An Ottoman Preacher's Perception of a Medieval Cosmography: Maḥmūd al-Haṭīb's Translation of Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib wa Farīḍat al-Gharāʾib

Abstract

The ninth/fifteenth century Arabic work, Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib wa Farīḍat al-Gharāʾib, ascribed to Ibn al-Wardī (d. 861/1457), was frequently translated into Ottoman Turkish and widely read by the Ottoman literati between the tenth/sixteenth and thirteenth/nineteenth centuries. The most popular translation of the Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib that is extant today with more than thirty copies in libraries worldwide was made by the tenth/sixteenth century Ottoman preacher Maḥmūd al-Haṭīb. Within the context of Medieval Islamic cosmographical works and their translations, which have potential to shed light on the Ottoman worldview in the early modern era, this paper delves into the extra-textual statements of the translator in the form of eye-witness accounts and contemporary hearsay. By doing so, it argues that Maḥmūd al-Haṭīb's intervention in the text he translated not only provides him with grounds for confirmation of the worldview promoted in the Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib, but also expressions on certain issues related to sixteenth century Ottoman rule.