EL-MANTIKU’L-KEBÎR, FAHREDDÎN ER-RÂZÎ TARAFINDAN MI TELİF EDİLDİ? AİDİYET PROBLEMİ ÜZERİNE BİR İNCELEME

Fakh al-Din al-Razi is considered as the initiator (al-imam/authority) of the "mutaahhir" period, an important period in the history of logic. And the subject of this article is about “al-Mantiq al-Kabir”, his most comprehensive work on logic. The critical edition of the work has not been prepared for reasons such as being a single copy and having no record that it belongs to al-Razi, and no work has been done on it yet. However, al-Mantiq al-Kabir is the first large-scale and independent work of Razi on logic, and in this respect it is among the sources of his other works such as al-Mulahhas, Sarh al-Isharat va al-Tanbihat and Sharh al-Uyun al-Hikmah.

Fakhr al-Dîn ar-Rāzī, one of the most prominent philosophers and commentators in the tradition of Islamic logic, had influenced the content and scope of the subsequent logical studies. In parallel with this significance, plenty of his works on logic have been published and also have become the subject of different academic researches. Nevertheless, there is an exception to this case, and it is the author’s book titled “al-Mantiq al-Kabīr.” This major book on logic has been accomplished to be able to escape from the attention of the researchers until now, and there are many reasons for this situation that will be mentioned in the following pages. However, the most worth mentioning one is the fact we have only one extant manuscript copy of the book. Here, we aim to present a scholarly edition of this single manuscript. In fact, the book’s first encounter with the reader has occurred a short while ago in the form of the thesis. We edited the manuscript and studied on it within the framework of our Ph.D. dissertation. However, through this scholarly edition, al-Mantiq al-Kabīr will be presented to the attention of the academic world in the strict sense.

There are several suspicions about both al-Mantiq al-Kabīr and the copy of Topkapi Palace. Some argue against that there is a book titled al-Mantiq al-Kabīr written by Fakhr al-Dîn al-Rāzī. Others oppose the claim of al-Rāzī’s authorship for the copy of Topkapi Palace. On account of the fact that we have only one extant copy of the book and indeed there are some points which seem at first glance supporting those objections, it is necessary to tackle this problem. To this respect, the following lines will include both objections and our answers to them.

Khaled El-Rouayheb expresses some doubts about the content of al-Mantiq al-Kabīr and states that the current copy may have been created by the logicians after al-Rāzī. According to him, even if al-Rāzī had such a work, it is not the present copy. But here is not fully explained what does the “content” means. It is possible to say that the system and content of the work differs from later works.

Hayri Kaplan, on the base of these reasons, asserts that it is proven for sure that al-Rāzī is not the compiler of it. However, the typeface of the note regarding the name of al-Qazwīnī is different from the one belongs to the book’s main text, and this fact allows us to argue for the claim that it is added by someone else later. For the main text penned with the typeface of Naskh and without any dot in good order. As for notes on fol. 1a, these are with dots and written with the typeface of Riqa. Additionally, their script does not seem much painstaking. At the same folio, along with the seals of Sultan Bayezid II and Mustafa III, the ownership statement belonging to Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Tabasī is discerned. The typeface by which Najm al-dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī’s name penned matches up with the ownership statement’s typeface. In the present case, then, it can be said that the note regarding al-Qazwīnī is an “ownership statement” rather than “compilation statement,” or perhaps, al-Tabasī attributed the copy to al-Qazwīnī who held it for a while. As another possibility, this note may be a side note denoting the fact that it was read or reviewed by al-Qazwīnī. Number 15 below the name of al-Tabasī and also number 51 at the center of the folio grab reader’s attention. Although we cannot provide any convincing proof, those may just be referring to the amount of money the holder paid for the copy or to the record order of the book at the holder’s library.

In a nutshell, after we thoroughly examine the works of bibliographers writing on the classical period and the contents of al-Rāzī’s books and finally the extant copy of al-Mantiq al-Kabīr, as a consequence, it can be said that there is no evidence whatsoever to give rise to any severe doubt about al-Rāzī’s authorship.

Fahreddîn er-Râzî’nin el-Mantıku’l-Kebîr adlı eserini ilk defa doktora tezi olarak çalışmaya karar vermiş idik. Eserin müellife aidiyeti hususunda varit bazı tartışmalar, başlangıçta bazı zorluklar ile yüzleşmeyi gerektirse de hocalarımızın teşvik ve tevcihleri ile bu çalışma, biiznillâh, tamamlandı. Tek nüshadan tahkik yapmak, kolay gibi görünüyor olsa da, metnin sağlıklı biçimde ortaya çıkarılması için müellifin tüm eserlerini ve hatta ilgili alanda telif edilen benzeri eserleri de inceleme zarureti, tek nüshadan tahkik yapmanın en temel zorluğudur. Bu tahkikte karşılaştığımız bir başka zorluk ise tek nüshanın tahkik mi yoksa neşir mi olduğuna yönelik tartışmalardır. Söz konusu tartışmalara, tahkik çalışmalarının akademik sayılıp sayılmayacağına yönelik bazı mülahazalar da eklendiğinde; karşımıza cevaplanması gereken bir sorular bütünü çıkmaktadır. Bu soruların cevaplandırılmasına yönelik bilimsel araştırmaları önemli görmekle birlikte; çalışmalarımızın deneye ya da gözleme değil de temelde “metinlere dayanıyor” olması nedeniyle, mevcut alandaki tüm metinlerin, büyük-küçük, şerh-telif demeden tahkik edilmesini ve hatta dilimize kazandırılmasını bir zorunluluk olarak gördüğümüzü ifade etmek istiyoruz.