Add MS 7887

This volume contains the following two texts :

(I) ff 1v-71v : Dakaikü'l-hakaik, a treatise on the niceties of the Persian language, especially on the fine distinctions existing between synonyms. The author, whose name does not appear in this copy, is Şemseddin Ahmet İbn-i Süleyman İbn-i Kemalpaşa, who is praised by his biographers as the greatest scholar of the Ottoman Empire and an accomplished poet. Son of a Mir Liva, Kemalpaşazade Süleyman, and born in Tokat, Ahmet began life as a soldier, but was so much impressed by the homage paid to science in the person of Menla Lutfi Tokati (who was, however, put to death for heresy in 900 AH/1494-95 CE), that he gave up a military career and applied himself to study. He soon rose to a high rank amongst the ulema, accompanied Selim I in the Egyptian campaign as a Kazasker, and enjoyed the favour of Kanuni Sultan Süleyman, who entrusted to him the composition of the annals of his reign.

During the last eight years of his life, he discharged the highest office of the law and died as Şeyh-ül-İslam in the month of Şeval 940 AH (April-May 1534 CE). Ali, who devotes to him a long notice in his history of Selim I's reign (Add MS 10004 ff 140-142), rebukes Aşık, the biographer of poets, for his carelessness in giving 941 AH (1534-35 CE) as the date of Kemalpaşazade's death, instead of the true date, which is attested by a number of contemporary chronograms.

The present work is dedicated to the Grand Vezir İbrahim Paşa, who was in office 929-42 AH (1522-36 CE) ;

(II) ff 72v-79v : Risālat al-taᶜrīb min al-taᶜjīm min mu’allifāt marḥūm Kamāl Bāshā Zādah (رسالة التعريب من التعجيم من مولفات مرحوم كمال باشا زادة), an Arabic treatise by the same author on the alterations which words of foreign origin undergo in passing into Arabic.

This manuscript was likely copied in the 16th century CE.