Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi

Öz

Muslims are fundamentally interested in the practice of writing
especially for scribing the copies of the Qur’ān. Later, the practice of
scribing ḥadīths texts and writing
diplomatic correspondence increased the demand for developing this practice. It
is because the writing is based on a religious reference in Islamic societies;
over time, the interest in writing and writing materials has also turned into an
art form. Thus, writing and writing materials have been named with the selected
words from the Qur’ān. Pencil, book, pages (ṣuḥuf),
line, stone tablet (alwāḥ) are some
of the examples of those words. The writing constituted a series of
professions. Calligraphers and warrāqs
(book dealers/booksellers) are some examples in Islamic societies. Until the
printing press became widespread, the books were written and reproduced by hand
which is called istinsākh. Nowadays,
these manuscripts are protected in libraries and digital archives. Codicology
examines the external elements of these manuscripts such as ink, binding and
paper. In addition, the critical edition method was used to bring out
manuscripts to the surface. Critical edition of manuscripts is not only
transferring the text to the computer. The critical edition is to compare
manuscripts of work to reach the original text of the author. While doing this,
the evaluation of the text has been held to reveal the historical value of it.
In this article, the place of manuscripts in Islamic culture has been discussed
and the basic principles of the critical edition, how to create the editing (dirāsa) and text (naṣṣ) sections of the critical edition are explained with examples.
The examples were selected from the previous critical editions conducted by the
author. This study aims to give an introduction to a very wide field of
codicology and critical edition. This article is intended to provide basic
information for researchers interested in codicology and critical edition.

Summary: Classical Islamic writing
culture has its method. For centuries, Muslims have written manuscripts
according to this method. This method has been applied from writing the
knowledge on paper to collecting and binding the fascicles.

The adventure of creating a manuscript is a long process. A lot of people
come around to contribute this process initiating from the writing of the first
sentence. Producer of the knowledge: scientists, paper-producer: werrâq, the
calligrapher: khaṭṭāṭ, bookseller,
bookbinder, expert in the ink, naqqāsh
who marbles the papers, sponsors of the project, collection and the librarian
are some of the contributors. Today, this adventure continues with the
participation of enthusiasts which are: the author who re-writes the manuscript
to revive it, the restorer who repairs the damage of the manuscript, the expert
who creates the digital copy and institutions which publishes the facsimile.

Nowadays manuscripts are accepted as important scientific data and are
examined in many ways other than their contents thus new specialities have been occurred. At universities, the institutes
which examine manuscripts have been established and academic journals have been
published. Moreover, the critical edition of manuscripts is the main subject of
some of the M.A. and Ph.D. theses.

The studies on critical edition, which initiated earlier in some of the
western countries, have made a rapid development and created its method. In
Turkey, there are many critical editions of works which are based on various
manuscripts from Theology to Literature fields. However, there is no
significant mutual method among the studies yet. Also, their understanding of
critical edition differentiates. In those studies, it has to be examined that
basic parameters such as the selection of convenient copy, access to all copies
of manuscript or priority of copies are applied to critical edition process.
Most of the time it is observed that the advisor’s way of the critical edition
has shadows on studies. However, fundamentally critical edition process needs
expert contribution itself. Difference between studies is related to the fact
that the critical edition is relatively a new field of study in Turkey.
Therefore, specific studies in the field of critical edition and codicology are
still needed to be developed. On the other hand, there are various publications
to establish an objective methodology of the critical edition. Significant
studies are being held by the Center for Islamic Studies (ISAM) to establish a
mutual language and method for critical edition studies. The factor that led to
the emergence of this article is the effort to contribute to the realization of
this method. The article discusses the principles to be followed during a
critical edition process. Moreover, topics are explained practically with
examples selected from manuscripts. Those examples have been chosen from the
author’s previous critical edition works. The article would be considered as an
“Introduction to Critical Edition” for the researchers who are new at this
field. In this respect, the article aims to make a methodological contribution
to the critical edition studies.

There are many parts of a manuscript –something more than the written
text on the page– which makes it a whole. These parts can be divided into
internal and external elements of the manuscript. All of these are parts have
different levels of contribution to the examination of the critical edition of
the work and the interpretation of the texts.

Some external elements of manuscript are: ink production and color,
inkwell, production of paper, foliation, rule-borders, and frames, ruling board
(misṭara), sewing of quires, gilt and gilding, bookbinding, stamping and
tooling, frontispiece, cases and pouches, storage boxes and cabinets, flap,
tabula ansata, the history of manuscript.

The internal elements of the manuscript are: text of the manuscript,
script, subject, authenticity, historical value and importance, proprietor,
literary features, number of copies and textual variants, scribes and copyists,
whether it has been falsified or not, sources used or referenced by the author,
abbreviations, records of marginalia, colophon, glosses and scholia, ownership
statements, seals and seal impressions, word transposition or transposition of
words/letters, waqf-statements,
correction signs and corrections, countermarks.

While the internal elements of manuscript are the work of critical
edition, the external elements of the text fall within the field of codicology.
Although critical edition and codicology are considered as separate sciences,
there are points where they can contribute to each other. For instance, the ink
tone or binding style of a manuscript may help to determine the writing date
range of it. The references used by the manuscript can give us an idea about
the name or the subject of another manuscript. The literary characteristics of
the manuscript may reflect the author's success in language and literature
fields. Thus, we are able to inform that the critical edition process of a
manuscript requires the evaluation of substantial information at the same time
which is no different from an archaeologist carefully examining an arrowhead.
Therefore, whatever is the relation between History and Archeology has; Islamic
sciences have the same relationship with critical edition. They are both
individual sciences with methods of their own and two inseparable common
sciences. Thus, without the contribution of codicology or other sciences,
rewriting a manuscript on a computer does not mean making a critical edition of
it. According to this information, we can define the critical edition as
follows, “Critical Edition is the process of reviving of any manuscript -which
belongs to Islamic civilization- with comparison of all available copies to
create a single text which is closest to the text of the author and to
determine the sources which this main text is based, citations such as verses,
hadiths and poetry.”

For studies on critical edition, the priority should be given to the
texts which will contribute to this science. Before initiating critical
edition, the authenticity of the author of the manuscript should be determined
precisely. Of course, having a person's name on the page is not enough for
determination. All copies of the manuscript must be identified. From those
copies, critical edition should be based on the text that the author has
personally written or prepared as a draft and other copies should be compared
with this. In the absence of the author’s authentic copy, new criteria will
apply. For instance, the copy written by the closest student of the author or
the copy with the closest writing date takes precedence over the copies with no
date. After comparison of all copies, the differences are shown in the
citation.

Critical Edition consists of two sections entitled as Edition (Editing/Dirāsa) and Text (Naṣṣ):

The Edition section includes: the author’s name, lineage, place and date
of birth, scientific life of the author and his/her prominent students, works,
the authentication document which is proven that the text is belong to the
author, the place of the work in the history of science, studies about the
work, bibliography, literary characteristic, terms in the text, the amount and
characteristics of the copies, the characteristic of the main copy which is
determined as the fundamental text for the research, the rules and principles
applied during the critical edition, the digital images of the first and last
pages of the copies used.

The Edition section is the part that demonstrates the reliability of the
study. All external elements of writing are being introduced here. The
importance of the text is confirmed by this edition process. Thus, the final
shape of the edition section must be shaped by reading and understanding the
text.

In the text section, the main aim is to reach the very first text which
has been written originally by the author. In this section, principles of
morality and objectivity are followed. The text is preserved; additions or
subtractions are not made. Cited sources at the manuscript are being found.
Verses and ḥadīths are written with
their sources. Poems are found in Dīwāns.
Text is made legible with punctuation and pilcrow. Proper names, dates of death
are written together. Page numbers in the manuscript are shown in square
brackets. Some simple grammatical errors are corrected without interfering with
the main text. Mostly the reason for this is the letters used for men or women.
At the end of the study, a bibliography with all the resources used during the
critical edition process is added.

The Islamic codicology and manuscripts appear to receiving interest
especially in academic studies. Considering that many manuscripts from the
Ottoman Era are still waiting to be revived thus, we may come across profound
critical edition works in the near future. Therefore, it is understood that
individual studies related to the manuscript itself and the method of the
critical edition will guide the researchers.