Kınalızade Ali Çelebi

Works

• 1564The Ethics of Ali

  Turkish book of practical philosophy, written in Damascus in 1564 and dedicated to the governor Semiz Ali Pasha: an introduction on the soul, then ethics, the household and the state; the last part treats justice as what keeps a realm alive and ends with a diagram of the circle of justice; it survives in more than seventy manuscripts in Istanbul alone.

Position

Kınalızade is on the map for The Ethics of Ali (Ahlâk-ı Alâî), which he wrote in 1564 in Damascus and dedicated to the governor of Syria, Semiz Ali Pasha. It brought the tradition of philosophical ethics to Ottoman readers in Turkish and is treated by modern scholars as the principal Ottoman work of its kind. In its own words a work on “practical wisdom”, it follows the arrangement that Nasir al-Din al-Tusi had given this tradition in the Nasirean Ethics: after an introduction on the soul and the purpose of ethics come ethics proper – the kinds of character, the virtues, the diseases of the soul and their cure, the discipline of speech – then the management of the household and finally the government of the state. Kınalızade drew on al-Tusi, on al-Dawani’s Jalalian Ethics and on Husayn Vaʿiz Kashifi, and, through them, on Miskawayh and al-Farabi, but he adapted the material to Ottoman society. The political part insists that a realm can last only through justice and closes with a diagram of the “circle of justice”, in which ruler, law, army, revenue and subjects depend on one another. In discussing bodily resurrection he noted that Ibn Sina and al-Tusi held different views in different works. The book survives in more than seventy manuscripts in Istanbul libraries alone and was printed at Bulaq in 1832/33. Katip Çelebi praised its author a century later in The Balance of Truth as a rare investigator of the truth.

Life & context

ʿAli ibn Emrullah, known as Kınalızade Ali Çelebi or Ali Efendi, was born in 1510 in Isparta in south-western Anatolia; the family name, “son of the man with henna”, goes back to his grandfather. He studied in Istanbul with several professors, finally at the madrasa of Mehmed the Conqueror with Çivizade Muhyiddin, and became his assistant in 1538. From 1543 he taught at madrasas in Edirne, Bursa, Kütahya and Istanbul, among them the Sahn-ı Seman and, from 1558, the Süleymaniye. From 1562 he served as judge in Damascus, Cairo, Aleppo, Bursa, Edirne and Istanbul, and in 1571 he became chief military judge of Anatolia. He died on 22 January 1572 in Edirne, probably while preparing for a campaign with Sultan Selim II; Wikidata gives 1571. He was also a poet in Turkish, Persian and Arabic, and his son Hasan Çelebi wrote a well-known collection of biographies of poets.

Further main works

• Classes of the Hanafi Jurists (Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyya)
• Gloss on al-Baydawi’s Qur’an commentary
• Collected letters (Münşeât) and poems