Approaches In Ottoman Tafsir Schools In The Context Of Hadith And Narration Sciences: Bursawi And Gurani As A Case Study

Abstract

The science of Tafsir is a fundamental science within the family of Islamic sciences, it is a science that originated for the understanding of the Noble Qur'an. In this regard it is considered one of the early Islamic sciences that arose in the time of the Companions and Successors. The Tafsir curriculum has formed in the time of formation of the curricula of other Islamic sciences, and in that time two types of curricula began to appear, the first method gives importance to the transmitted narrations of the Messenger and the Companions, while the second method attaches importance to the mind according to the rules of the language during the interpretation processes. Thus, a big Tafsir corpus was formed. The books of the first method are called tafsir by narration, while the second methodology is called tafsir by opinion. Those books reflected the orientations of their authors, the scientific milieu in which they received knowledge and the scientific accumulation was clearly reflected in the tafsir literature, so that some books gained great fame and became a reference for everyone who specializes in tafsir.

This study deals with the direction of "narration-based exegesis of the Qur'an" in the Ottoman era, through two Exegetes, Bursawi in his tafsir-work "Ruh al-Bayan" and Molla Kurani, in his work " Ghayat al-Amani". The reason for choosing these two Exegetes as a case study representing the Ottoman Quranic-exegesis, is -beside their fame-, their expertise in the field of Hadithsciences. Their works reflect how the Quran-Exegetes dealt with an exegesis based on islamic narrations. For anwsering this question, there is no doubt about the need for examining the Ottoman-intellectual context and searching for intellectual influences in the Ottoman school of Qur'anic-exegesis. During the study, we asked several questions in order to reach to a correct methodology for our applied part of this study, and the main question on which the study was based was: What is the impact of the hadith and the narrative in the interpretations, how was the authors' approach to the hadiths, which methodology that the authors used in choosing their hadiths and how they used them to serve their work of interpretations? Meanwhile, we tried to notice if these hadiths passed in the previous books of exegesis (Tafsir). Based on these questions, we examined in this study a sample of hadiths in the context of several aims and aspects, the most important of which are: the authenticity of the hadith, how the interpreter used the hadith, in order to reach at the basic research question which is the authority of Hadith in these two works. The hadiths that were studied were presented according to their degree of validity and the context of their quoting. Thus, the hadith table presented in the research became richer.

According to what we noticed from the sample that we analyzed; it was clear that these Tafsirs relied in the inclusion of hadiths on the previous books. This leaded us to say that the Ottoman commentaries did not highlight the interpretations which based on narrations nor did they give it great importance. In a conclusion, the Ottoman School of Tafsir is a school that is a continuation of linguistic, verbal and jurisprudential interpretations. It has been based and relied heavily on the interpretations that were previously written.

To go to some details about these two tafsir work, the research found that Bursawi used the Hadith in his tafsir for preaching purposes, he relied on Sufi-based methods of authentication like "ilham" and "kashf". The applied study showed that Bursawi was adopting the Kashf method to correct some hadiths. In addition to that, he advocated this approach and indicated the necessity to rely on this method because it is more reliable than the approach of Muhaddithin in his opinion. Therefore, wherever reliance on Kashf is possible, it is sufficient to accept hadiths. What is important in this context is that Bursawi used to say about these hadiths " authentic", useing a certain word to describe the hadith attribution to the Prophet.

Moreover, he tried to defend the idea: "This hadith was lied to him, not against him." Reffering to the famous Hadith: "Ascribing false things to me is not like ascribing false things to anyone else. Whosoever tells a lie against me intentionally then surely let him occupy his seat in Hell-Fire." On the other hand, Molla Kurani, despite being a Hadith-specialist, it did not clearly affect his approach of dealing with Hadith in his book of exegesis, but he was more accurate and cautious in dealing with the narrations in terms of authenticity and fame of his resources of books of hadith despite the fact that there were some errors in Tahrij and quotation.

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