Hafız Yahya Hilmi Kastamonī's Misbāh al-Ihvān li-Taharrī Āyāt al-Qur'ān as a Sample of Plagiarism Cover Image

Bir İntihal Örneği Olarak Hafız Yahya Hilmi Kastamonî’nin Misbâhu’l-İhvân li Taharrî Âyâti’l-Kur’ân Adlı Eseri
Hafız Yahya Hilmi Kastamonī's Misbāh al-Ihvān li-Taharrī Āyāt al-Qur'ān as a Sample of Plagiarism

Author(s): İskender Şahin
Subject(s): Theology and Religion, Islam studies
Published by: Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi İlahyat Fakültesi
Keywords: Qur'ān; Concordance; Flügel; Yahya Hilmi Efendi; Plagiarism; Misbāh alIhvān;

Summary/Abstract: Indexes are among the important resources for studies on the Qur'ān. Owing to such works, it is possible to find easily whether a word belong to Qur'ān and in which verses or how it is used. Such works of arts, whose early examples are given by Muslim scientists, later written by orientalists and thus gave its first work of art with the help of a German Orientalist Gustavus Flügel. His accommodation of Qur'ān index blazed a trail in this field and later, it became a resource to those work written by Muslims. Yahya Hilmi Kastamonī who was one of the late Ottoman Era scholar never mentioned from Flügel and his work in his work named Misbāh al-Ihvān. In this article, after introduction of the work of these two authors, two works are compared in terms of obvious mistakes. The aim is to determine whether the work of Kastamonī is original or not.Summary: The scope of this work consists of the comparison of two "index" type of works. It's obvious that indexes are the most essential source in the Qur'ān based researches. The aim of these kinds of works is both to enable researchers to reach verses of the Qur'ān and to show those concepts where and how it is displayed in the Qur'ān. Thus, both effort and time loss will be prevented. Together with knowing that the first Qur'an indexes were prepared by Muslim authors, it's not clear which one is the first. The work called Tertību zībā by Ottoman theologian Muhammed al-Vardarī is considered as one of the first indexes in the field. The author organised this work by putting the very first words of verses of the Qur'ān in an alphabetic order in Turkish so as to reach the intended verse of the Qur’ān easily. The efforts for writing indexes continued later on, by taking his work as an example, the number has extended hastily with writing other works up to now.On the other hand; besides Muslims, we can see that the orientalists has involved in carrying out index preparations. For the first time, Gustavus Flügel wrote a Qur'ān index, originally named as Concordanticae Corani Arabicae, and named as Nücūm al furkān fī atrāf al-Qur'ān in Arabic so that Muslims may benefit from it. It's obvious that Flügel's work which was prepared orienting to find Qur'ānic words has influenced Muslim index authors. After Concordanticae Corani Arabicae written, the number of the works alike in Islamic world has extended vastly.One of such works is the work of art of Kastamonī Yahiya Hilmi's Misbāh al-ihvān li tahharī āyāt al-Qur'ān written in 1322/1906. Although in those works which was written after Flügel's index, the authors credited Flügel and his Concordanticae Corani Arabicae, Kastamonī, being the topic of the article in this work as well, didn't credit him and his index. The situation grasped our attention and caused us to focus on these two works.On this point, Concordanticae Corani Arabicae pioneering in index writing and Misbāh al-ihvān carefully investigated and later compared to one another. In the next step, the aspects that both index have in common and different have been tried to detect. Thus, the originality of Kastamonī's work was questioned.Flügel made undeniable errors on the point of detecting the origin of 39 words while sorting out words of the Qur'ān alphabetically. These errors he made clears outs obviously the authors being incapable of Arabic grammar and not having a grasp of the meaning of the Qur'ānic words. Another failure Flügel made was despite arranging words in a letter order, in some places he didn't pay attention. Besides, the verse of the Qur'ān numbers doesn't fit with those numbers Muslims take as a basis from copy of the Qur'ān we have today.Kastamonī, whose life we don't have any information, made mistakes in detecting 39 origins of the words in the Qur'ān in his index just like Flügel. Besides, the numbers he gave to the verses of Quran and the ones in the copy of the Qur'ān that Muslims use doesn't correspond. Another mistake Kastamonī made in Misbāh is despite putting words in an alphabetic order, he didn't pay attention in some places.Like this, the data received from investigation of both authors compared to one another and eventually some results came across. According to this, it's clearly seen that the error Kastamonī and Flügel made upon detecting the origin of the 39 words are the same. On the other hand, the numbers both author gave to verses of the Qur'ān in their works correspond with one another. Also, Kastamonī repeated the same errors Flügel did in the alphabetical order of the words. As a result of all the comparisons, it's detected that Misbāh al-ihvān is the same of Concordanticae Corani Arabicae. This similarity is not a mere coincidence. As it's understood from the result, Kastamonī plagiarised Flügel's index and wrote it by crediting himself.Continuity and depending on sources is a very important aspect on academic studies. To do that, all academic works must be based on previous efforts. For any reason, if this doesn't happen, works lose their scientific base and became unreliable. As a result, scientific ethic will be neglected and violated and so the field of study will be in harm's way. The major reason that prevents obeying those codes, which creates the orient of academic study, of continuity and reliability is the academic theft called plagiarism. Plagiarism which is defined as showing ones thoughts, works and writings as his/her own without giving proper credit to source in any portion by another author is an enormous ethic problem. The activity of interchanging an author work which was put together with great effort without giving any proper credit is the further step of the plagiarism. It's clearly understood that Kastamonī has fallen the same mistake. At the end of research, it's revealed that Kastamonī didn't compile a work of art. However, he deceived the scientific community by taking the work at issue to himself in his preliminary and disdain the ethical rules in academic studies.As a result, this study aims to raise an awareness upon the necessity of reading the works that resembles one another by comparing right or wrong sides when evaluating those works. if this is done, the originality of works, their relationship, similarities and differences will both be seen clearly and be evaluated wholesomely.

  • Issue Year: 21/2017
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 1565-1590
  • Page Count: 26
  • Language: Turkish