Elmalili Muhammed Hamdi Yazir

One of the religious scholars of the late period, known for his Qur'an commentary Hak Dini Kur'an Dili (1878-1942); exegete, jurist, thinker and calligrapher. He signed his writings Küçük Hamdi ("Hamdi the Younger"); with the Surname Law he took the surname Yazır, but he became better known as Elmalılı, after his birthplace.

He was born in the district of Elmalı in Antalya. His father Numan Efendi, originally from the village of Yazır in the Gölhisar district of Burdur, was chief clerk of the Sharia court of Elmalı; his forefathers Mehmed, Bekir, Hasan and Bedreddin Efendi belonged to the learned class. His mother Fatma Hanım was the daughter of Sarlarlı Mehmed Efendi. He completed his primary and secondary education and his memorization of the Qur'an at Elmalı, then went to Istanbul with his maternal uncle Mustafa Efendi to continue his studies and settled in the Küçük Ayasofya madrasa (1895). He received his licence from Mahmud Hamdi Efendi of Kayseri, whose lessons he followed at the Beyazıt Mosque; thereafter his teacher was called "Hamdi the Elder" and he "Hamdi the Younger". During his studies he also attended the calligraphy lessons of Bakkal Arif Efendi and Sami Efendi and received licences from them. In 1904 he passed the ruus examination, and he graduated first from the Mekteb-i Nüvvab, which he was attending. By his own efforts he learned literature, philosophy and music.

In the hope that it would bring the country to the level of modern science and civilization, he championed constitutional government; he joined the learned section of the Committee of Union and Progress and worked to develop a model of constitutional government in accordance with the Sharia rather than one on the European pattern. After two years as a lecturer at the Beyazıt madrasa he entered the first parliament of the Second Constitutional Period as deputy for Antalya. He played an effective part in the deposition of Abdülhamid II by persuading the fatwa officer Nuri Efendi, who had refused his consent, and by writing the draft of the fatwa. He served in the Correspondence Office of the Şeyhülislam, and taught jurisprudence at the Mekteb-i Nüvvab and the Mekteb-i Kudat, legal theory at the Medresetü'l-mütehassısin, logic at the Süleymaniye madrasa and waqf law at the Mülkiye school. In 1915-1917 he took part in the Ramadan huzur lessons as a respondent. He became a member, and after a while president, of the Darü'l-hikmeti'l-İslamiyye founded in 1918. He served as minister of pious foundations in the first and second governments of Damad Ferid Pasha; on 15 September 1919 he was appointed to the Senate and his scholarly rank was raised to that of professor at the Süleymaniye madrasa.

With the proclamation of the Republic the institutions in which he had served were abolished and he was left without office. Because he had served in the Istanbul governments during the National Struggle, the Independence Tribunal sentenced him to death in absentia; he was taken from his house in Fatih to Ankara and held for forty days. At the end of the trial he was found not guilty — according to the source probably because of his membership of the Committee of Union and Progress — and released. After returning to Istanbul he never left his house except to go to the mosque; in this period of financial hardship, having no income, he completed his translation Metalib ve Mezahib. When the Grand National Assembly decided to have a Turkish commentary on the Qur'an prepared, the Presidency of Religious Affairs offered him the task; he accepted, wrote Hak Dini Kur'an Dili, and succeeded in completing it before his death.

He died on 27 May 1942 of the heart failure from which he had long suffered, in his son-in-law's house at Erenköy, and was buried in the Sahrayıcedid Cemetery.

His Circle of Influence — The source regards him as a scholar who, by thinking independently of other thinkers and scholars and at times criticizing them to put forward different views, contributed to the revival of Muslim intellectual life. His commentary was first published by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Istanbul 1935-1938) and has since gone through many editions. At a symposium held in Elmalı on 4-6 September 1991 he was presented in all his aspects, and the papers were published as Elmalılı M. Hamdi Yazır Sempozyumu (Ankara 1993). Doctoral theses on his commentary and his exegesis have been written by İsmet Ersöz and Fahri Gökcan.

His Poetry and Sufi Line — He wrote poems in Turkish, Arabic and Persian, but his literary side remained little known. In his writings he generally preferred plain Turkish words, while on scholarly and religious subjects he used a heavy, ornate style, at times rhymed, building long sentences of sound logical structure. His artistic personality shows above all in his calligraphy: he wrote panels in thuluth, naskh, ta'liq and jali, was also regarded as accomplished in riq'a and in the licence script, and is counted among the distinguished calligraphers of the late period. He was also concerned with Sufism: the source takes his abundant quotations from Ibn 'Arabi, whom he at times criticized on wahdat al-wujud, and his occasional Sufi-minded style as signs of his Sufi inclination. For him asceticism and piety mean not tormenting the self but drawing it to the line of moderation; to say "every existent is God" is polytheism, but there is no objection to understanding wahdat al-wujud as God being the sole necessary existent and all else contingent beings dependent on Him. In his scholarly line he held that one should benefit from the West's science, not its values; in exegesis he combined the methods of transmission and of reasoned interpretation, drew widely on al-Tabari, al-Zamakhshari, al-Raghib al-Isfahani, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Abu Hayyan and al-Alusi, confined himself on legal matters to Hanafi sources, and regarded forced interpretations as a distortion of the Qur'an. He criticized positivism, materialism and the theory of evolution; in theology he was attached to the Sunni school, generally in a Maturidi line, and on the scriptural attributes was seen to have a Salafi inclination.

His Works — ① Hak Dini Kur'an Dili: his commentary on the Qur'an, begun at the age of forty-eight and completed at sixty, his most famous work. ② Irshad al-akhlaf fi ahkam al-awqaf: a textbook he prepared for teaching at the Mülkiye school (Istanbul 1330 r./1914). ③ Hz. Muhammed'in Dini İslam: a treatise consisting of the answers he gave on behalf of the Şeyhülislam's office to the questions of the Anglican Church. ④ Metalib ve Mezahib (Istanbul 1341): a translation of Paul Janet and Gabriel Séailles' Histoire de la philosophie; the introduction and the extensive analytical and critical footnotes he wrote are of great philosophical value. ⑤ İstintaci ve İstikrai Mantık: a translation, from the French version, of a work by Alexander Bain, which he gave to students at the Süleymaniye madrasa as lecture notes. Besides these he has more than twenty articles published in the journals Beyanülhak and Sebilürreşad under the signatures "Küçük Hamdi" or "Elmalılı Küçük Hamdi".