A Hanafi law manual in the vernacular: Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıkesrī’s Turkish verse adaptation of the Hidāya-Wiqāya textual tradition for the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (824/1424)

Abstract

This study examines how Devletoglu Yusuf Baliesris versified Hanafi law manual, written in Anatolian Turkish and dedicated to the Ottoman sultan Murad II (d. 855/1451), engages in a complex relationship between the nascent vernacular, Anatolian Turkish, and the Classical Arabic religious textual tradition. Devletoglu Yusufs work, ManZum fikih, is a Turkish paraphrase of the Wiqaya, a popular abridgement of the major Hanafi law handbook, the Hidya, in the form of a mathnaw (verse work of rhymed couplets). Several passages from the 'Book on the Affairs of the Qadi" in Devletoglu Yusuf's work are analysed in order to gain insight into how the work functions as a normative text in the Classical Hanafi tradition set within a localized context. Furthermore, this study explores how the work expounds upon the benefits of transmitting religious knowledge in the vernacular and justifies the use of Turkish for religious texts by drawing on Hanafi-approved Persian language practices of religious devotion. of particular interest is how Devletoglu Yusuf grounds his argumentation on the rhetorical theories of the Classical Arabic grammarian, Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani.