Translations as Ego-Documents: Notes of Two Ottoman Physicians in the Turkish Translation of Ibn Baytar’s Kit b Al-Mughn

Abstract

This article examines the lives and ideas of two seventeenthcentury
 Ottoman physicians, Muhammed b. Ahmed of Edirne
 and his disciple İbrahim b. Hüseyin Çavuş, as reflected in
 their notes in the Turkish translation of Ibn Baytar’s Kitab
 al-Mughni. In these notes, Muhammed b. Ahmed emerges
 as a Kadızadeli-minded Turkish physician, translator, and
 a “world traveler” who claimed to have traveled the world
 for “forty to fifty years.” In contrast, his disciple İbrahim b.
 Hüseyin Çavuş appears as a religiously moderate Ottoman
 officer who had a passion for medicine. These notes disclose
 new interpretive possibilities for early modern Ottoman
 cultural and medical history and help researchers explore
 untold stories of several individuals and groups. They reveal
 details that are often difficult to find in conventional sources
 and constitute hitherto neglected personal narratives or
 ego-documents. They also contain new insights into some
 of the critical events in the period, including the Kadızadeli
 movement and the 1672 Kamaniçe campaign. Ultimately,
 these notes remind us of the need in Ottoman studies to
 scrutinize translations under a new light.