Birgivî’ye Nispet Edilen Kelime-i Tevhîde Dair Lugaz’ın Asıl Müellifi ve Bu Lugaz Üzerine Yazılan Şerhler
Birgivî Mehmed Efendi (ö. 981/1573) eserlerinin birçoğunu toplumda gördüğü problemlere çözüm sunma adına telif etmiş, 16. yüzyıl Osmanlı Devleti’nin meşhur alimlerinden biridir. Birgivî’nin bu eserleri toplum nezdinde büyük itibar gördüğü gibi ilim adamları tarafından da yoğun bir ilgi ve rağbete mazhar olmuş; bu eserlerin birçoğuna şerh, hâşiye, nazım, ihtisar ve tercüme çalışmaları yapılmıştır. Eserleri bu denli meşhur olmuş pek çok büyük şahsiyet gibi Birgivî’ye de çeşitli sebeplerden dolayı kendisine ait olmayan eserler nispet edilmiştir. Son zamanlarda yapılan çalışmalarda bu eserlerin asıl sahibinin kim olduğu tespit edilmiş; bu sayede hatalı nispetler sebebiyle Birgivî’ye ait olduğu zannedilen görüşler tashih edilmeye başlanmıştır. Birgivî’ye nispeti hatalı olan bu eserlerden bir tanesi de Lugazü’l-Birgivî veya Risâletü’t-Tevhîd ismiyle bilinen, 6 cümlelik risaledir. Bu makalede öncelikle mezkûr risalenin metni değerlendirilmiş ve bu hatalı nispete kaynaklık eden şerhler tespit edilerek müellifleri, kütüphane bilgisi ve baş-son kısımlarıyla birlikte tanıtılmıştır. Son olarak da bu lugazın aslında İbnü’l-Arabî’nin (ö. 638/1240) el-Abâdile isimli eserinde, Abdullah b. Abdilbârî b. İsa ismini verdiği kurgu bir karakterin dilinden aktarıldığı ortaya konulmuştur.
The Original Author of the Lughaz Concerning Kalimah alTawhīd Attributed to Birgiwī and Commentaries on this Lughaz
Birgiwī Mehmed Efendi (d. 981/1573) is one of the famous scholars of the 16th century Ottoman state who wrote many of his works to provide solutions to the problems he confronted in society. These works of Birgiwī were highly respected by society and attracted great interest and demand from scholars. Many of these works have been topics of further study including commentaries, glosses, naẓm, abridgments, and translations. Like many charismatic figures whose works became so famous, Birgiwī was given credit for work that was not his. Recent studies identified the original owner of these works, and began to correct the views that were thought to be Birgiwī’s due to erroneous attribution. One of these erroneously attributed works is a short 6-sentence treatise known as Lughaz al-Birgiwī or Risālat al-Tawḥīd. In this article, the text of this treatise is evaluated and the commentaries that are the source of this erroneous attribution are identified and introduced together with their authors, library information and beginning and end parts. Finally, it is shown that the lughaz was actually narrated by Ibn al-ʿArabī in his work al-Abādila, through the saying of a fictional character named ʿAbdullāh b. ʿAbd al-Bārī b. ʿIsā.
Birgiwī Mehmed Efendi (d. 981/1573), who wrote his works to provide solutions to the problems he saw in society, is one of the famous scholars of the Ottoman state. These works of Birgiwī were highly respected by society and attracted great interest from scholars. Many of these works have been topics of further study including commentaries, glosses, naẓm, abridgments, and translations. With this in mind, there are works that were erroneously attributed to him such as a 6-sentence treatise known as Lughaz al-Birgiwī or Risālat al-Tawḥīd.
In this article, the consequences of attributing a work to someone else are briefly mentioned by giving the example of Birgiwī’s inaccurately attributeed treatises such as Ziyārat al-qubūr and Aḥwāl al-aṭfāl al-muslimīn. Afterwards, the Arabic text and meaning of this lughaz/riddle, which deals with the tawḥīd in terms of nafiyy and proof, are explained. However, the six options in which the lughaz is mentioned are not given and their meaning is not explained. This is because the meaning changes according to the pronunciation and the meaning of the lughaz is explained accordingly. This, in turn, varies according to the interpretation of the person who solved it.
Afterwards, the eighteen works that were identified in the Manuscript Libraries and the commentary gloss literature formed around this work are first introduced, then references are made to academic studies on these works, if any, and the beginning and end are presented to guide the researchers.
The author of three of the eighteen works could not be identified and there was no information about another one other than the author was a muftī. Some of the writers, such as Akkirmānī (d. 1174/1760) and Abū Saʿīd al-Khādimī (d. 1176/1763), wrote commentaries on Birgiwī’s other works, and almost all of the commentators attributed the lughaz to Birgiwī, even if in imprecise terms. One of the commentators, Lālezārī (d. 1204/1789), attributed the lughaz to Birgīwī as he took it from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) works al-Jalāla and al-Futūḥāt alMakkiyya; however, the fact that Birgiwī did not quote Ibn al-ʿArabī even once in his famous work al-Tarīqat al-Muḥammadiyya, which he wrote in the field of Sufism and ethics, showed that this possibility is very weak.
After the commentaries and glosses, which were written around the 12th century, it showed that the first person to attribute the work to Birgiwī in the modern period was Hüseyin Nihal Atsız (d. 1975) and that the lughaz began to be counted among Birgiwī’s work in later studies.
As a result of the research conducted at the end of the article, it revealed that the real owner of the lughaz was Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī. As a matter of fact, Ibn al-ʿArabī’s work al-Abādila, in which he made fictional characters speak, showed that the lughaz was spoken by a fictional character named ʿAbdullah b. ʿAbdilbārī b. ʿIsā. So, by giving a picture of the part of this lughaz that was written in 663/1265, 250 years before Birgiwī was born, in a copy in Köprülü Library, Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, it is clearly shown that this work does not belong to Birgiwī.
In addition, the work of al-Madārī Ibrahim b. Mustafa b. Ibrahim al-Khalabī (d. 1190/1776), who came to Istanbul in the 18th century and worked as a scribe in Rāğıb Pasha Library, and where he annotated this lughaz attributing it to Ibn al-ʿArabī.
As a result, scholars who lived in the provinces generally wrote commentaries on the lughaz, while scholars in the center were not aware of it. Among the commentaries, there are more than ten manuscript copies of al-Khādimī and al-Niğdevī’s commentaries, while others have relatively fewer copies – some of them have only one copy.
There is not any concrete data on who, when or why the lughaz was attributed to Birgiwī, and the scholars who commented on the lughaz were not concerned with these questions and did not seek answers to them. As a matter of fact, the commentaries stated in the introduction that these writers wrote their works in line with requests directed to them to solve whether or not the lughaz attributed to Birgiwī was true and they did not question the reliability of the attribution of the work to Birgiwī or by whom it was made.
Finally, a table showing the manuscript libraries in which the lughaz and the commentary and gloss literature, which are generally in manuscript form, can be found is shared as an appendix.
