A BOSNIAK WHOSE COMMENTARIES ON PERSIAN CLASSICS HAVE BEEN TRANSLATED INTO GERMAN AND ENGLISH

Ahmed Sudi Bošnjak lived in the 16th century. He was born in the village of Sudići near Čajniče. He received education in one of Sarajevo madrasas, and then went to Istanbul. Between the age of twenty and twenty-five he went further east, to new academic centers of the Ottoman Empire and studied with well-known personalities of the time in Damascus, Baghdad, Najaf, Kairo and Diyarbakir. Sudi wrote wonderful and interesting descriptions of these and other cities which became part of the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the 16th century. These descriptions reveal his broad interest in classical Persian texts across a vast geographic space. At an older age he returned to Istanbul and gained prominence as a lecturer at Atmejdan-serai (Ibrahim-pasha's serai), where he taught selected young men (gilmani-hass) who were trained for highest court and state jobs in the Ottoman Empire. He died at the turn of the 17th century. It is known that his grave used to be in the harem (courtyard) of the Yusuf-pasha Mosque at Aksaray in Istanbul, although it is no longer marked and therefore the exact spot where he was buried is not known.

Sudi is one of the significant commentators of classical works written in Arabic and Persian. His work is therefore suitable for research in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman studies. He wrote in Ottoman Turkish, and primarily focused on studying Arabic and Persian grammar. Consequently, his works can be classified into commentaries on Persian texts on the one hand, and commentaries on and translations of Arabic texts on the other. His best-known commentaries are those on three classical Persian texts: Commentary on Hafiz's “Divan” (Šarh-e Dīwān-e Hāfez), Commentary on Sa'di's “Gulistan” (Šarh-e Golestān) and Commentary on Sa'di's “Bustan” (Šarh-e Būstān). Biographers claim that Ahmed Sudi also wrote the Commentary on “Masnavi” by Jalal al-Din Rumi. However, a credible manuscript of the commentary, which would convincingly be considered as Sudi's, has not been found yet. Among his translations and commentaries of Arabic texts, the most significant are the translation and commentary in Turkish of two works by Arabic grammarian Ibn al-Ḥāğib Commentary on Kafiyya (Šarh al-Kāfiyya, Tarğama al-Kāfiyya) and Commentary on Šafiyya (Šarh al-Šāfiyya). He also wrote several less known shorter works.

Manuscripts of Sudi's works are held in many libraries, mostly in Turkey, but also in European libraries, including a significant number of them in Gazi Husrev-beg's library in Sarajevo. His commenting approach and a distinctive writing style have remained well-known among later Ottoman authors under the name of sudiyane.

Sudi has remained best known for his commentaries on three classical texts in Persian  – Sa'di's works Gulistan and Bustan, and Hafiz's Divan. Sudi's commentaries on the three works were the most used and the best received in the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and the 19th century, and during the 19th century some fragments were also translated into German and English, which confirms how well they were received. Thus, Brockhaus's Leipzig edition of Hafiz's Divan in German (1854–1856) included Sudi's commentary on the first 80 ghazels, and Sudi's methodology was discussed in English by W. H. Lowe in his study Twelve Odes of Hahiz done literally into English together with the corresponding portino of the Turkish Commentary of Sudi, for the first time translated, published in Cambridge in 1877. Commentaries on the three classical works of Persian literature were also translated into Persian, in the integral form.

Consequently, there is no comprehensive overview of the Ottoman commenting tradition which did not point out Ahmed Sudi's significant role in understanding classical Persian texts. Safvet-beg Bašagić proudly calls him the most popular Bosniak among Turkish writers, as well as the best and the greatest commentator of Persian classics, who achieved a level in the profession higher than anyone other in Turkish literature of all times. Džemal Ćehajić considers Sudi one of the best experts in Persian literature, since his commentaries contributed to better understanding of these texts, which has in turn contributed to the Ottoman science and literature. Hamid Algar goes a step further and claims that Sudi is probably the most prominent among all Ottoman Persianists. He is obviously an extremely worthy author from these regions, who deserves a significant attention in Arabist, Iranianist and Ottoman-Turkologist circles.

Literatura:

• Algar, Hamid, „Bosnia and Herzegovina“, Encyclopadia Iranica, Online Edition, 2003, članak dostupan na stranici: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bosnia-and-herzegovina

• Bašagić, Safvet-beg (2007), Bošnjaci i Hercegovci u islamskoj književnosti, Sarajevo: BZK „Preporod“, Sarajevo.

• Ćehajić, Džemal (1980), „Ahmed Sudi Bošnjak“, POF 28-29/1978-79, str. 103-122.

• Hoca, Nazif M. (1980), Sudi: hayatı, eserleri ve ili risalesi'nin metni, Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, str. 19-34.

• Karahalilović, Namir i Munir Drkić (2014), Ahmed Sudi Bošnjak – komentator perzijskih klasika, Mostar: Baština duhovnosti.

• Kaya, Ibrahim, Şerh-i Divan-ı Hafız (Sudi): Kelimeler – remizler – kavramlar, Doktora tezi, Inonu Üniversitesi, Istanbul, 2008, str. 31-44.

• Lavić, Osman, „Rukopisna djela Ahmeda Sudija Bošnjaka u Bosni i Hercegovini“, Anali Gazi Husrev-begove biblioteke u Sarajevu, godište 25, broj 39, Sarajevo 2018, str. 197-206.

• Šabanović, Hazim (1973), Književnost Muslimana BiH na orijentalnim jezicima, Sarajevo: Svjetlost.

• Šarh-e Sūdī bar Golestān-e Sa῾dī (1349/1970), motarğemān: Heidar Xoštīnat, Zeinol῾ābedīn Ċāwošī, ῾Alī Akbar Kāzemī, Ketābforūšī-ye Tehrān, Tabrīz – Tehrān, 1349 [1970];

• Šarh-e Sūdī bar Būstān-e Sa‘dī, Tarğome wa tahšiye wa tahiyye-ye matn-e enteqādī az: doktor Akbar Behrūz, Ketābforūšī-ye Haqīqat, Tehrān, 1378 [1999];

• Šarh-e Sūdī bar Dīwān-e Hāfez, Tarğome-ye doktor ‘Esmat Sattārzāde, Ċāp-e panğom, Entešārāt-e Sarīr, Tehrān, 1378 [1999].