al-Fanārī

Early Ottoman scholar and the first holder of the office of müftü in the Ottoman capital, whose commentary al-Fawāʾid al-Fanāriyya became one of the two most famous commentaries on the Īsāghūjī.

Life

Al-Fanārī was born in Ṣafar 751 (April 1350). His given name was Muḥammad b. Ḥamza; the origin of the name ‘al-Fanārī’ is disputed (a village called Fenar, or his father’s trade as a lamp-maker are both suggested). He studied first with his father, then in Iznik with ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Aswad and in Amasya with Jamāl al-Dīn al-Aqsarāʾī, from whom he received a licence (ijāza) in 778/1376. He then travelled to Cairo, where he studied the religious sciences with Akmal al-Dīn al-Bābartī and others.

Back in Bursa, Sultan Bayezid I made him professor at the Manastır madrasa and, in 795/1393, judge (qāḍī) of Bursa. After the battle of Ankara he spent more than ten years teaching in Karaman, returned to Bursa in 817/1414 and was again appointed judge. In 828/1425 Murad II appointed him müftü; some sources therefore call him the first Ottoman şeyhülislâm, although TDV warns that the office did not yet have the institutional weight it acquired in the sixteenth century. He died in Bursa on 1 Rajab 834 (15 March 1431). His students included his son Meḥmed Şāh Fenārī, Qāḍīzāde-i Rūmī, al-Kāfiyajī and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī.

TDV describes his thought as an attempt to bring logic, the methodology of law (uṣūl al-fiqh) and the Sufi metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī’s school into one consistent whole, while belonging to the school of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī in philosophy and helping to carry Rāzī’s Avicennan system into the Ottoman tradition. He wrote on Qurʾān commentary, law, legal theory, Sufism and logic.

Works

• al-Fawāʾid al-Fanāriyya (Sharḥ Īsāghūjī) الفَوَائِدُ الفَنَارِيَّة — on ĪsāghūjīA blended (mamzūj) commentary, in which al-Abharī’s words are woven into al-Fanārī’s sentences. In its introduction al-Fanārī says friends complained that the Īsāghūjī was hard to understand, and that he wrote the commentary on one of the shortest days of the year, starting at the dawn prayer and finishing at the call to the evening prayer. Printed in Istanbul in 1253, 1263, 1266 and 1269 AH (TDV); a modern edition by Muṣṭafā Shaykh Muṣṭafā appeared in Beirut (Maktabat al-Hāshimī, 2nd ed. 2015).commentary
• Fuṣūl al-badāʾiʿ فُصُولُ البَدَائِعِHis best-known work on the methodology of law (printed Istanbul 1289).work
• Miṣbāḥ al-uns مِصْبَاحُ الأُنْسِA commentary on Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s Miftāḥ al-ghayb, which TDV calls a clear witness to his ties with Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysics.commentary

Reception

TDV calls al-Fawāʾid al-Fanāriyya one of the most famous commentaries on the Īsāghūjī and says it was read in Ottoman madrasas until recent times. Ahmet Kayacık notes that it was read especially at the ‘Yukarı İktisar’ stage of the madrasa course, together with Qul Aḥmad’s gloss.

Ḥājjī Khalīfa calls it ‘a precise, blended and subtle commentary’. The modern editor of al-Kātī writes that its brevity and tight style make it ‘almost a riddle’, yet it has remained in use in the schools ‘old and new’.

Its opening pages, which explain how a science gets its unity from its subject or its purpose (jihat al-waḥda), were later treated as a treatise of their own; a version with glosses by Meḥmed Emīn Shirwānī was printed as Jihat al-waḥda (Istanbul 1307).

Glosses on it include those of Qul Aḥmad, Burhān al-Dīn al-Bulghārī, Qara Khalīl (Khalīl b. Ḥasan, d. 1123; printed Cairo 1289) and one by a certain al-Jūrī (manuscript in Berlin).