Taşköprüzâde

Ottoman scholar and judge, author of the encyclopaedia of the sciences Miftāḥ al-saʿāda and the biographical dictionary al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmāniyya, whose autobiography records the logic books an Ottoman student read.

Life

According to his own account in al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmāniyya, he was born in Bursa on 14 Rabīʿ I 901 (2 December 1495), the son of the müderris Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Muṣṭafā, from whom the family name Taşköprüzâde comes. He followed his father to Ankara and Amasya and studied in Istanbul and Bursa with his uncle Qiwām al-Dīn Qāsim and with Şeyhzâde Muḥyī al-Dīn Meḥmed, among others. From 931/1525 he taught at a series of medreses in Dimetoka, Istanbul, Skopje and Edirne, rising to the Sahn-ı Semân; he was judge of Bursa in 952/1545 and of Istanbul in 958/1551, until an illness cost him his sight. He died in Istanbul on 30 Rajab 968 (16 April 1561).

He wrote about thirty treatises and several larger books in Arabic, on kalām, law, exegesis, ethics, logic, grammar and medicine, mostly in the commentary and gloss tradition; in theology he discussed the Ashʿarī authors but remained a Māturīdī. He is best known for Miftāḥ al-saʿāda, a bio-bibliographical encyclopaedia of the sciences, and al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmāniyya, the biographies of the scholars of the Ottoman state. He belonged to the Khalwatī order and was a skilled calligrapher, spending what he earned by it on his students.

His autobiography in the Shaqāʾiq is one of the few early sources for what an Ottoman student actually read. Fatma Zehra Pattabanoğlu summarises his list: in logic, the Īsāghūjī with Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Kātī’s commentary and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya with al-Jurjānī’s gloss; then Masʿūd al-Rūmī’s Ādāb al-baḥth, Mawlānāzāde’s commentary on al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma with Hocazâde’s gloss, al-Taftāzānī’s commentary on the creed with al-Khayālī’s gloss, al-Iṣfahānī’s commentary on the Ṭawāliʿ and al-Jurjānī’s commentaries on the Tajrīd and the Mawāqif. As a müderris he later taught several of the same books.

In the Miftāḥ al-saʿāda he praised logic. Khaled El-Rouayheb quotes his description of it as the highest of the instrumental sciences and the chief of the rational ones, as certain as the sun, which only those without understanding could doubt: ‘the blindness of the blind does no harm to the light of the morning sun’. He also wrote on the art of disputation and commented on his own treatise on it.

Works

• Miftāḥ al-saʿāda wa-miṣbāḥ al-siyāda fī mawḍūʿāt al-ʿulūm مِفْتَاحُ السَّعَادَةِ وَمِصْبَاحُ السِّيَادَةِ فِي مَوْضُوعَاتِ العُلُومِEncyclopaedia of the sciences (Hyderabad 1328–29; ed. Cairo 1968); translated into Turkish by his son Kemâleddin Meḥmed as Mevzûâtü’l-ulûm (Istanbul 1313).werk
• al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmāniyya fī ʿulamāʾ al-dawla al-ʿUthmāniyya الشَّقَائِقُ النُّعْمَانِيَّةُ فِي عُلَمَاءِ الدَّوْلَةِ العُثْمَانِيَّةِBiographies of Ottoman scholars, ending with his autobiography; ed. A. S. Furat (Istanbul 1985), Turkish tr. Muharrem Tan (2007).werk
• Sharḥ ʿalā Risāla fī ʿilm ādāb al-baḥth wa-l-munāẓaraCommentary on his own treatise on the art of disputation (Istanbul 1299; Baghdad 1375) (TDV).commentaar
• al-JāmiʿNamed in the TDV article on logic among the logic books of the sixteenth century; not described further.werk
• al-Maʿālim fī ʿilm al-kalāmTheological handbook arranged on the plan of al-Bayḍāwī’s Ṭawāliʿ al-anwār (manuscript).werk

Reception

His Miftāḥ al-saʿāda became a source for later reference works: Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Abjad al-ʿulūm, for example, cites it in its entry on logic.

El-Rouayheb cites him as evidence that mainstream Ottoman scholars of the sixteenth century taught and praised logic, unaffected by al-Suyūṭī’s and Ibn Nujaym’s objections.