ULUSLARARASI BEDRUDDIN EL-AYNI SEMPOZVUMU VE

II. HADiS iHTiSAS TOPLANTISI SEMPOlYUM TEBLiGLERi, MOZAKERELERi,

lHTiSAS TOPLANTISI, KONU~MA METiNLERi VE ALINAN KARARLAR

Editor

Yrd. Do~. Dr. RECEP TUZCU

Editor YardJmcJsl Ar~. Gar. M. RA~iT AKP~NAR

GAZiANTEP 10/11 MAVIS 2013

Turkiye Diyanet Vakft Yaymlan: 628

Uluslararast Bedn1dd!n El-Aynt Sempozyumu ve II. Hadi.s ihtisas Toplanf.lsl

-Sempozyum Tebligleri, Mtizahereleri, lhtisas Toplanttsr, Konu~ma Metinleti

ve Alman Kararlar-EditOr: Yrd. Do~;. Dr. Recep Tuzcu

Editor Yardtmcrst: Ars. Gor. l\·1. Ra$it Akpmar Grafik, Tasanm: T,woos

ISBN 978-975-389-876-8 © Blltlln p;m haklan Turkiye Oi):anet

Val

FOUR CHRONICLES ATTRIBUTED TO BEDRUDDIN AYNI

Nobutaka Nakamachi*

The Mamluk historians, al-Sakhawt (d. 1497) and Ibn Taghribirdi (d. 1470), identified Aynis three chronicles as a major history in nineteen or twenty volumes, a minor history in eight volumes, and

"an excerpt of it (mukhtasar-hu)" in three volumes. However, no his-torian during the Mamluk Period noted the titles of Ayms chroni-cles, except for Ibn Iyas (d. 1524), who referred to Ayni as "the au-thor of al-Ta'1ikh al-Badrf." Later, an Ottoman bibliographer, Haci Halife (d. 1657), stated the major history as corresponding to Aynis famous chronicle, 'ikd al-]uman ft Ta'nkh Ahl al-Zamtln (hearafter, '1hd), and the minor one to Ta'tikh al-Badrft Aw~ci.f Ahl al-'~r (hear-after, Badr). However, closer examination of the manuscriplS of '1hd reveals that there are four different versions of text preserved under the name of 'lhd. What does the fourth chronicle stand for?

This study trealS the four chronicles attributed to Ayni as four independent works. A codicological survey and a textual compar-ison clarify when, how, and why Ayni wrote each of his chronicles. At the end of the presentation, we examine the importance of his-torical narrative practice for Aynis career: writing, reading and cir-culating his historical works.

* Kanan University. Faculty of Letters Ogretim Oyesi.

ULUSLARARASI BEORUDDIN EL·AYNI SEMPOZVUMU

'thd: the major chronicle Ayni originally wrote '1kd in 19 volumes, of which 14 autographs are extant. Even though these manuscripts ~re scattered among

the Topkap1 Palace Library. the Beyazit National Library, and the

Suleymaniye Library. we can recogr~ize them as a coherent se-

ries because of their common features: they were written by the-

same handwriting onto the same number of lines on the same

sized paper. Besides, in the title pages of them all, there are brief

notes:

The author of it (this manuscript), Mahmud Ayni al-Hanafi,

stopped [to endow] it and regulated it in the waqf document and its position should be in his school (Waqafa musattir-hu wa-mu'allif-hu Mahmud Ayni al-Hanafi wa-sharata-hu ft kitab al-waqf wa-maqan·-hu madrasat-hu).

These notes show that the series of manuscripts was endowed

as waqf property by Ayni himself to his school, the Badriyyah School. This series might be the 'Ikd's final version, from which one of Ayni's disciples, al-Ikhmimt, copied, as seen below. It might

have been preserved at the Badriyyah until the Ottoman army

took them and removed them to palace libraries.

Table 1 lists these autographs of 'ikd, showing the completion date of each manuscript, as written in the colophon of each one.

We can add to the list the completion date of volume 14 as Re-

biiilahir 24, 832 I January 30, 1429, even though the autograph itself is not extant, because it is recorded by al-Ikhmlmi in his

manuscript copied from the autograph. This list demonstrates that

Ayni seems to have written a volume about every three months.

Consequently, we can guess that he started to write volume 1 dur-

ing Sevval824/0ctober 1421 at the. latest. When then did he fin-

ish writing the whole series of'Ikd? Although volume 19 lacks a colophon at the end, this vol-

ume was probably completed after 850/1446-4 7 because its de-

scription is not finished till849AH. However, if we look closely at

this manuscript, a basmalah phrase at the head of "chapter of the events in the year 838" divides the contents into two parts. In the

first half, when he names Sultan Barsbay, Ayni always put honor-

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should not be regarded as a political offering, but as something

that Aynt wrote for his own literary and academic interest.

Before moving to Badr, we should look at the other copies of 'lkd. Although no copies of 'lkd which were produced during the lifetime of the author are extant, dozens of 'lkd manuscripts cop-ied during the Mamluk Period are extant. Among them, eight

manuscripts copied by one of Aynls disciples, Muhammad b. Ah-

mad b. Muhammad al-lkhmimi, from 892 to 898 is the most im-

ponant, because he copied directly from the authors autographs.

This Ikhmimi set has primary imponance after the autographs,

and as Table 2 dlsplays, this set complements volumes 4, 14 and 16, which the autograph set lac~. Another copyist during the

Mamluk Period is 'AbdAllah b. 'lsa b. Isma'il al-'Umari al-Azhari,

whose information is not found in any contemporary biographi-

cal sources. Fifteen copies, which was copied or seemed to be cop-

ied by him, have a different structure of volume from both the au-

tograph set and the lkhmimi set; every two volume by al-Azhari

equal one volume of autographs. The Azhari set is also impor-

tant as a primary source because it has alm_?st the same contents

as the original text and, above all, because it fills for the time gap in the autographs and the Ikhmimi set. As de~onstrated in Table 2, volumes 9 and 10 of al-Azhari:S version fill the lacuna of origi-

nal volume 5.

In addition, several 4-tome sets of Ikd were copied during the Ottoman Period. These sets can be separated into smaller volumes,

each of which is copied from either a 19-volume set or a half-vol-

ume set. They sometimes have lacunae for the length of a volume

or a half, mentioning, "From [the year] 689 to 708, original man-

uscript lacks" in the Ottoman-Turkish language [B~ir Aga 457:

227v]. Thus, the Ottoman-era 4-tome sets should be regarded as

incoherent texts of only minor importance as primary sources.

Bad1; the minor chronicle Many scholars have confused Badr with an excerpt of 'tkd or '1kd itself. For example, Siileymaniye 830 is regarded as a manuscript

of 'ikd even in a newly published catalogue of the Siileyrnaniye Li-

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es stating '"ihd al-]uman," these pages seerr;t clearly to be added in a later period. Rather, the first volume has a preface by the au-

thor, calling this history "al-Tar'ihh al-Badri." Therefore these man-uscripts might be regarded as the original text of Badr; further re-search, however, is needed to confirm this conclusion.

The preface attached to the first volume of Badr can also be seen in two other manuscripts: Es'ad 2165 and Selim 833.The

preface is translated as follow:

... Now then, the poor servant of God the Powerful, Mahmud

b. Ahmad al-Sharuhi Ayni, says: it had filled my heart to compile a book

ARAPQ.·TARIH ALANlARINOA El·AYNi

cise information of Ayni until he made a pilgrimage from Egypt to

Mecca in 799/1397. He might have moved to Cairo before the pil-

grimage, and continued to live there until he died. Therefore, he

might have decide to settle himself in Cairo about the same time

he started writing Bad1: Next, Aynt states that his main source for his history is Ibn

Kathir. This is almost the only place Ayni notes his source in Badr, whereas in 'lhd he often notes his sources. This testimony agrees with that of his contemporary, the historian Ibn Hajar, and say-

ing, [Aynl) stated that Ibn Kathlr is his source ('umdah) in his his-tory And it is [right) as he stated." ln fact, however, Ayni had a

. source other than Ibn Kathir at wrting Badr, as previous studies have qemonstrated. Nevertheless, he often notes erroneously his

source as "Ibn Kathir said" in 'thd instead. of referring to his true source. This source reference indicates that Ayni surely planned

to write his Badr by summarizing Ibn Kathir at the beginning and that he might later misconceive his entire sources as Ibn Kathir

when writing 'ikd. Finally, in this preface he names this chronicle "a!-Ta1ihh al-

Badrt," using the adjective form of "Bad1:" This name contradicts the better-known title "Tmihh al-Bad1;" using the noun form. A lat-er historian, likely Haci Haltfe, altered the original title to a new

one, changing Bad1i to Badr, which seems to rhyme, even if imper-fectly, with the final pait of the title,':ft Awsaf Ahl al-'Asr."

TwoExwpts · The Topkapi Museum Library has other two autograph manu-

scripts of Ayni, labeled as Ahmet Ill 2911/B1 and B2. Although

they both lack titles and colophons, their outward features resem-

ble the 19-volume series of 'lhd autographs. Further, the first fo-lios of these two contain brief notes about waqf: "The author of it (this manuscript), Mahmud al-Hanafi, stopped [to endow) it and

regulated it in the waqf document and its position should be in his school." However, each of these two cover~ a longer period in one

volume than the 19-volume series of 'thd; B1 covers from 95 to 520 AH and B2 from 726 to 835, whereas volume 7 of 19 volumes

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UlUSLARARASI BEORUODIN EL-AYNI SEMPOZVUMU

covers from 96 to 150 and volume 17 from 725 to 745 . These

shorter periods mean that B 1 and B2 contains relatively thinner

descriptions than the full text of '1kd. A bibliographical survey clarifies that the time gap between

these two manuscripts can be complemented by another manu-

script, Selim 840. These three share common features: handwrit-

ing, size and a brief note about waqf at the beginning. Further-more, as Table 5 shows, Selim 840 fits into the gap between B1

and B2; therefore, we could regard these three manuscripts as a

coherent set.

What then is this set? A textual comparison between B2 and

A17, i.e. volume 17 of 'tkd, shows that the former contains much less information than the latter and that the latter includes all the

paragraphs contained in the former. Further, the topic order in B2

follows that of '1kd. In contrast, if B2 is compared to Suleymani-ye 830, i.e. volume 9 of Badr, it can be found that the topic order in B2 is thoroughly different from that of Suleymaniye 830 and

that some information in B2 is not included in Suleymaniye 830.

Therefore, we can conclude that B2 is excerpt version of 'lkd's full text, not that of Badr. Consequently, this three-piece autograph set should be regarded as an excerpt of 'lkd.

Among the manuscripts of this set, Selim 840 has a colophon,

which shows its completion date as 1431. As Table 6 illustrates,

this date suggests more accurate completion date of the full text

of 'ikd which was not clear from data shown in Table 1. Selim 840 covers volume 12 to 16 of'ikd,; therefore, volume 15 and 16 must be written between 1429, the year volume 14 was written,

and 1431, the year Selim 840 was written. Likewise, Ahrnet lli 2911/B1, which covers volume 7 to 11 of'lkd, must be written af-ter 1428, the year volume 11 was written. Although it is difficult

to determine the completion date of Ahmet Ill 2911/B2, which

covers volume 17 to the first half of volume 19, it may have been

completed after 8.38/1434-35. Thus, it seems that Aynt wrote the

excerpts of 'lkd from 1428 at the earliest to after 1435; he wrote the excerpts of 'lkd after he had almost finished the full text of it.

. The previous study determined that Selim 83 7 is the fourth

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ARAPc;A-TARlH AlANlARINDA EL-AYNi

variant of Aynis chronicle. This manuscript, which seems to have

Sihabuddtn Aynis handwriting, lacks its title page and is labeled

as a Badr manuscript; however, a sample text of the year 728 AH shows that its contents differ from those of Suleymaniye 830, i.e.

the text of Badr. Rather, even though the descriptions of the former are shorter than the latter, the latter includes all the paragraphs of

the former in the same order. Hence, Seilm 837 should be regard-

ed as an excerpt of Badr. The author conjectures that Selim 837 belongs to the chroni-

cle known as al-Tarihh al-Sihabi (hereafter Sihdbi). As Cahen and Karatay point out, this chronicle is an independent work written

by Sihabuddin Ayni, the younger brother of Aynt; five manuscripts

of it written by the author are extant. Table 7 describes the data of SiMbT manuscripts, juxtaposing th~ data of Selim 83 7. These

six manuscripts share outward features including their handwrit-

ing. Furthermore, if one of the Sihcib! manuscripts is compared with 'lhd, the excerpt of 'lhd, and Bad1; we can recognize that the textual relationship of these four variants is parallel to that of Se-

lim 83 7 and the other three variants. Table 8 shows the result of

a sample test of the year 565/1169-70, referring to published ver-

sion of'lhd, Selim 840 (excerpt of'lhd), Selim 839 (Badr), and Ah-met Ill 2952/6 (Shihabi). Shihabi can be regarded as an excerpt of Bad1; just as in the sample test of the year 728, surveyed in the pre-vious study.

These surveys, identifying two excerpts of so-called "Aynis

chronicle," determined conclusively their actual provenance: one

is an excerpt of 'lhd, and the other is that of Bad1: The 'lhds excerpt is "the excerpt of it" which the Ottoman bibliographer Haci Halife

states, whereas the Badrs excerpt is not Aynts work but his broth-er Sihabuddins work.

Conclusio'n Now we have analysed the overall structure of the historical works

attributed to Ayni. Among the four variants, the oldest one is Badr, which was originally named al-Tatihh al-Badli, a title known by the end of the Mamluk Period. Aynt began writing this chroni-

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de, summarizing Ibn Kathirs chronicle, when he settled down in Cairo around 799/1396. Then Ayntbegan writing ikd, his largest

chronicle and the second oldest, about 824/1421. Although writ-ten at almost the same time as his patron Barsbay seized the pow-

er, lhd should not be regarded as an offering to this monarch but as a revised version for Aynts own literary and academic interest.

After he had almost finished the full text of ikd, Ayni began writing its excerpt, the third variant. Last, the fourh variant, which cor-responds exactly to the excerpt of Badr, was not written by Ayni, but by his younger brother, Sihabuddtn Aynt, as an independent

chronicle titled Sihcibt. Further, we stress that as far as we know volume 18 of ikd has

no autographs or copies written during the Mamluk Period. Even

among the 4-tome versions copied during the Ottoman Period, we do not have any original text containing the descriptions of

volume 18; instead, some Ottoman copyists cited the equivalent descriptions from Badr. This missing original shows that the orig-inal text of volume 18 had lost by the eighteenth century, when

they were copied and translated into Otto~an-Turkish. Therefore, until the original text of volume 18 is found, even though this

is unlikely, we recommend that the future publication of edition covering the period of volume 18 should be based on the excerpt

of lkd, Ahmet lll2911/B2, and on Badr, whether BL or Suleyman-iye 830.

How then do we evaluate Aynfs history writing practice in

a context of intellectual history? His first and minor chronicle, Badr, was written at the start of his political and social career in Cairo. Then he began writing his major chronicle, lkd, at the

heyday of his career. It is obvious that these two works have dif-ferent writing purposes; Badr was intended to summarize a fa-mous chronicle in his day, Ibn Kathirs Bidayah; lkdwas aimed as an extensive history. ihd might be the text which Ayni read in the

presence of Sultan Barsbay, as Mamluk historians pointed out, even it was not made as a political offering. Rather, Aynt might

have written the ikd excerpt as a short summary for easily ex-

plaining it to sultans.