Or 14003

This volume contains a compilation of fetava in 56 ebvap. The title is written as 'Bu kitap Üskübi Pir Mehmet Efendi'nin fetavasıdır'.

Üskübi Mehmet İbn-i Hasan Üskübi was Müfti of Üsküp (Skopje, North Macedonia), before holding the office of Seyh-ül-İslam. He is said to have died in 1020 AH (1611 CE) (Atayı) or in 1030 AH (1620 CE) (Kâtip Çelebi). While manuscripts of his works entitled Müinü'-müftü and Zahirü'l-kudat have been described in published catalogues (see VOHD XIII/4, pp. 83-5) it has not yet proved possible to prove his authorship of the present compilation. The text appears to be the same as that found in MS. Or.oct. 2196 of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, an anonymous collection copied in 1054 AH (1644 CE) (described in VOHD III/4, pp. 87-8). Most of the replies to the questions posed are in Arabic, being derived from a number of Hanefi treatises.

The incipits of the two copies are identical, but the excipits are slightly different. Inter alia, the present manuscript’s reading el-mare appears preferable, despite its orthographical incorrectness, to the Berlin manuscript’s el-murade. The end of the two works differs, as the Berlin manuscript closes with a chapter on diyat while the current manuscript contains four on the topic. The present manuscript is also of interest because of its geographical origin.

The contents of the text are as follows: miscellaneous dicta and fetava, some of which are in Arabic (ff 1v-4r); ownership inscriptions (f 5r); a list of chapters (kitaplar), and authorial attribution (ff 5v-6r); table for determining the gurre of months (f 7r); the beginning of the main text (f 7r); end of the text (f 315r). A passage in Arabic from a work on jurisprudence by Mueyidzade is found on ff 316v-317r, with a final fetva on f 317v.

The text shows evidence of mild damp staining throughout.

This manuscript was copied by Mustafa İbn-i Mehmet es-Samakevi (of Samakov, near Sofia, Bulgaria), known as Hocạ and is dated evail-i Recep 1122 AH (26 August 1710 CE).