Fuat Sezgin’s Views on the Origins of Ilm al-Badi (In the context of his Dissertation on Ilm al-Badi)

Fuat Sezgin, who wrote important studies on Islamic literature, completed his education at the Istanbul University Institute of Oriental Studies with his dissertation titled “Bedî‘ İlminin Tekamülü ve İstanbul Kütüphanelerinde Bulunan Bediiyyelere Ait Yazmalar Kataloğu” in 1947. Sezgin aimed to examine the genre of badîiyyah and to produce a catalog of badîiyyât in Istanbul manuscript libraries. Moreover, he considers it necessary to explain in his work the following: the beginning of rhetoric (al-balagha) with Jahiz (d. 255/869), the sudden increase in rhetorical forms used by Ibn al-Mu‘tazz (d. 296/908), and Qudâma b. Ja’fer’s (d. 337/948) acceptance of himself in this field as the first author. Based on these issues, he has already been involved in debates regarding the origins and development of rhetoric. In the modern period, there has been a debate on the influence of Greek philosophy on the origins of rhetoric, which is accepted as a discipline with the book of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz called Kitab al-Badi. Fuat Sezgin, who divides the history of al-badi into two phases with the examinations he made based on the writing process of Kitab al-Badi, made a distinction between the chapters of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz. Sezgin concluded that İbn al-Mu’tazz was influenced by Aristotle in the second part of the book. He supported this conviction with the detectable Aristotle effect in Qudâma, a contemporary of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz. In this study,Fuat Sezgin’s findings and argumentation about the history of the rhetorical arts will be analyzed.