Saçaklızâde

Ottoman scholar of Maraş who criticised gloss-heavy madrasa teaching in his Tartīb al-ʿulūm and wrote the Waladiyya, the short handbook of disputation read after logic from Istanbul to Cairo and Kurdistan.

Life

Mehmed Efendi, known as Saçaklızâde, was born in Maraş in south-eastern Anatolia around 1070–1080/1660–1670. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he studied in Maraş with Ḥasan al-Marʿashī, Dārendeli Ḥamza Efendi and Ayıntābī Mehmed Efendi, and in Damascus with ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī, from whom he read exegesis, ḥadīth and Sufism and received licences in the Qādiriyya and Naqshbandiyya. Back in Maraş he was imam of a mosque and taught in the madrasa beside it; the TDV finds no evidence that he held a state office. He died in Maraş in 1145/1732, though other dates and places are also recorded. His works are estimated at between thirty and a hundred and twenty.

His Tartīb al-ʿulūm (completed 1128/1716) is a guide to the sciences and their textbooks. Khaled El-Rouayheb shows that it attacked not logic but the way it was taught: it was ‘an ill practice’ to make students read al-Fanārī’s commentary on the Īsāghūjī together with Qul Aḥmad’s gloss, and ‘working on the abstruse parts of a discipline before understanding its clear issues’ only hindered understanding; he recommended starting with Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Kātī’s commentary, and advised reading al-Fanārī only after Quṭb al-Dīn’s commentary on the Shamsiyya. In El-Rouayheb’s study of the status of logic he is the representative Ottoman voice: logic, he wrote, is recommended and a collective duty, partly because knowing the proofs is a condition of knowing the principles of law, and it sharpens the mind.

In disputation (ādāb al-baḥth) he wrote a large summa, Taqrīr al-qawānīn al-mutadāwala fī ʿilm al-munāẓara, and an abridgement of it, al-Risāla al-Waladiyya, with his own commentary. The Waladiyya became a standard text, usually read after logic; it was commented on many times and printed by the Azhar press in 1331/1912–13 with the commentaries of the Diyarbakır scholar ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Āmidī and of Mehmed Behisnī. He also commented on al-Samarqandī’s treatise on debate and wrote on logic proper (al-ʿArāʾis fī l-manṭiq, a commentary on al-Risāla al-qiyāsiyya). Dāwūd al-Qārṣī, a younger critic of the same tradition, abridged his Taqrīr and wrote a ‘new Waladiyya’ meant to replace his.

Works

• Tartīb al-ʿulūm تَرْتِيبُ العُلُومِCompleted 1128/1716; a survey of the sciences and their textbooks with criticism of madrasa practice. Edited by Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Sayyid Aḥmad (Beirut 1988).work
• Taqrīr al-qawānīn al-mutadāwala fī ʿilm al-munāẓara تَقْرِيرُ القَوَانِينِ المُتَدَاوَلَةِ فِي عِلْمِ المُنَاظَرَةِHis summa of disputation; printed Istanbul 1289/1872–73 (El-Rouayheb).work
• al-Risāla al-Waladiyya الرِّسَالَةُ الوَلَدِيَّةُShort handbook of disputation abridged from the Taqrīr, with his own commentary Taḥrīr al-Taqrīr; translated into Turkish by Serbestzāde Aḥmed Ḥamdī and commented on by many. Printed Cairo 1331/1912–13 with the commentaries of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Āmidī and Mehmed Behisnī.matn
• Sharḥ al-Risāla al-Samarqandiyya — on Shams al-Dīn al-SamarqandīCommentary on al-Samarqandī’s treatise on the etiquette of debate (TDV).commentary
• al-ʿArāʾis fī l-manṭiq; Sharḥ al-Risāla al-qiyāsiyyaWorks on logic listed by the TDV.work

Reception

The Waladiyya appears in the Ottoman study plans after the logic primers (Erzurumlu İbrāhīm Ḥaqqī’s Tertīb-i ʿulūm puts it after al-Fanārī) and in the Kurdish course, where it was memorised after the commentary on the Shamsiyya (see ‘The Ottoman medrese’ and ‘Kurdish madrasas and the Shīʿī ḥawza’).

El-Rouayheb cites Stefan Reichmuth’s view that his favourable stance towards logic was typical of the Ottoman scholars of his time.