Ibn Kemal

al-Mu'allim al-Awwal (The First Teacher)[1]
Ibn Kemal
Personal
Born
Şemseddin Ahmed

1468
Edirne, Rumelia, Ottoman Empire
Died14 April 1534(1534-04-14) (aged 65–66)
Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
ReligionIslam
Era15th-century
DenominationSunni
JurisprudenceHanafi
CreedMaturidi[2]
Main interest(s)Aqidah, Tafsir, Tasawwuf, Hadith, Fiqh, Usul, Ma'aani, Mantiq, Falsafa, Ottoman history
Notable work(s)Tevarih-i Al-i Osman ("The Chronicles of the House of Osman")
OccupationIslamic scholar, Historian

Şemseddin Ahmed (1469–1534), better known by his pen name Ibn Kemal (also Ibn Kemal Pasha) or Kemalpaşazâde ("son of Kemal Pasha"), was an Ottoman historian,[4] Shaykh al-Islām, jurist[4] and poet.[5]

He was born into a distinguished military family in Edirne[4] and as a young man he served in the army and later studied at various madrasas and became the Kadı of Edirne in 1515.[6] He had Iranian roots on his mother's side.[7] He became a highly respected scholar and was commissioned by the Ottoman ruler Bayezid II to write an Ottoman history (Tevārīh-i Āl-i Osmān, "The Chronicles of the House of Osman"). During the reign of Selim the Resolute, in 1516, he was appointed as military judge of Anatolia and accompanied the Ottoman army to Egypt. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent he was appointed as the Shaykh al-Islām, i.e. supreme head of the ulama, a post which he held until his death.

Kemalpaşazâde was a crucially important figure in the codification of the Hanafi school of thought in its Ottoman iteration.[8]

  1. ^ Atâullah, Nev‘îzâde. Hadâiku'l-hakāik fî tekmileti'ş-Şekāik. Abdülkadir Özcan. p. 185.
  2. ^ Ibn, Kemal (1304). Resail. İkdam Matbaası. pp. 231–233.
  3. ^ Çelebi, Âşık. Tezkire. Millet Ktp., Ali Emîrî Efendi, Tarih, nr. 772. pp. vr.53a.
  4. ^ a b c Kemalpashazade, Franz Babinger, E. J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, Vol.4, ed. M. Th. Houtsma, (Brill, 1993), 851.
  5. ^ The Reigns of Bayezid II and Selim I 1481–1520, V.J. Parry, A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730, ed. M.A. Cook, (Cambridge University Press, 1976), 78.
  6. ^ History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Stanford J. Shaw, page 145, 1976
  7. ^ Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. p. 83. A preeminent scholar and madrasa professor, Kemalpaşazade was born into a distinguished family with Iranian roots on his mother's side.
  8. ^ Burak, Guy. The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316106341.