Article

The Hashiya of Dursunzada Abdulbaqi Effendi on the Interpretation of the Chapter of Shu’ara: Verification and Analysis

Abstract

The outstanding aspects of exegetical hashiyas compared to independent tafsirs are that they can deepen the issues which have arisen during the interpretation of the verses, and make contributions to knowledge accumulation, by adding what is missing and making criticismand corrections. Dursunzada Abdulbaqi Effendi, one of the 16th century Ottoman scholars, wrote a hashiya on tafsirs dealing with various verses of the chapter of al-Shu'ara, which speak of the stories of the previous prophets. It may be said that his exegetical hashiya has two significant features: First, it differs from other exegetical hashiyas with regard to the number of the tafsirs, which it annotates. The hashiya consists of Dursunzada's comments on the interpretations of ten mufassirs, namely alBaghawī, Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī, al-Zamakhsharī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, al-Bayđāwī, Abū Ĥayyān, alSamīn al-Ĥalabī, Sa'dī Chalabi, Ibn Kamāl Pasha and Abu’l-Su˓ūd on various verses of the chapter of al-Shu’ara. The second feature of the work is that it mainly consists of criticism and corrections. Dursunzada Abdulbaqi Effendi frequently criticizes the interpretations of mufassirs on the verses and explains his own views by justifying them. He generally criticizes the explanations of mufassirs from two aspects. Firstly, Dursunzada deems the meanings assigned by the mufassirs to some words inappropriate regarding the usage of those words in Arabic. Secondly, he expressed that the meaning attributed by the mufassirs to the verses is problematic in terms of the contextual congruence of the relevant verses. Also in this article, the hashiya authored by Dursunzada Abdulbaqi Effendi on some verses of the chapter of al-Shu'ara is critically published by comparing the four manuscripts of the work in Millet and Suleymaniye libraries in Turkiye

Keywords

Tafsir Hashiya Criticism Ottoman Dursunzada Abdulbaqi Afandi