A Scholar of the Beyliks Period on the Tabrīz-Transoxiana Line: Badr al-Rūmī Dāwūd b. Ḳutluġbek b. Islām b. Rajab al-Kānī
Mehmet Kalaycı, Muzaffer TanManuscripts can function as historical documents in terms of the intertextual and extratextual information they contain, and they can be instrumental in this way in enlightening the biography of those involved in the physical circulation of a certain copy of a text. This article is an important example of this as it deals with the scholar Badr al-Rūmī. The article evaluates his biblio-biographic information with regard to certain manuscripts. In this context, the article analyzes the information given in the farāgh records of three manuscripts al-Rūmī copied, two in the field of jurisprudence and one in the field of tafsir. The information in the two ijāzat documents were given to him at the end of a copy of al-Kashshāf and in the preamble of the abridged commentary Badr al-Rūmī wrote on al-Pazdawī’s Uṣūl. The article contextually evaluates this information on al-Rūmī using other biblio-biographic information, in an attempt to understand the meaning of this information in the general framework of the period in which he lived. The article not only highlights awareness of scholars of the Beyliks period such as Badr al-Rūmī but also presents in the case of Badr al-Rūmī at least a meaningful picture of the relationship of the Anatolian Beyliks period’s scholarly tradition with the scholarly centers beyond Anatolia.
Tebriz-Maveraünnehir Hattında Bir Beylikler Dönemi Âlimi: Bedru’rRûmî Dâvud b. Kutluğbek b. İslâm b. Receb el-Kânî
Mehmet Kalaycı, Muzaffer TanYazma eserler, ihtiva ettikleri metin içi ve metin dışı bilgiler bakımından birer tarih vesikası işlevi görebilmekte, bu haliyle de bir metnin belirli bir nüsha üzerinden fiziksel dolaşım sürecine eşlik eden şahısların tarihinin aydınlatılmasına vesile olabilmektedir. Merkezinde Bedru’r-Rûmî isimli bir âlimin bulunduğu bu makale, bunun önemli bir örneğini oluşturmaktadır. Makalede, bazı yazma eserlerde yer alan ona ait biyo-bibliyografik mahiyetteki bilgiler değerlendirilmiştir. Bu çerçevede makalede ikisi fıkıh, biri tefsir alanında olmak üzere Bedru’r-Rûmî’nin istinsah ettiği üç yazma eserin ferağ kayıtlarında sunduğu bilgiler, bir el-Keşşâf nüshasının sonunda kayıtlı bulunan ona verilmiş iki icazet belgesinde geçen bilgiler ve onun Pezdevî’nin Usûl’üne yazdığı muhtasar şerhin dibacesinde yer alan bilgiler tahlil edilmiştir. Bedru’r-Rûmî’ye ait/dair olan bu bilgiler, biyo-bibliyografik mahiyette başka bilgiler üzerinden bağlamsal bir değerlendirmeye tabi tutulmuş, böylelikle de Bedru’r-Rûmî’nin bilgilerinin yaşadığı dönemin umumi manzarası içerindeki karşılığı anlaşılmaya çalışılmıştır. Makale, Bedru’r-Rûmî gibi bir Beylikler dönemi âliminin varlığından haberdar olunabilmesine imkân tanıdığı kadar, aynı zamanda ilgili dönemdeki ilmî geleneğin Anadolu dışındaki ilim merkezleriyle irtibatına dair de -en azından Bedru’r-Rûmî özelinde anlamlı bir resim sunmaktadır.
Limited knowledge exists about scholarly life in the Anatolian Beyliks period, and this is often explained through the limitation of historical data that allows one to have knowledge about this subject. This situation often leads one to remain confined to what is known of the history of this period. However, recent studies, especially those on manuscripts, have required the meaning that has been attributed to the concept of historical data to be reevaluated. In past years, most of the manuscripts in the Turkish Manuscript Libraries have been put into the service of researchers by allowing them to obtain visual images of the manuscripts. This has allowed manuscripts to be positioned as an independent field in the archaeology of knowledge much more than before. The intertextual and extratextual historical information in manuscripts is an important historical data source. Through this source, many unknown names, works, and institutions can be brought to light, with the scholar Badr al-Rūmī being a striking example of this as the subject of this article.
No information exists about this scholar in biographical or bibliographic works. He gave his full name as Dāwūd b. al-Shaykh Ḳutluġbek b. Islām b. Rajab. For the first time, scholars became aware of his existence through a farāgh record written by him in 1313 AD/712 AH at the end of a copy of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī’s Kashf al-Asrār. This record is an important piece of information in that a person from Anatolia had copied this work shortly after it was composed. As such, however, this information had at most a footnote regarding an examination centered on the circulation of Kashf al-Asrār. During this article’s studies on Anatolian Beyliks period, additional information about him was encountered in other manuscripts. In this sense, this study found two separate ijāzats that had been given to al-Rūmī by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Chārpardī and Muḥammad al-Hamadānī on al-Kashshāf. Likewise, two juridical works were found to have been copied by Badr al-Rūmī, one of which was from Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn al-Nasafī and the other from ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī. Badr al-Rūmī copied the former in 1306/705 in the Orkhāniyya Madrasa that had been allocated to the Ḥanafīs in Ilkhānid Tabrīz.
The clue Waliyy al-Dīn Jārullāh Efendi provided in a manuscript note led to this article being composed on the basis of these fragmentary records. While listing the commentaries on al-Pazdawī’s Uṣūl, Jārullāh Efendi was found to have included Badr al-Rūmī’s commentary in the list and to regarded it as an abridgement of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī’s Kashf al-Asrār. In his note, Jārullāh Efendi stated that he had read alPazdawī’s work with his disciples and pondered the commentaries on it, mentioning Badr al-Rūmī’s commentary among them. This suggested that the related commentary might have been in Jārullāh Efendi’s possession. Thus, the study examined the juridical works in the collection of Jārullāh Efendi and found one commentary that had been mistakenly cataloged as ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī’s Kashf al-Asrār to have in fact belonged to Badr alRūmī. The information in its preamble revealed Badr al-Rūmī to have read al-Pazdawī’s Uṣūl from ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī and to have received the ijāzat for the work from a person named Arshad al-Dīn. As a result, the current article has been composed by making use of the information in the various separate records, some of which came from Badr al-Rūmī.
The intertextual and extratextual historical records discussed in this article deserve special attention in two respects. The first is that they allow expansion of the knowledge of the scholarly life during the Anatolia Beyliks to a certain extent. The juridical ijāzats in the Ottoman period are known to have generally been attributed to Akmal al-Dīn alBābartī. This is understandable both in terms of the basic logic of ijāzats and al-Bābartī’s undeniable role in this regard. However, this situation should not lead one to think that a strong juridical tradition in Anatolia had begun with al-Bābartī. Badr al-Rūmī showed that at least one generation before al-Bābartī, one Anatolian scholar had read about ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī, an important figure in the Ḥanafī tradition. When considering that ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī had been the teacher of al-Bābartī’s teacher, Qiwām al-Dīn alKākī, Badr al-Rūmī’s discipleship to al-Bukhārī becomes worthy of being taken into consideration. The second is that the manuscripts can be used as an important source of biblio-biographic data, especially with regard to the history of the Anatolia Beyliks. Limited information is found associated with the history of religious thought during this period. However, intertextual and extratextual historical information in related manuscripts written by Anatolian scholars or in Anatolian cities during the Beyliks period reveals the written tradition to have been stronger than expected. The fragmentary nature of these records makes assessing the relevant period relatively difficult in terms of references to them. However, these records appear in the first analysis to be distinct from one another and to be able to allow meaningful patterns to form over time. The records this article has shared and analyzed regarding Badr al-Rūmī were accumulated piece by piece over a period of around five years during our studies on the Anatolian Beyliks. This firstly encourages the expansion of knowledge on the meaning and function of manuscripts as well as regarding these manuscripts as a vital component of historical archeology.
