿa Maḥmūd,Footnote 17 the Wiqāya is a digest of selections from the Hidāya designed to assist the beginning student in studying and understanding the authoritative text upon which it is based by presenting laws and rulings in a simple-to-consult format designed for easy memorization.Footnote 18 The Manẓūm fıḳıh was composed with similar pedagogic aims in mind.

The Manẓūm fıḳıh and classical Hanafi substantive law in the early Ottoman context

Although the Manẓūm fıḳıh follows the same format as the Wiqāya and Hidāya, and largely reproduces the same juridical points, it sometimes does so in quite a different manner, and not only because of the syntactic and semantic constraints imposed by its format of rhyming verse couplets. In the book of judicial procedure (Kitābu'l-Ḳażāʾ), which treats the post and conduct of the qadi,Footnote 19 Devletoğlu Yūsuf illustrates abstract legal points with concrete examples not found in the Wiqāya. These examples provide a local context for his intended audience, which may have been Turcophone children studying at the maktab, where they were introduced to the basics of fiqh before having acquired enough Arabic to read the standard textbooks.

Devletoğlu Yūsuf prefaces the section on judicial procedure with a statement on the hierarchical relationship between rulership, the post of the qadi, and the carrying out of justice according to the sharīʿa:Footnote 20

The Lord of all creatures is
The reason for order in this world.Footnote 21
From among mortals He chooses someone as sultan
To rule over all people by edict.Footnote 22
He will be God's representative among the faithful
Who will accept his authority.Footnote 23
Then he will immediately appoint qadis
So that the realm will prosper with religious law.Footnote 24
He [viz., the qadi] will put into effect the rulings of religious law
So that all injustice in the world disappear.Footnote 25

These remarks are not found in the original text of the Wiqāya composed in Bukhara in the thirteenth century, but are unique to Devletoğlu Yūsuf's fifteenth-century Turkish text, and impart the author's particularly Ottoman understanding of the relationship between the ruler and the qadi. Although since early Abbasid times the ruler (whether caliph or sultan) or his representatives were responsible for appointing qadis,Footnote 26 the intimate association of the qadi with the sultan appears to be a new historical development. Guy Burak has recently argued that a major change occurred in the nature of Islamic law in the eastern Islamic lands in the post-Mongol period. Burak points out that in the Sunni successor states of the post-Mongol lands, such as the Ottomans, Timurids and Mughals, a new relationship emerged between the ruling dynasty and Islamic law: ruling dynasties attempted to regulate the structures, doctrines and authorities of law schools.Footnote 27 Islamic law was no longer the sole province of jurists, free from intervention by political rulers, but rather became closely tied to the prerogatives of a sultan, and in turn constituted an important element of dynastic and political legitimacy.Footnote 28 Devletoğlu Yūsuf's insertion of the sultan into his text – with an emphasis on the sultan's intermediary role between God and the implementer of God's law, the qadi – indeed reflects the above changes described by Burak in the ideology and practice of Islamic law.

The bulk of the chapter on Ḳażāʾ contains the same legal precepts and principles mentioned in the Wiqāya. Thus, we are told that a qadi should be knowledgeable, and preferably a scholar who has attained the status of müctehid (Ar. mujtahid),Footnote 29 that is, a jurist authorized to use independent legal reasoning (ijtihād);Footnote 30 in the post-classical period, a qadi who held the rank of mujtahid fī’l-madhhab was required to be capable of making judgments based on the established rulings and opinions of his school. Devletoğlu Yūsuf writes:

[The qadi] must possess the qualifications of a witness
He must be learned and just as well.Footnote 31
That is, he [viz., the qadi] must be learned not ignorant
and if he is a mujtahid, even better.Footnote 32

Devletoğlu Yūsuf's discussion of a qadi's ethical behaviour also closely follows the Wiqāya. He says:

He who gains his appointment through bribery
May his rulings be considered null and void.Footnote 33
If a qadi accepts a bribe after taking up his office,
He is a sinful offender (fāsiḳ), his rulings untrustworthy.Footnote 34
The qadi must not be crude or violent
Nor forceful or stubborn.Footnote 35
He should not begin to accept gifts from anyone
so that it will not become a habit.Footnote 36
Gifts are allowed only from his relatives
and those from whom he has already received gifts.Footnote 37
When he becomes qadi
He must hold court in an appropriate place,Footnote 38
Such as a masjid or Friday mosque
or the like, oh esteemed one.Footnote 39

These verses on the characteristics and ethical behaviour of a qadi, as well as where he may hold court, faithfully summarize the contents of the Wiqāya.Footnote 40 Devletoğlu Yūsuf diverges significantly from the Wiqāya in a subsection (bāb) of this chapter dealing with the impermissibility of using written correspondence between qadis (kitāb-i ḥukmī) as evidence for reclaiming lost movable property.Footnote 41 Rather than explaining the regulations, Devletoğlu Yūsuf introduces a hypothetical case involving the loss of a horse by someone residing in the Thracian town of Yanbolu.Footnote 42

Let us suppose someone from Yanbolu
went before a qadi to file a lawsuit,Footnote 43
[Claiming that] a certain individual in Edirne
found a horse of his and undoubtedly took possession of it.Footnote 44
‘That horse is mine, it was stolen from me;
I have brought forth witnesses regarding the matter, it is true.’Footnote 45
The qadi [viz., of Yanbolu] listened to his witnesses
and recorded a detailed description of that horse.Footnote 46
Then immediately for the qadi of Edirne
he prepared a judicial letter.Footnote 47
[When] the judicial letter was received by the qadi of Edirne
with a record of the oral testimony of the witnesses.Footnote 48
He [viz., the qadi of Edirne] did not record it in the sijil but rejected it,
For he followed the school of law of the two Imāms [i.e. Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad al-Shaybānī].Footnote 49
If it [viz., the disputed object] were a piece of land or a house, [then it would have been admissible],
That is to say, only immovable property is admissible.Footnote 50

These verses explain that the admissibility of judicial letters of evidence (kitāb-i ḥukmī) is limited to cases involving immovable property for, as the Hidāya more fully explains, only immovable property may be defined by a description of its boundaries – whereas movable property must be physically exhibited at court.Footnote 51 Here Devletoğlu Yūsuf uses a concrete example to ease the beginner student's introduction to the complexities of law. By referring to Edirne, the Ottoman capital, and the Ottoman Balkan town of Yanbolu, Devletoğlu Yūsuf also imparts local colour into the text. Devletoğlu Yūsuf probably created the case for pragmatic pedagogical purposes: qadis regularly dealt with the recovery of lost horses and other livestock.

Aside from an occasional interpolation as in the above example, the Manẓūm fıḳıh closely paraphrases the Wiqāya, sometimes verbatim. Curiously, Devletoğlu Yūsuf is silent with regard to his work's intimate relationship with the Wiqāya. He does, however, cite as sources eleven other authors and texts, belonging primarily to the Transoxanian Hanafi tradition, such as the Muḥīṭ al-Burhānī by Burhān al-Sharīʿa (d. 616/1219).Footnote 52 He also notes in his preface that he made limited use of material from fatāwā works which he does not identify.Footnote 53 Devletoğlu Yūsuf emphasizes the legal authority of the three leading Hanafi jurists: Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767), the eponymous founder of the Hanafi school of law; his foremost disciple, Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798),Footnote 54 who is often referred to in the text as the “Second Imām” (İmām-ı Sānī); and their student, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Shaybānī (d. 189/805), simply called Muḥammad as is customary in classical Hanafi judicial literature.Footnote 55 Devletoğlu Yūsuf specifies that his work is an explication of the Hanafi school of law as found in the rulings of the two Imāms, i.e. Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf.Footnote 56 And, to remind his audience, presumably young readers, of the three founders of Hanafism, Devletoğlu Yūsuf refers to them throughout the work using the following formula in myriad variations: “this is Abū Ḥanīfa's, Abū Yūsuf's or Muḥammad's position” (ḳavl, from the Arabic qawl, literally, word).Footnote 57 At the end of his work, Devletoğlu Yūsuf emphasizes Abū Ḥanīfa as his primary source and authority, highlighting his eminence as imām and mujtahid:

Know [that] this is the position of Abū Ḥanīfa
Be struck with awe, for you may not know the original [text];
That Imām, the exemplar of the mujtahids–
His judgment was perfect, the foundations sound – the end.Footnote 58

Thus, rather than associating himself with his main source, the Wiqāya, Devletoğlu Yūsuf locates his textual authority with the aṣḥāb al-madhhab, the founding fathers of the Hanafi school – Abū Ḥanīfa, Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad al-Shaybānī, presenting them as the primary mediators between the Word of God and the wider public of believers.

Justifying the vernacular: Devletoğlu Yūsuf's prologue

Devletoğlu Yūsuf's decision to compile a Hanafi legal handbook in Anatolian Turkish verse needed not only explanation but also justification, on both cultural and religious grounds.Footnote 59 Like other fifteenth-century Ottoman authors writing in Turkish, Devletoğlu Yūsuf prefaces his Manẓūm fıḳıh with a self-conscious statement justifying his use of Turkish for imparting religious knowledge usually rendered in Arabic. With respect to vocabulary and expression, Anatolian Turkish was at a disadvantage compared to Arabic and Persian.Footnote 60 Anticipating detractors, authors in the Turkish vernacular offered justifications for their choice of language, usually arguing that they were serving the common good by making knowledge accessible to those otherwise denied its benefits. In his prologue, Devletoğlu Yūsuf offers a detailed and sophisticated argument for the use of Turkish.

Devletoğlu Yūsuf begins his preface with a pragmatic argument. The use of Turkish, he claims, is necessary for the edification of Turkish readers not proficient in Arabic. He then cites the precedent of religious scholars who composed in Turkish:

Now listen to a book in Turkish verse,
Censure me not for this!
We have seen many great scholars,
Diligent and perfect in their learning,
Who composed works in Turkish,
Thus removing the veil obscuring meaning's face.Footnote 61

Although these earlier authors often offered apologies for the use of the vernacular (ʿöẕrini hem anda ḳıldılar beyān),Footnote 62 this was not because they were ashamed to use Turkish (hem idenler daḫı hiç ʿār etmedi).Footnote 63 Rather, Devletoğlu Yūsuf suggests, these apologetics were nothing more than conventional literary topoi. Indeed, these authors were motivated by the desire to serve the people (ḫayr-ı nās olmaḳ dilediler hemān)Footnote 64 by providing them with access to knowledge that was otherwise inaccessible. By acknowledging the long-standing prejudice against Turkish as a literary medium, specifically for religious texts, Devletoğlu Yūsuf attempts to put to rest these biases by emphasizing the public benefits of rendering religious knowledge in Turkish.

Devletoğlu Yūsuf presents a two-pronged argument for the use of the written Turkish vernacular. While on the one hand, he refers to Abū Ḥanīfa's position on the permissibility of using Persian instead of Arabic for religious acts of devotion as a way to legitimize his own use of Turkish in the place of Arabic, on the other, he invokes notions of Classical Arabic grammar and rhetoric with a discussion on the superiority of meaning (maʿnā) over utterance or verbal form (lafẓ). Rendering religious knowledge in the Turkish vernacular, argues Devletoğlu Yūsuf, reveals meaning otherwise obscured: thus “meaning becomes unambiguously clear” (yaʿnī maʿnā fehm olur bī-iltibās),Footnote 65 like that of “lifting the veil off the face of meaning” (maʿnā yüzinden götürdiler nikāb).Footnote 66 Devletoğlu Yūsuf claims that his vernacular work thus transcends the limitations of mere words or utterances (alfāẓ), and renders into Turkish the meaning (maʿnā) located in the linguistic medium of Arabic. In this context, Devletoğlu Yūsuf plays upon the meaning of naẓm, which refers not only to verse, but also to composition or construction, in the sense of the arrangement of words into a meaningful order.Footnote 67

With these [words] my apology ends.
The orderly arraying of verses suffices for poetry.
That is, they say a book is composed according to order;
what it relates is true as a result of its arrangement.Footnote 68

Devletoğlu Yūsuf's use of naẓm echoes theories of Arabic rhetoric originally developed by Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 474/1078). Al-Jurjānī succinctly summarizes these theories in his Dalāʾil iʿjāz al-Qurʾān, pointing out that “stylistic superiority resides in the meanings or ideas (maʿānī) of words and how they are associated with each other in a given composition (naẓm), and not in the utterances or words (alfāẓ) themselves”.Footnote 69 Drawing on al-Jurjānī’s theory of rhetoric, Devletoğlu Yūsuf highlights his own poetic skills, which successfully render the maʿnā of the Arabic tradition into a Turkish composition produced according to the correct conventions of versification:

He who has composed has created order
And thus has received disapproval from none.
All scholars have approved of it;
And he has gained fame among the people.Footnote 70

Fifteenth-century Ottoman scholars were familiar with al-Jurjānī’s theories as developed by the master of Arabic rhetoric, Sīrāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1228), author of the Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm, a digest of al-Jurjānī’s two major works on rhetoric and grammar, Dalāʾil al-iʿjāz and Asrār al-balāgha. Al-Sakkākī’s Miftāḥ spurred a flurry of epitomes and commentary-writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For instance, Khaṭīb al-Qazwīnī’s (d. 739/1338) Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ fī’l-ʿilm al-balāgha presents a summary al-Sakkākī’s Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm. His Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ in turn was expansively commented on by al-Taftāzānī (d. 792/1390) in his Sharḥ Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ.Footnote 71 Muṣliḥuddīn Muṣṭafā Ḫocā-zāde (d. 893/1488), the muftī of Bursa, subsequently produced a gloss on al-Taftāzānī’s commentary on al-Qazwīnī’s summary of the Miftāḥ. Ḫocā-zāde's work is one example of the wide interest among fifteenth-century Ottoman scholars in Arabic grammar and rhetoric as established by al-Jurjānī and reworked by al-Sakkākī.Footnote 72

Devletoğlu Yūsuf concludes his discussion of maʿnā and naẓm by pointing out that the use of verse and Turkish are both legitimate forms by which to render religious knowledge:

It thus suffices that the words are in Turkish as well as in verse,
For there is no shame in either, and so be it!Footnote 73

Why would an author render a legal text, with its dry factual presentation of content, into verse? While such a textual practice seems counterintuitive to the modern mind, which conceives of verse as an imaginal practice, in the pre-modern world verse served multiple functions, especially relating to the internalization of texts when the principal mode of reception was auditory. It has been pointed out that medieval European textual culture, initially shaped largely in a monastic setting, involved the internalization and absorption of texts through memorization.Footnote 74 The literary culture of the Muslim world was also conditioned by memorization and endless repetition of scripture and its exegesis, especially at the elementary level of education. Books thus served as mnemonic devices at the mektep (Ar. maktab) where they were recited and their contents memorized under the guidance of the teacher. The versification of prose religious texts is a phenomenon common to a literary culture where canonical works were internalized through largely auditory means.Footnote 75 It is difficult, nevertheless, to know if a fiqh text, even when rendered into verse to facilitate memorization, was part of the mektep curriculum.Footnote 76 In addition to pedagogical purposes, a shorter versified and memorizable version of a legal manual may have been useful for practising Turcophone jurists, considering the possible difficulties of access to libraries and books, especially in rural areas.

In a reference to madrasa pedagogical practice, Devletoğlu Yūsuf describes a symbiotic relationship between Arabic and the Turkish vernacular. Turkish served as the main language of instruction in madrasas, where students studied the textual tradition in Arabic, even in higher institutions specializing in the instruction of ḥadīth and tafsīr:

Brother, the professor's lessons are held in Turkish
As are the lessons of the scholars of ḥadīth and tafsīr.Footnote 77

Since the oral explication of the Classical Arabic religious textual tradition was customarily done in Turkish, Devletoğlu Yūsuf argues that written Turkish likewise legitimately served as an exegetical language.

Devletoğlu Yūsuf then situates maʿnā within the context of Hanafism. He refers to Abū Ḥanīfa's positive position on the permissibility of the translation of the Arabic sacred text, the Quran:

He considered the Quran lawful in Persian;
If [when] you recite it during prayer, [you] become filled with pious zeal.Footnote 78

As reported by al-Shaybānī in his Ẓāhir al-riwāya, Abū Ḥanīfa considered it permissible to read translated portions of the Quran during prayer based on a tradition that Salmān al-Fārisī, one of the Prophet Muḥammad's closest companions, translated the Fātiḥa, the first sura of the Quran, into Persian for use in prayers by Persian Muslims.Footnote 79 By drawing on the precedent of Persian translations of the Quran deemed permissible by Abū Ḥanīfa, Devletoğlu Yūsuf attempts to legitimize Turkish as an “auxiliary” religious language along similar lines to Persian.

Devletoğlu Yūsuf concludes his prologue with reference to maʿnā and lafẓ, thus situating himself in a centuries-old debate over the relation “between alfāẓ as the linguistic expression, and maʿānī as the underlying meaning”.Footnote 80 Devletoğlu Yūsuf aligns himself with al-Jurjānī’s position of privileging maʿnā over lafẓ:

As such, it must be so with any other language;
Utterance is just a means; it is meaning that counts.Footnote 81

By prioritizing intended meaning over mere verbal utterance – a position which, taken to the extreme, would justify the translation of the QuranFootnote 82 – Devletoğlu Yūsuf thus points out that the actual linguistic medium becomes irrelevant; it is the meaning of the words that counts:

Thus when words are full of meaning and truth,
Does it matter whether they are uttered by a Türk or a Tat (i.e. Iranian)?Footnote 83

The use of the written vernacular in place of Arabic for exegetical purposes likewise provoked great anxiety in the Islamic world, as exemplified by the late tenth-century Persian translation of al-Ṭabarī’s Arabic tafsīr, the religious permissibility of which was affirmed by a fatwā issued by the ulema of Transoxania.Footnote 84 Yet, despite this anxiety, Travis Zadeh points out that the linguistic leniency shown to new converts with regard to the use of Persian as a religious language in place of Arabic “may have suited the cosmopolitanism of an empire in the process of expanding deeper into Anatolia and Central Asia”.Footnote 85 Indeed, Devletoğlu Yūsuf's constant invoking of the authority of Abū Ḥanīfa and his two disciples serves as a trope for putting to rest the recurrent anxieties associated with the vernacular rendering of religious works usually composed in Arabic.

Conclusion

Devletoğlu Yūsuf presented his work to Murad II in the year 827/1424; this year is significant in that it was by this time that it had become clear that Murad would indeed remain on the throne as the Ottoman sultan after several years of intense warfare in Anatolia against Byzantine-supported contenders.Footnote 86 Indeed, the following two decades of Murad II's reign proved to be a watershed period in Ottoman history for the transference of Perso-Islamic culture to Turcophone Anatolia, with an explosion in the production of literary works primarily through translation and the composition of imitative works. This literary development, as Âmil Çelebioğlu first argued, coincided with Murad II's consolidation of his rule and Ottoman consolidation of its Anatolian and Balkan territories. Devletoğlu Yūsuf's Manẓūm fıḳıh constitutes an early work in a growing trend of Turkish vernacular works patronized by Murad II during the first half of the fifteenth century.Footnote 87

Devletoğlu Yūsuf's Manẓūm fıḳıh likewise provides us with a rare glimpse into the interactive linguistic landscape between Turkish and Arabic in the early religious education of Turcophone Anatolians. Although it would be inaccurate to characterize the work as a translation of the Wiqāya, Devletoğlu Yūsuf did in a certain sense “translate” the Arabic textual tradition of the Wiqāya into the Anatolian Turkish idiom. His translation thus involves not only linguistic movement from Arabic to Turkish, but also the localization of his narrative in his own time and place. This strategy not only made Hanafi fiqh principles more concrete, but also, in essence, indigenized classical Hanafi practice.

In his preface, Devletoğlu Yūsuf justifies his rendering into the newly emerging literary language of Anatolian Turkish, a religious tradition normally composed in Arabic. According to the author, the translation of the Classical Arabic fiqh tradition into the Turkish vernacular finds support in Classical Arabic grammatical–rhetorical theories of meaning and form, as first articulated by al-Jurjānī, combined with the Hanafi precedent of substituting Arabic with Persian as a religious linguistic medium. A law manual drawing on the thirteenth-century synthesis of the Hanafi tradition as it appears in the standard epitome of substantive law, the Wiqāya, Devletoğlu Yūsuf's Manẓūm fıḳıh repeatedly assures its readers that it represents a pure and unadulterated version of the law as first conceived by the three pre-eminent founding fathers of Hanafism. It may well be that Devletoğlu Yūsuf's emphasis on the hermeneutical authority of Abū Ḥanīfa and his disciples related to the anxieties the author faced in translating the Hanafi tradition into Turkish.

Rethinking the emergence of early Anatolian Turkish as a vernacular literary language along broader comparative perspectives and in the context of larger conceptual issues may help us to formulate new questions as well as new methodological approaches for dealing with language and cultural transfer. For instance, what triggers the emergence of a vernacular literary culture?Footnote 88 Observing that “the practices of literary culture are practices of attachment and belonging”,Footnote 89 Pollock proposes that “vernacular literary cultures were initiated by the conscious decisions of writers to reshape the boundaries of their cultural universe by renouncing the larger world for the smaller place, and they did so in full awareness of the significance of their decision”.Footnote 90 In seeking a legitimate literary role for Turkish in the composition of religious texts, authors such as Devletoğlu Yūsuf firmly grounded themselves in the greater Islamic tradition, but translated it into localized versions. Classical Arabic grammar and rhetoric, combined with Hanafi justifications for the use of the vernacular, provide Devletoğlu Yūsuf with the heuristic tools for carving out a smaller yet legitimate space for the Turkish vernacular as a religious textual medium.

Footnotes

1

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n.208476, “The Islamisation of Anatolia, c. 1100–1500”. Many thanks go to A.C.S. Peacock for his invaluable suggestions on previous drafts of this article, and to Sooyong Kim for his advice on translating tricky passages of Old Anatolian Turkish verse into English.

References

2 The practice of glossing Qurans in Turkic languages originated in Central Asia, and can be traced back to the Eastern Turkish of the Karakhanid period. See Ata, Aysu, “İlk Türkçe Kurʾan Tercümesi”, in Ata, Aysu and Ölmez, Mehmet (eds), Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Sempozyumu 2003. Mustafa Canpolat Armağanı (Ankara: Şafak Matbaası, 2003), 44 Google Scholar; Boeschoten, Hendrik, “Translations of the Koran: sources for the history of written Turkic in a multilingual setting”, in Johanson, Lars and Bulut, Christiane (eds), Turkic–Iranian Contact Areas: Historical and Linguistic Aspects (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), 70 Google Scholar.

3 A certain Muṣṭafā b. Muḥammed penned a series of partial Quranic commentaries in Turkish, dedicating them to different patrons. The Yāsin Suresi Tefsīri was first composed in the name of Ḫızır b. Gölbey, an unknown figure, and later presented to İnançoğlu Murād Arslan Bey (d. before 761/1360), the local ruler of Denizli in southwestern Anatolia. Although it is not dated, the work must have been composed sometime in the mid-fourteenth century. Muṣṭafā b. Muḥammed's Turkish Mülk Suresi Tefsīri was composed for Orhan Bey's young sons Süleymān and Murād, presumably for pedagogical use. The work was later presented to the İnançoğlu ruler Murad Arslan's son, İshak Bey ( Özkan, Mustafa, “Eski Anadolu Türkçesi Döneminde Ortaya Konan Kuran Tercümeleri Üzerine – I”, Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi 39, 2005, 136, 140Google Scholar). There are several extant manuscripts of the Yāsin Sūresi Tafsīri. Ayşe Hümeyra Aslantürk published the Süleyman Library, MS İbrahim Efendi 140 as Hızır Bey Çelebi ve Yāsin-i Şerif Tefsiri (Edisyon Kritik ve Sadeleştirilmiş Metin) (İsparta: Fakülte Kitabevi, 2007)Google Scholar.

4 Although not published, the text has been reproduced in transliteration by Bilal Aktan, “Devletoğlu Yūsuf'un Vikāye Tercümesi (İnceleme-Metin-Dizin)”, Erzurum Atatürk Üniversitesi: PhD Dissertation, 2002 (hereinafter cited as Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan). I follow Aktan's edition for all textual references and citations. All English translations are mine.

5 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 455–73. This section paraphrases the Wiqāya’s chapter 23, Kitāb Adab al-Qaḍāʾ.

6 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 112, lines 47–8. Aktan conflates Devletoğlu Yūsuf with a certain Yūsuf Efendī (Yūsuf b. Ḥuseyin Kirmāstī), identified in the Ottoman bibliographical tradition as a renowned Bursan religious scholar associated with Ḫocazāde Muṣliḥuddīn Efendī and a prolific author with many works on fiqh and grammar, including a commentary on the Wiqāya. Devletoğlu Yūsuf states that he was 28 years old in 827/1424 when he composed his Manẓūm fıḳıh. If he had died in 920/1514, Yūsuf Efendī’s death date, then he would have been at least 118 years old. Furthermore, Aktan's assumption that Ḫocazāde was Devletoğlu Yūsuf's teacher is highly improbable, in as much as Ḫocazāde was born a decade after Devletoğlu Yūsuf presented his work to Murad II. See Efendī, Mecdī Meḥmed, Hadaiku’ş-şakaik, ed. Özcan, Abdülkadir (Istanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1989), 1: 330Google Scholar; Bursalı Meḥmed Ṭāhir, ʿOsmānlı Mu‘ellifleri (Istanbul: Maṭbaʿa ʿĀmire, 1333/1914–15), 2: 53–4; Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 2–5; Safet Köse, “Hocāzade, Muslihuddin Efendi”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi.

7 Çelebioğlu, Âmil, “Balıkesirli Devletoğlu Yusuf'un Fıkhī bir Mesnevīsī”, in Kerman, Zeynep (ed.), Mehmet Kaplan İçin (Ankara: Türk Kültür Araştırma Enstitüsü, 1988), 43 Google Scholar. Among the various titles given to Devletoğlu's work is Manẓūme-i Bidāyetü’l-Hidāye, as in Bursa İl Halk Library, MS Haraççıoğlu 558, copied in 949/1542. See Gülensoy, Tuncer, “Bursa Haraççıoğlu Kitaplığında Bulunan Türkçe Yazmalar Üzerine Notlar”, Türk Dili Araştırmaları Yıllığı Belleten 102, 1971, 238 Google Scholar.

8 Although Devletoğlu Yūsuf makes no reference to the Wiqāya, he cites many other authorities. In addition to the three founders of the Hanafi school, Devletoğlu Yūsuf makes reference to eleven other religious authorities or works: al-Shāfiʿī (116, line 96) and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (İmām-ı Ḥanbal, 192, line 1123); ʿAmr b. Sharāhil al-Shaʿbī (d. 103/721), one of Abū Ḥanīfa's teachers (465, line 4812); Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Karkhī (d. 340/951) (189, line 1090); ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) (190, line 1091), Qāḍī-Khān (d. 1196) (275, line 2225); the Hidāya (332, line 2993); the Muḥī ṭ, most likely by Burhān al-Sharīʿa (d. 616/1219) (123, line 190); the Fatāwā, possibly by Tāj al-Sharīʿa or Qāḍī-Khān (d. 592/1196) (217, line 1455); the Ṣiḥāḥ al-Lugha (or Tāj al-Lugha) by the Arabic grammarian al-Jawharī (386, line 3716); the Mukhtār Sharḥ Ikhtiyār (likewise known as al-Ikhtiytār li-taʿlīl al-mukhtār) by ʿAbdullāh b. Maḥmūd al-Mawṣilī (d. 683/1284) a commentary on his own work, al-Mukhtār li'l-fatwā (496, line 5239).

9 In the first modern study of the work, Âmil Çelebioğlu suggests that Devletoğlu Yūsuf did not actually draw upon the Wiqāya but rather made use of other fiqh works. Çelebioğlu claims that Devletoğlu based his work on a versified Arabic fiqh work consisting of 2,600 couplets, composed by a certain Abū Hafṣ ʿUmar in 504/1110. Çelebioğlu, however, does not provide a name or demonstrate how these texts are related, but simply provides reference to two manuscripts, one from the Ankara National Library (Milli Kütüphanesi), MS Cebeci İl Halk 370, copied in 854/1450, and the other housed at Topkapı Palace Library, MS Revan 1997, 96a–111b. Çelebioğlu, “Balıkesirli Devletoğlu Yusuf'un Fıkhī bir Mesnevīsī”, 45–7.

10 Variations of this work's name include al-Hidāya fī’l-furūʿ and al-Hidāya al-burhāniyya fī’l-fiqh al-nuʿmāniyya. For a published version of the Hidāya, see Abū Bakr b. ʿAlī al-Marghīnānī, al-Hidāya: sharḥ bidāyat al-mubtadā, 4 vols (Cairo: Maṭbaʿah Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1975)Google Scholar. The Arabic text has also been edited by Darwīsh, Muḥammad as Al-Margīnānī al-Hidāya: Sharḥ Bidāyat al-Mubtadiʿ (Beirut: Dar al-Arqam, 1997)Google Scholar. It has been partly published in English translation in a two-volume set by Nyazee, Imran Ahsan Khan as al-Hidāyah: A Classical Manual of Hanafi Law (Bristol: Amal Press, 2008)Google Scholar. Charles Hamilton and Standish Grove Grady first translated the Hidāya into English, albeit selectively, and omitting, for example, the chapters on prayer and purification. It was first published in London in 1871 in four volumes.

11 The Hidāya is al-Marghīnānī’s shorter commentary on his Bidāyat al-Mubtadiʿ, itself a commentary on the foundational text for Hanafi fiqh scholarship, al-Qudūrī’s (d. 428/1037) Mukhtaṣar fī al-fiqh al-Ḥanafī. Like many later Hanafi texts, al-Marghīnānī’s Hidāya reproduces the text of al-Qudūrī’s Mukhtaṣar word for word. See Wheeler, Brannon M., “Identity in the margins: unpublished Hanafi commentaries on the Mukhtaṣar of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Qudūrī”, Islamic Law and Society 10/2, 2003, 184–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wheeler argues: “By relying on the text of the Mukhtaṣar, al-Marghīnānī makes the Mukhtaṣar into a sort of ‘canonical text’: it is through the medium of this text that readers of al-Marghīnānī are taught how to interpret the opinions of the Ḥanafī authorities” (ibid. 187).

12 A pupil of Burhān al-Dīn al-Marghīnānī, Husām al-Dīn Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, composed the first commentary on the Hidāya, the Nihāya, which added the law of inheritance to the Hidāya. Another important commentary was produced by the fifteenth-century scholar Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Siwāsī, known as Ibn al-Humām (d. 861/1456–57). Ibn al-Humām's al-Fatḥ al-kabīr l'il-ajāʾiz al-faqīr is one of the most comprehensive commentaries on the Hidāya ( Hughes, Thomas Patrick, A Dictionary of Islam (London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1885), 288 Google Scholar).

13 Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam, 288.

14 Compare, for instance, the Hidāya with al-Sarakhsī’s (d. 483/1090) Kitāb al-mabsūṭ, a 30-volume commentary on the Kitāb al-Kāfī fī’l-fiqh, which, in turn, is based on the legal writings of al-Shaybānī. See Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam, 15. On the Hidāya and Wiqāya, see further Calder, Norman, Islamic Jurisprudence in the Classical Era, ed. Imber, Colin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 32 ff., 42 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Alternatively entitled Wiqāya al-riwāya fī masāʾil al-Hidāya, the Wiqāya omits the theoretical aspects of Hanafi law, such as discussions of conflicting views (ikhtilāf) and the indication of right views, as found in the Hidāya. The Wiqāya has not been published and exists in manuscript form only. I have consulted the following manuscripts: Balıkesir İl Halk Library, MS 807; Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 1505 (dated Rajab 975/January 1568); Manisa İl Halk Library, MS Akhisar Zeynelzade 428 (dated 893/1487).

16 Of the many commentaries of the Wiqāya, the most famous is the Sharḥ al-Wiqāya by Tāj al-Sharīʿa's grandson, ʿUbayd Allāh al-Maḥbūbī, known as Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa II (d. 747/1346), who also produced the Niqāya, an abridged version of the Wiqāya. ʿUbayd Allāh al-Maḥbūbī’s Sharḥ al-Wiqāya was usually studied together with the Wiqāya, which was reproduced together with its gloss with special attention to the chapters dealing with marriage, dower and divorce. Numerous other commentaries and super-commentaries on the Wiqāya were penned in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Wiqāya, in fact, generated more commentaries than any other legal or religious text in the Ottoman realm during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. See Abdurrahman Atçıl, “The formation of the Ottoman learned class and legal scholarship (1300–1600)”, (University of Chicago: PhD Dissertation, 2010), 295–6. A survey of these works is beyond the scope of this essay. Several of the better known works are: al-Sighnaqī (d. 714/1314), al-Nihāya; the Aydınid scholar İbn Melek (Fireşteoğlu) (d. after 821/1418), Sharḥ al-Wiqāya; the Kifāya by ʿImād al-Dīn Amīr Kātib b. Amīr ʿUmar; the Cairene Akmal al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Bābartī (d. 786/1384), ʿInāya; the ʿInāya fī sharḥ al-wiqāyat al-riwāya by ʿAlāʾeddīn el-Esved (d. 800/1396–97), a scholar from Amasya; al-Kūrlānī, al-Kifāyat al-muntahā, a commentary in eight volumes; Muṣannifek (d. 875/1470), Shar ḥ al-Wiqāya; and Ḥāshiyā ʾ ʿalā sharḥ al-Wiqāya by Ḫaṭībzāde [Ibn al-Khaṭīb] (d. 901/1495).

17 Based on careful consideration of the manuscript evidence, Murteza Bedir reviews the problem of the correct name of the author of the Wiqāya, Burhān al-Sharīʿa Maḥmūd b. Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Akbar Aḥmad b. Jamāl al-Dīn ʿUbaydullāh al-Maḥbūbī al-Bukhārī, whose death date remains unknown. Bedir points out that Burhān al-Sharīʿa has often been confused with his brother Tāj al-Sharīʿa ʿUmar (d. 709/1309), who is often referred to erroneously as Tāj al-Sharīʿa Maḥmūd in Arabic biographical dictionaries. Much of the confusion seems to stem from their complicated family relations: Tāj al-Sharīʿa's son Masʿūd married the daughter of Burhān al-Sharīʿa, and from that union was born the grandson of both, Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Asghar (or al-Thānī) ʿUbaydullāh b. Maʿsūd (d. 747/1346), for whom Burhān al-Sharīʿa wrote the Wiqāya. Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Asghar ʿUbaydullāh is confusingly referred to by western scholars as Maḥmūd b. ʿUbayd Allāh al-Maḥbūbī. Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Asghar ʿUbaydullāh later wrote a sharḥ on the Wiqāya, as well as producing a summary of the text, the Nuqāya. See M. Bedir, “Tācüşşerīa”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi; idem., “Viḳāyetü’r-Rivāye”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi; Ş. Özen, “Sadrüşşerīa”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. See also Akgündüz, Ahmed, Introduction to Islamic Law (Rotterdam: IUR Press, 2010), 49 Google Scholar.

18 Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam, 288.

19 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 455–73. This section covers Qaḍāʾ, Book 23 of the Wiqāya, which abridges the Kitāb Adab al-Qaḍāʾ of the Hidāya.

20 A comparison with the Arabic text of the Wiqāya confirms the absence of discussion of the sultan as appointed as God's representative and as the one responsible for appointing the qadi for the implementation of religious law. See Balıkesir İl Halk Library, MS 807, 99b–100a; Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 1505, 103a–107a; Manisa İl Halk Libary, MS Akhisar Zeynelzade 428, 115a–118a.

21 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 455, line 4664: Bir daḫı bu ʿālem içinde niẓām / Kim sebeb ḳıldı aña rabbu'l-enām.

22 Ibid. 455, line 4665: Ḳullarından birisin sulṭān ider / Cümle ḫalḳı ḥükmine fermān ider.

23 Ibid. 455, line 4666: Nāyibullāh olur ol beyne'l-ʿibād / Pes iderler buyruġına inḳıyād.

24 Ibid. 455, line 4667: Ḳāżılar naṣb eyler ol daḫu hemān / Tā ki maʿmūr ola şerʿ-ile cihān.

25 Ibid. 455, line 4668: Ḥükm-i şerʿi ol daḫı icrā ider / Pes cihānda ẓulm kalmaz hep gider.

26 Muhammad Khalid Masud, Rudolph Peters and Powers, David S., “Qāḍīs and their courts: an historical survey”, in Masud, Muhammad Khalid, Peters, Rudolph and Powers, David S. (eds), Dispensing Justice in Islam. Qadis and their Judgments (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 15 Google Scholar; EI 2, s.v. Ḳāḍī (E. Tyan).

27 Burak, Guy, “The second formation of Islamic law: the Post-Mongol context of the Ottoman adoption of a School of Law”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 55/3, 2013, 579–602 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 During the classical and late Ottoman periods, the kadıasker, who was under the direct authority of the şeyhülislam, was responsible for appointing, dismissing and supervising qadis in the provinces. The şeyhülislam and his representatives, however, had no authority to interfere in the judgments or procedures of the qadi. In regard to administrative issues, only the sultan had the authority to issue, through an imperial fermān, a legally binding order on the qadi. As Ronald C. Jennings observed, the qadi was autonomous of imperial authority in the judicial sphere. See Jennings, Ronald C., “Limitations of the judicial powers of the kadi in 17th c. Ottoman Kayseri”, Studia Islamica 50, 1979, 155, 155–6 note 1, 164Google Scholar. On the notion of justice as a mechanism of political legitimization in the early-modern Ottoman Empire, see Ergene, Boğaç A., “On Ottoman justice: interpretations in conflict (1600–1800)”, Islamic Law and Society 8/1, 2001, 52–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Calder, Islamic Jurisprudence in the Classical Era, 64; Omer Awass, “Fatwa: the evolution of an Islamic legal practice and its influence on Muslim society” (Temple University: PhD Dissertation, 2014), 252.

30 On ijtihād and mujtahid see further Hallaq, Wael B., “Was the gate of ijtihad closed?”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 16/1, 1984, 3–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and EI2 , s.v. “Mudjtahid” (J. Calmard). The Hidāya points out that some have stipulated that a qadi must be a mujtahid but that the more approved doctrine is that this is merely preferable, but not indispensable. See Hamilton, Charles and Grady, Standish Grove (trans.), The Hedaya or Guide: A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws (Lahore: Premier Book House, 1871, reprinted 1963), 334 Google Scholar.

31 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 455, line 4670: Bir kişi ehl-i şahādet olsa ger / ʿĀlim u ʿādil daḫı olsa meger.

32 Ibid. 455, line 4670: Yaʿnī cāhil olmaya ʿālim gerek / Müctehīd olursa daḫī yigirek.

33 Ibid. 456, line 4677: Rişvet-ile ḳāżılıḳ almaḳ kişi / Ḥükmi nāfiẕ olmaya bāṭīl işi.

34 Ibid. 456, line 4678: Ḳāżı olup ṣoñra rişvet alsa ger / Fāsıḳ olur ḥükmi olmaz muʿteber.

35 Ibid. 456, line 4682: Ḳāżı olan olmaya faẓẓ u şedīd / Hem daḫı olmaya cabbār u ʿanīd.

36 Ibid. 456, line 4683: Hem kimesneden hedāyā almaya. / Yaʿnī evvelden ki ʿādet olmaya.

37 Ibid. 456, line 4684: ʿĀdet olmış kimse olursa revā / Hem ḳarībinden daḫı olsa n'ola.

38 Ibid. 456, line 4685: Çünki ḳāżı oldı imdi n'eyleye / Bir muʿayyen yirde meclis eyleye.

39 Ibid. 456, line 4686: Şöyle kim mescīd ve cāmiʿ gibi hem / Yā daḫı bunuñ gibi iy muḥterem.

40 Wiqāya, Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 1505, 101a.

41 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 463: Bāb Kitābi'l-Ḳāżı ilā’l-Ḳāżı. The Wiqāya does not provide a subdivision (bāb) of this section on the correspondence between judges in the book of judicial procedure (Kitāb al-Qaḍāʾ), as is found in both the Hidāya and in Devletoğlu's Manẓūm fıḳıh (Wiqāya, Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 1505, 102a).

42 Yanbolu is today's Yambol in Bulgaria, some 90 kilometres north of Edirne. Yanbolu was conquered in the 1370s by the Ottomans. See M. Kiel, “Yanbolu”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi.

43 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 464, line 4793: Şöyle kim Yanbolıdan bir kişi ger / Ḳāżı ḳatında varur daʿvī eder.

44 Ibid. 464, line 4794: Edrene şehrinde yaʿnī şol fulān / Bir atum buldum elinde bī-gümān.

45 Ibid. 464, line 4795: Benden oġurlandı benümdür ol at / Aña ṭanuḳlar getürdüm uş uñat.

46 Ibid. 464, line 4796: Ḳāżı diñledi anuñ ṭanuḳların / Yazdı ol atuñ ṣıfātın her birin.

47 Ibid. 464, line 4797: Edrene ḳāżısına yaʿnī hemān. / Bir kitāb-ı ḥükmī yazdı ol zamān. Here kitāb-i ḥukmī refers to a letter produced by one qadi and sent to another if a defendant, involved in a case involving the first qadi's jurisdiction, resides in the second qadi's jurisdiction, and is not present during the proceedings officiated by the first qadi. The letter includes a transcription of the oral testimony of the plaintiff's witnesses, given in the absence of the defendant. It is considered “a transcript of real evidence” (Hamilton and Grady (trans.), The Hedaya or Guide, 340).

48 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 464, line 4798: Edrene ḳāżısına vardı kitāb / Kim odur naḳl-i şahādet bi'l-ḫiṭāb.

49 Ibid. 464, line 4799: Ol bitiydi dutmadı redd itdi ol / Pes imāmeyn meẕhebin ḳıldı ḳabūl.

50 Ibid. 464, line 4801: Līki bir pāre yir olsa yāḫū dār / Yaʿnī menḳūl olmaya ola ʿaḳār.

51 Hamilton and Grady (trans.), The Hedaya or Guide, 339–40.

52 Bu rivāyetdür İmām-ı Sānīden / kim Muḥīṭden naḳl ḳılmış naḳl iden (Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 123, line 190). The Muḥīṭ here is most likely Muḥīṭ al-Burhānī fī al-Fiqh al-Nuʿmānī by Burhān al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Aḥmad b. Abd al-ʿAzīz al-Bukhārī al-Marghīnānī, commonly known as Burhān al-Sharīʿa (d. 616/1219). Usually referred to as Muḥīṭ al-Burhānī or simply Muḥīṭ, the work is essentially an expanded version of the Ẓāhir al-Riwāya, the six canonical Hanafi treatises compiled by al-Shaybānī. The popularity of Muḥīṭ al-Burhānī among Ottoman scholars is well attested, and it constituted a major source for the fiqh work, Jāmiʿ al-fuṣūlayn by Maḥmūd b. İsrāʾīl Simavna Kadısı-oğlu Şeyḫ Bedreddīn, Devletoğlu Yūsuf's near contemporary. The Muḥīṭ al-Burhānī is not to be confused with al-Sarakhsī’s al-Muḥīṭ. See Uzunpostalcı, M., “Burhāneddin el-Buhārī”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi; Apaydın, Hacı Yunus (ed.), Yargılama Usulüne Dair: Câmiu'l-Fusûleyn. Şeyh Bedreddin (Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2012)Google Scholar.

53 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 114, lines 66–7: Hem fetāvādan daḫı naḳl eyledüm / Çok degüldür hem daḫı az söyledüm; Her fetāvānuñ velīkin adını / dimege ʿöẕr oldı dimedüm anı. Calder argues that so-called fatāwa collections, such as Qāḍī Khān's Fatāwā Qāḍī Khān, were normative texts providing theoretical examples of rulings rather than fatwās that were actually issued (Calder, Islamic Jurisprudence in the Classical Era, 72).

54 Abū Yūsuf. See J. Schacht, “Abū Yūsuf Yaʿḳūb b. Ibrāhīm al-Anṣārī al-Kūfī”, EI 2.

55 The works of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b al-Shaybānī (d. 804) serve as the foundational texts of the Ḥanafī tradition. See EI 2, s.v. al-Shaybānī (E. Chaumont); EI 2, s.v. al-Sarakhsī (N. Calder).

56 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 113–4, lines 64–5: Bū Ḥanīfe meẕhebi üzre hemān / Yaʿnī anuñ ḳavlini ḳıldum beyān; Hem imāmeyn ḳavlini daḫı meger / baʿżī yirde kim gerekdür iy piser. It is clear from this couplet that the “two imams” (imāmeyn) refers to Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad al-Shaybānī as distinct from Abū Ḥanīfa, as this couplet from the section of inheritance indicate: Bū Ḥanīfe bunı cāyizdür didi / Pes imāmeyn bunı cāyiz görmedi (ibid. 624, line 6972). When there was disagreement between Abū Ḥanīfa and his disciples, the two imams, Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad al-Shaybānī, the view of the latter prevailed in Hanafi law. This reference to the differing opinions between the jurists is unique to Devletoğlu Yūsuf's text and is not found in the Wiqāya.

57 Examples of variations of this formula are: Bū Ḥanīfe ḳavli budur iy dedem (Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 129, line 271); Bū Ḥanīfe hem Ebū Yūsuf daḫı / Bunlaruñ ḳavli budur kim iy aḫı (ibid. 593, line 6567); Bu rivāyetdür İmām-ı Sānīden (ibid. 123, line 190); Bu Muḥammed ḳavlidür diñle bunı / Bū Ḥanīfe ḳavlidür añla anı (ibid. 584, line 6445); Hem Muḥammed ḳavli budur bī-gümān (ibid. 121, line 164).

58 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 626, lines 7005–6: Bū Ḥanīfe ḳavli budur añla sen / Çünki aṣlın bilmeyesin ṭañla sen / Müctehidler muḳtedāsı ol imām / Rāyı kāmil aṣlı muḥkem ve's-selām.

59 The extended preface or “reason for the composition of the book” (Faṣl fī beyān-i sebeb-i naẓmi'l-kitābı) consists of 89 couplets. See Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Viḳāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 110–6, lines 17–104.

60 Early authors writing in the Anatolian Turkish vernacular often commented on the difficulties of composing in Turkish. In the late fourteenth century, Aḥmed-i Dāʾī discusses in the prologue of his Çeng-nāme the difficulties of translating the original Persian work into Turkish. See Alpay, Gönül, Ahmed-i Dāī ve Çengnāmesi (Cambridge, MA: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University, 1993), 327–8Google Scholar. Also in the late fourteenth century, Şeyḫoğlu Muṣṭafā complains that Turkish is ungrammatical, cold and without flavour. Kemāl-i Zerd describes Turkish as a harsh language (bu Türkī dil be-ġāyet sert dildür) in his Selātinnāme-i ‘Āl-i ‘Osmān (composed in 1490). See Yavuz, Kemal, “XIII.–XVI. Asır Dil Yādigārlarının Anadolu Sahasında Türkçe Yazılış Sebepleri ve Bu Devir Müelliflerinin Türkçe Hakkındaki Görüşleri”, Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları 27, 1983, esp. 35–7, 46Google Scholar.

61 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 110, lines 17–9: Diñle imdi Türkçe manẓūm bir kitāb / itdügümçün siz baña itmeñ ʿitāb / İy nice gördük ulu ʿālimleri / ʿilmi ile ʿāmil u kāmilleri / Türk dilince düzdiler bunca kitāb / maʿnī yüzinden götürdiler nikāb.

62 Ibid. 110, line 21.

63 Ibid. 110, line 20.

64 Ibid. 110, line 21.

65 Ibid. 110, line 22.

66 EI 2, s.v. Maʿnā. 1. Grammar (C.H.M. Versteegh). In Classical Arabic grammar/rhetoric circles, opposition “between alfāẓ as the linguistic expression, and maʿānī as the underlying meaning” was hotly debated.

67 Larkin, Margaret, “Al-Jurjani's theory of discourse”, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 2, 1982, 79 Google Scholar. Rebecca Gould defines naẓm as “the order that binds together all the elements that comprise a literary text”, noting that it can be translated as concinnity, “the harmonious reinforcement of the various parts of a work of art”. According to Gould, naẓm “is situated at the foundation of Arabo-Persian poetics as well as of Qurʿānic exegesis”. See Gould, Rebecca, “Inimitability versus translatability: the structure of literary meaning in Arabo-Persian poetics”, The Translator 19/1, 2013, 86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 110, lines 23–4: Pes bularuñla öẕrüm biter; / naẓm içün daḫı manẓūme yiter. / Yaʿnī kim manẓūme dirler bir kitāb, / Naḳli anuñ naẓm ile olmış ṣavāb.

69 Larkin, “Al-Jurjani's theory of discourse”, 77.

70 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 110–1, lines 25–6: Anı manẓūm eylemiş teʾlīf iden. / Aña hem ṭaʿn olmadı hiç kimseden. / Ḳamu ʿālimler anı ḳıldı ḳabūl. / Cümle ḫalḳ içinde meşhūr oldı ol.

71 Smyth, William, “Controversy in a tradition of commentary: the academic legacy of Al-Sakkākī’s Miftāḥ Al-ʿUlūm ”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 112/4, 1992, 590–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Ḫocā-zāde, Süleymaniye Library, MS Antalya Tekelioğlu 838, 1b–50a. On al-Sakkākī’s Miftāḥ as the basis of Ottoman rhetoric, see Şaban, İbrahim, “Osmanlı Ālimlerinin Arap Belagatine Dair Eserleri”, Şarkiyat Mecmuası 17, 2011, 108–33Google Scholar.

73 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 111, line 27: Türkī olmaḳ manẓūm olmaḳ bes kelām / Aña hiç ʿayb olmaz-ımış ve's-selām!

74 Robertson, Duncan, “Writing in the textual community: Clemence of Barking's Life of St. Catherine ”, French Forum 21/1, 1996, 5 Google Scholar.

75 Verse was used frequently for pedagogical purposes in both Arabic and Turkish texts. Ibn al-Ḥājib's (d. 1249) al-Kāfiya is a salient example of this phenomenon: the popularity of this Arabic grammar textbook was a result of its conciseness and verse format, which facilitated the memorization of Arabic grammar rules. Abdü’l-Muḥsīn Muḥammed el-Ḳayserī’s (d. 761/1360) Arabic Jāmiʿ al-durar (composed in 736/1335) is a versified adaptation of Muḥammad al-Sajāwandī’s al-Farāʾiḍ al-Sirājiyya. See Cici, Recep, “XIV. Yüzyılda Kayserili Bir Fakih: Abdülmuhsin Kayseri ve Çalışmaları”, in XIII. ve XIV. Yüzyıllarda Kayseri'de Bilim ve Din Sempozyumu (Kayseri: Erciyes Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi, 1998), 95, 98–100 Google Scholar; R. Cici, “Muhsin-i Kayserî”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. There are other examples. Young, M.J.L., Latham, John Derek and Serjeant, Robert Betram (eds), Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 134 Google Scholar.

76 The Ottoman mektep curriculum traditionally focused around the Quran and primarily involved the memorization of certain verses as well as of popular lines of ḥadīth. By the time of Bayezid II in the late fifteenth century it included Turkish works of catechism (ʿilm-i ḥāl) (Nebi Bozkurt, “Mektep”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi; Cahit Baltacı, “Mektep (Osmanlılar'da Mektep)”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. See also Aslıhan Gürbüzel's discussion of Baḫtī’s versification of Birgivī Meḥmed Efendī’s Vaṣiyyetnāme in 1052/1647 in order to facilitate the instruction of this popular work of catechism to children by rendering it into a memorizable form (Aslıhan Gürbüzel, “Teachers of the public, advisors to the sultan: preachers and the rise of a political public sphere, 1600–1670”, Harvard University: PhD Dissertation, 2016).

77 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 111, line 28: Türkçedir dersi müderrisler aḫı / Hem muḥaddisler müfessirler daḫı.

78 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 111, lines 29–30: Bū Ḥanīfe kim odur ṣāḥib-uṣūl / maʿnīdür Ḳurʾān didi bir ḳavli ol. / Pārsiçe Ḳurʾānı cāʾiz gördi bes, / kim namāzda oḳusañ ḳılsañ heves.

79 Khadiga Karrar El-Shaykh El-Tayeb, “Principles and problems of the translation of scriptures: the case of the Qurʾān” (Temple University: PhD Dissertation, 1985), 3–6; Yahaghi, Mohammad Jafar, “An introduction to early Persian Qur'anic translations”, Journal of Qur'anic Studies 4/2, 2002, 105 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 C.H.M. Versteegh, “Maʿnā: 1. Grammar”, EI 2.

81 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 111, line 31: Eyle olsa her ne dilce olsa ger / Lafẓı ālet maʿnī olur muʿteber.

82 Gould provides an extensive and stimulating examination of ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī’s hermeneutics on iʿjāz, the doctrine of Quranic inimitability, and its relationship with naẓm (structure). See Gould, “Inimitability versus translatability”, 81–104.

83 Devletoğlu Yūsuf, Vikāye Tercümesi, ed. Aktan, 111, line 32: Pes ḳaçan söz olsa maʿnīlü uñat [oñat] / N'ola Türk ola anı diyen yā Tat.

84 Peacock, A.C.S., Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy: Bal'ami's Tarikhnama (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 44 Google Scholar.

85 Zadeh, Travis, The Vernacular Qur'an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2012), 2 Google Scholar.

86 Murad II was faced with an unstable political situation when he ascended the throne in 823/1421. His uncle, Mustafa, referred to as Düzme Mustafa in the Ottoman sources, who was held in detention by the Byzantines, was set free to challenge Murad II's sovereignty by armed struggle, with Byzantine support and according to a plan intended to weaken the Ottomans. Düzme Mustafa was accompanied by the deposed Aydınid prince, Cüneyd, who had also been Byzantine captivity. Likewise, in Anatolia several local princes simultaneously rose in rebellion, including Murad II's younger brother, Mustafa, the princely governor of Hamidili in south-west Anatolia. By early 826/1423, all forces of opposition were quelled, and both Mustafas had been executed. Halil İnalcık, “Murad II”, İslam Ansiklopedisi; Halil İnalcık, “Murad II”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. See also Flemming, Barbara, “The reign of Murad II: a survey (I)”, Anatolica 20, 1994, 249–67Google Scholar.

87 For more on literary production during Murad II's period, see Çelebioğlu, Türk Edebiyatı’nda Mesnevi XV. yy.’a kadar, 15–6.

88 Sheldon Pollock points to historical symmetry between South Asia and Western Europe in connection with the rise of the vernacular during “the early second millennium” (which is equivalent to the medieval period in the post-Roman world). On these implications, see further Pollock, Sheldon, “Cosmopolitan and vernacular in history”, Public Culture 12/3, 2000, 595 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Ibid. 594.

90 Ibid. 592.

Figure 0

Table 1. Chapter headings of the Hidāya, Wiqāya, and Manẓūm fıḳıh