Muhammed b. Mustafa el-Alâî’ye Nispet Edilen Şerḥ-i İrâde-i cüzʾiyye’nin Aidiyeti Hakkında Bir Değerlendirme

The current study will focus on the epistle of Sharḥ al-irādah al-juzʾiyyah which Muḥammad Ibn Muṣtafa al-ʿAlāī claims to have authored and which is attributed to him by successive generations but in reality is a modified version of Dāwūd al-Qarṣī's (d. 1169/1756) Risālâh fi'l-ikhtiyārāt al-juzʾiyyah wa'l-irādāt al-qalbiyyah. A close examination of the content of Sharḥ al-irādah al-juzʾiyyah epistle, which ʿAlāī reconstructed by removing some contexts and topics that he did not need from Qarṣī's Risālah, and taking some parts he deemed fitting from Abu Saʿīd al-Khādimī's al-Barīḳa al-maḥmūdiyyah fī sharḥ al-Ṭarīqah el-Muḥammadiyyah, reveals the fact that it is a work in which plagiarism is most obvious. Considering the Ottoman intellectual tradition, it is known that a vast textual literature in the form of several epistles on human will and actions has been produced and these epistles have effected the introduction of certain ideas about the subject. We know for a fact that there may occur interchanges and overlapping between various intellectual activities, but copying an original work in kernel with minor and insignificannt modifications and reclaiming it for oneself is intellectually unethical and unacceptable. We, thus, intend to demonstrate that the epistle of ʿAlāī was created by partially changing Qarṣī's treatise on the subject and no reference was made to latter. In order to do achieve our goal, we comparatively studied both texts from beginning to end through tables, determined and showed the commonalities and different points. As a result of this comparison, we also strove to determine whether this plagiarism phenomenon was made by ʿAlāī himself or by someone else. Furthermore, the instances that ʿAlāī copied from Abu Saʿīd al-Khādimī without citing the source were also determined and shown in a different color on the text. Finally, the treatise of ʿAlāī was also reviewed in order to provide a holistic view. In the analysis of the text, words and sentences that are present in Qarsī's text but not in ʿAlāī's text and that complete the meaning are shown in square brackets.