CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Sucu, Cevat |
|---|---|
| Title | The Most Marvelous among the Marvelous Things (Acebul-Uccab): Disseminating and Reframing of the Occult Knowledge for the Ottoman Audience in the Early Fifteenth Century |
| Summary | This study discusses the work entitled ‘Aceb&#x fc;’l-&# x2018;Uccā ;b (The Most Marvelous among the Marvelous Things) written in 1438 by Mahmud bin Kadı Manyas, also known as Manyasoğlu, contextualizing it in the lettrist trends of the Islamic world and Ottoman literary politics of the early fifteenth century. At this time, Ottoman intellectuals translated works from Arabic and Persian, commenting on, excerpting, and rearranging them to instruct Turkophone readers in various sciences and transmit the knowledge from the wider Islamic world. This period also coincided with the dissemination of lettrist practices, as well as proliferation of messianic ideas and movements with different political agendas. The courts, including Ottoman, sponsored occultist cosmopolitan intellectuals who viewed lettrism as a “queen science” of the impending messianic age. It is against this background that the thesis approaches Manyasoğlu’s work that was compiled and presented to Ottoman sultan Murad II in 1438. The thesis argues that ‘Aceb&#x fc;’l-&# x2018;Uccā ;b differs from contemporary lettrist and occultist works because it largely disregards millennialist, messianic, gnostic and Sufi perspectives, and focuses more on the experimental and replicable nature of the occult practices than a mystical chain of transmission. Moreover, it strives to activate occult properties for the practitioner’s benefit rather than solve the theoretical problems of the cosmos. By juxtaposing it to the contemporary “cosmopolitan” occult works, the thesis argues that this lettrist text reflected Manyasoğlu’s vernacular authorial strategies not only in terms of language but practice of the occult as well. |
| Supervisor | Krstic, Tijana; Borekci, Gunhan |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/sucu_cevat.pdf |
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