Katib Çelebi

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This map of the Indian Ocean and the Sea of ​​China was printed by the Ottoman scholar İbrahim Müteferrika in 1728. It comes from the book Cihannuma by Kâtib Çelebi

Kâtib Çelebi , Muṣṭafa ibn ʿAbd Allāh or Hâcci Halfa (* 1609 in Istanbul ; † 1657 ibid) was an Ottoman-Turkish polymath . He wrote in Arabic and Turkish, but also translated works from French and Latin.

Life

Kâtib Çelebi's father was Silahdar (body cavalryman) at the Sublime Porte and secretary in the financial administration ( Anadolı muhasebesi ). His mother, who came from a wealthy Istanbul family, left him a sizeable inheritance. From 1622 he worked as his father's deputy. In 1624 both went to war against Abaza Paşa of Erzurum and to recapture Baghdad . Kâtib's father and uncle died when they withdrew from Baghdad. Back in Istanbul he became a student of Kadizade Mehmed Efendi , after whom the Kadizade movement was named. Two further campaigns, first to Iran, then again to Baghdad (1629–1631), interrupted his studies for some time; it ended in 1633 with a new military commitment.

In Aleppo he began to build the base for his library and also did the Hajj to Mecca . After staying in Yerevan and Tabriz due to the war , he returned to Istanbul in 1635, which he never left. After the death of his former teacher Kadızade, he continued his studies independently. Chronicles, geographical works, maps, astronomy, mathematics, law and all the basic sciences of a medrese (university) were his area of ​​interest. Financially independent due to his inheritance, he did not graduate with a degree, but built the largest private library of his time in Istanbul. At this time he wrote his first works. He was in contact with many educated personalities, including those from the West. With some politicians, e.g. B. with Köprülü Mehmed Paşa , he was in close relationships.

Kâtib Celebi died of a heart attack in 1657, which is why some works remained unfinished. Since his only son died young, his library was sold after the death of his widow in 1659. Some of it was acquired by Levinus Warner for the University of Leiden (Legatum Warnerianum).

Works

22 works are known, including:

  • Fadhlakat al-tawārīkh (1639)
  • Takvîm al-tevârîh (1648), a chronology from Adam to the year 1648. The work was translated into Italian by Rinaldi Carlo in 1697 as Cronologia historica .
  • Keşf ez-zuûn 'an esâmî el-kutub ve-l-fünûn (كشف الظنون عن أسامي الكتب والفنون). In this work he bibliographically lists around 14,500 book titles from Arabic, Persian and Turkish books. It formed the basis for the Bibliothèque Orientale of the French orientalist Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville . It was published with a Latin translation from 1835-1858 by Gustav Leberecht Flügel ( digitized version ).
  • Cihânnümâ , Weltenspiegel, which Katib Çelebi began to write in 1648 and in which he used European atlases and sources for the first time.
  • Düstûr ül-Amel fî Islâh il-Halel ("Practical Guide to Mending Evil")
  • Tarih-i Frengi - Translation of the Chronique de Jean Carrion , Paris 1648
  • Revnak al-sultāna - translation of the Historia rerum in Oriente gestarum , Frankfurt 1687
  • Dustūr al-amal li islah al-khalal (1653)
  • Tuhfat al-kibâr fi asfâr al-Bihâr (1656) - History of the Ottoman Navy
  • Mīzān al-ḥaqq fī iḫtiyār al-aḥaqq (1656), see below.

Mīzān al-Haqq

In his treatise Mīzān al-ḥaqq fī iḫtiyār al-aḥaqq (“The scales of truth in choosing who is entitled”), Katib Çelebi deals with a number of religious and ethical issues that were discussed intensely at the time. These include the question of whether Chidr is still alive (chap. 1), the permission to sing (chap. 2), dance and dhikr (chap. 3), and the expression of the blessing formula for the prophet and his companions (chap. 4 ), the consumption of tobacco (chap. 5), coffee (chap. 6), and various drugs (chap. 7), the prophet's parents problem (chap. 8) the Pharaoh's belief (chap. 9), the controversy surrounding Ibn Arabi (chap. 10), the curse of Yazid (chap. 11), the concept of bid'a (chap. 12), the question of visiting graves (chap. 13), the prayers in the nights of Lailat al-Bara ' a , Lailat ar-raghā'ib and Lailat al-Qadr (chap. 14), shaking hands (chap. 15), bows (chap. 16), the concept of al-Amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿani l-munkar (chap. 17), the concept of the milla (religious community) (chap. 18), bribery (chap. 19), the controversy between Mehmed Ebussuud Efendi and Birgili Mehmed Efendi (chap. 20) and the controversy between the Chalwati -Sufi Abdülmedschid Efendi and his opponent Kadızade (chapter 21). Katib Çelebi offers its own solutions to all disputes and tries to mediate between the extreme positions. The book was translated into English by Geoffrey L. Lewis under the title The Balance of Truth in 1957 and examined by Florian Zemmin with regard to the ideas of action that become visible in it.

literature

  • Gottfried Hagen: An Ottoman geographer at work: origin and world of thoughts by Katib Celebis Ğihannüma , Klaus-Schwarz-Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-87997-303-2 .
  • Gottfried Hagen: Kātib Çelebī. In: Cemal Kafadar, Hakan Karateke, Cornell Fleischer (eds.): Historians of the Ottoman Empire , March 2007 ( online , PDF, 871 kB).
  • Klaus Kreiser : The Ottoman State 1300-1922 , Oldenbourg, 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58588-9 , page 101f.
  • Kreiser / Neumann: A Little History of Turkey , Reclam, 2003, ISBN 3-15-010540-4 , pages 190, 208, 235f, 239f.
  • Richard Franz Kreutel: Mustafa bin 'Abdullah , in: Biographical Lexicon for the History of Southeast Europe . Vol. 3. Munich 1979, p. 270 f.
  • Franz Taeschner : The Ottoman Literature in Handbook of Oriental Studies: Turkology , BRILL, 1982, ISBN 90-04-06555-5 , page 316f.
  • Florian Zemmin: Islamic ethics of responsibility in the 17th century. A Weberian understanding of Kātib Čelebi's (1609-1657) ideas of action . (= Bonn Islam Studies ; 26). ebv-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 3-86893-065-5 .
  • Historians of the Ottoman Empire . In: Don Babai (Ed.): Reflections on the past, visions for the future . Harvard University. Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2004, ISBN 978-0-9762727-0-0 , pp. 97-99. ( Excerpt from Google Books )

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Katib Çelebi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muṣṭafa Ibn ʿabd Allāh, Hâcci Halfa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ottoman scholar
DATE OF BIRTH 1609
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul
DATE OF DEATH 1657
Place of death Istanbul