Tefsir Araştırmaları Dergisi

Öz

The Ottoman tafsir tradition has a significant place in the tafsir tradition of Muslim societies. In the Otto-man period, in addition to complete tafsirs based on the order of the Mushaf, partial tafsirs which dealt only with the interpretation of certain sūrahs and verses were also written. The Ottoman-Turkish tafsir entitled Meʿālî-i Islâmiyye (The Glories of Islam) by Âbidin Pasha (d. 1906), who served as the governor of Ankara and other important bureaucratic positions during the reign of Abdülhamid II, is one of these works. Containing 236 verses selected from 61 different Qur’anic sūrahs, Meʿālî-i Islâmiyye contains im-portant information in terms of both rhetoric and content. In the work, the verses are first given their me-anings and then interpreted in a dirayah-oriented style. It is observed that the mufassir, albeit in a limited number in his work, resorts to interpretation methods that fall within the scope of narrative exegesis, such as explaining a verse with a verse in another sūrah or making istishhad with a hadith narration, in a style that we can call the exegesis of the Qur’an with the Qur’an. Âbidin Pasha does not give information about the source of the quotations he makes from past mufassirs in his tafsir and generally prefers to make a general reference by saying “according to some mufassirs”. This work, which is among the rare tafsirs written in Ottoman Turkish, contains traces of the author’s bureaucrat and scholarly personality as well as the socio-cultural and political structure of the period in which he lived. The fact that Âbidin Pasha wrote his tafsir at a time when reservations about the permissibility of translating the Qur’an occupied the agenda is of particular importance. The mufassir wanted to publish his meal commentary under the title Hikem-i Qur’ân about five years before he published it under the title Meʿālī-i Islâmiyya, but he was unable to do so because he could not obtain the necessary official permissions. The fact that Âbidin Pasha was subjected to such a publication ban despite being one of the important statesmen of the period is a phenomenon that needs to be analysed separately. It can be stated that Ābidin Pasha’s Sufi and Māturīdī identity came to the fore in his commentary. As a matter of fact, his references to Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī (d. 672/1273) can be associated with the Sufi identity of the mufassir, and his frequent emphasis on the importance of reason and human freedom of will in his comments on theological issues can be associated with his Māturīdī identity. In this study, the documents in the Ottoman archives regarding the content and publication process of the Meʿālî-i Islâmiyya of Ābidin Pasha, who came to the forefront not only with his duties at state levels but also with his scientific writings in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, are scanned with the documentary scanning method and it is aimed to complete and correct the incomplete and incorrect information about the work in the sources. Furthermore, the methods followed by the mufassir in the interpretation of the verses, the main topics he dealt with and the sources he used were evaluated. In addition, in order to contribute to a better understanding of Ābidin Pasha’s identity as a mufassir, the Latinized text of his commentary on Sūrah al-Fâtiha is included in the study.