Şırnak Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi

Öz

In the literature, al-Fatāwā is introduced as an independent work containing the fatwas of Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi. However, this assessment is based solely on a single manuscript, and sufficient evidence regarding the work’s authorship has not been provided. The manuscript titled al-Fatāwā, attributed to Shaykh al-Islam Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi and registered under number 01048-001 in the Şehid Ali Paşa Collection of the Süleymaniye Manuscript Library, does not contain any explicit statement in the introduction or colophon directly indicating its authorship. In the existing manuscript, only a note appears to have been added later, and a phrase found on the zahriye page (bookback page). This evidence is insufficient to verify the authorship of the work. Nevertheless, despite the lack of sufficient evidence proving that the work belongs to Karaçelebizâde, numerous academic studies have been conducted based on this assumption. A master's thesis has been written specifically on al-Fatāwā. In a book about Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi, some fatwas included in al-Fatāwā have been transcribed and attributed to him. Additionally, many contemporary academic studies have cited al-Fatāwā, if the fatwas within the work belong to Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi. This study demonstrates that such evaluations, which continue in modern academic texts, are erroneous and draws attention to this long-standing misattribution in the literature by examining the content of al-Fatāwā. Given the problems that arise when determining the authorship of a manuscript based solely on a single copy in academic literature, the methods used in this study serve as a model for similar research. In this study, artificial intelligence-assisted text analysis methods were employed to compare Ottoman fatwa collections, and the findings were verified through traditional comparative methods. Utilizing artificial intelligence-based text analysis techniques developed within a TÜBİTAK-supported project, textual similarities between two collections were examined. Initially, a dataset was created using transcriptions of selected fatwas on waqf law, followed by data cleaning and standardization processes. Subsequently, the texts were transformed into mathematical vectors using the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) method and compared through the cosine similarity metric. Additionally, all fatwas in the relevant collections were manually compared. The findings from these comparisons reveal that the fatwas attributed to Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi belong to Çatalcalı Ali Efendi, indicating that there is no independent fatwa collection belonging to Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi. However, minor linguistic differences that do not alter the meaning were identified in some fatwas. These variations are believed to have resulted from changes made by copyists during the transcription process or differences in transliteration. Furthermore, fatwa collections formed by pasting original signed fatwas into compilations (Fetâvâ-yı Yapışdırma), containing hundreds of fatwas, were examined, and fatwas definitively attributed to Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi bearing his signature were analyzed. It was determined that these fatwas were not included in Fatāwā-yi ʿAlī Efendi. This finding eliminates the possibility that Karaçelebizâde's fatwas were incorporated into the fatwa collection prepared by Çatalcalı Ali Efendi. Additionally, during the study, a work titled Fatāwā al-Sulṭāniyya, believed to belong to Karaçelebizâde Abdülaziz Efendi, was discovered. However, upon examination, it was determined that this was not a fatwa collection but a concise jurisprudential text dealing with fundamental legal issues. This study demonstrates that the manuscript titled al-Fatāwā is not an independent compilation but instead contains fatwas from Fatāwā-yi ʿAlī Efendi. Moreover, by showcasing the applicability of artificial intelligence-assisted text analysis methods in the study of Ottoman legal literature, this research introduces an innovative methodological approach to academic inquiries in this field.