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WE ARE BRUNN

Let’s Work Together

A LIFE DEDICATED TO KNOWLEDGE PROF. DR. FUAT SEZGIN

“Scholars are the lamps of the earth.” Hadith

The discoverer of the golden age of Islamic civilization, our world-renowned historian of science who unearthed many works and inventions of Muslim scientists Prof. Dr. Mehmet Fuat Sezgin was born on October 24, 1924
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He was born in Kizil Masjid, Bitlis. His father was Mirza Mehmet Efendi and his mother was Cemile Hanım. Fuat Sezgin’s family is originally from the Şirvan district of Siirt and his ancestors served the Ottoman Empire as Şirvan beys for centuries.

Fuat Sezgin attended primary school in Doğubeyazıt in 1936. Upon the death of his father Mirza Mehmet Efendi, he went to Bitlis and graduated from secondary school with a scholarship and boarding in 1939. In 1942, he went to Erzurum and graduated from Erzurum High School Science Department, again with a scholarship and boarding.

Fuat Sezgin came to Istanbul in 1943 with the idea of studying mathematics and becoming an engineer. On the recommendation of a relative, he attended a seminar given by the German orientalist Hellmut Ritter (1892-1971), one of the most renowned experts in his field, at the Institute of Oriental Studies at Istanbul University. He was so impressed by this seminar that he gave up his dream of becoming an engineer and decided to become a student of Hellmut Ritter. Neither the discipline of Hellmut Ritter nor the difficulty of the field could dissuade Sezgin from his firm decision. Wasting no time, he went to the Institute of Oriental Studies to enroll and began his undergraduate studies at Istanbul University, Faculty of Literature, Department of Arabic and Persian Philology. In the meantime, he was exempted from the foreign language exemption exam by taking French, which he had also studied in middle school.

“In 1943, one of my relatives took me to the Faculty of Literature. But I wanted to be an engineer. At that time there was a great German scholar. He knew Arabic very well. He said to me, ‘I want to take you to his seminar. So I said, ‘Let’s go,’ and I went to that great scholar’s seminar. That day I was mesmerized by that great scholar. I am no longer interested in being an engineer or pursuing any other profession. I was thinking of becoming a student of that great scholar. It was past registration time, but I went to the dean, albeit belatedly. As luck would have it, I was in the dean’s office when this great scholar entered the room. He was a big man. He stopped. He waited for me to finish talking to the dean. The dean said to him, ‘Oh.. Mr. Ritter…’ ‘I am talking to a person who has applied to be your student,’ he said. The teacher looked at me and said, ‘I think this was in my seminar yesterday. Only 3-4 people would go to his seminars, he was a difficult man. Students would run away from his seminars. I remember many times I attended as a single student. He said to me: ‘Let’s have a talk. You are aspiring for something very difficult. You must learn Arabic. I am also a difficult teacher. Do you know that my students always run away from me? ‘I know, they told me these things. I want to take this risk in spite of all this.’ He laughed and said, ‘Okay’. So I became his student. When I went to the second week seminar, I was 3 minutes late, he took out his gold watch from his pocket and showed it to me and said: “You were 3 minutes late, this must not be repeated again! I didn’t just say, ‘OK,’ but from that day onwards, I paid utmost attention to the principle of not being late for my appointments in my whole life.

I had the chance to be a student of such a teacher. For some reason I was fascinated by this man, and I began to feel that he was passing on to me the knowledge of the wise men who had gone before him. I never took notes. He would say it and I would write it down in my head. Believe me, much of what he told me is still carried in my head. That man was perhaps the greatest of the great European orientalists. This was a different type among the great orientalists. It made a big impression on me. It is not possible for me to convey this impression to you in its entirety.

When I was a student, there was no history of science at Istanbul University. However, my teacher told me: ‘Don’t quit math’. The Faculty of Science was already with us. ‘Go to the mathematics department, take courses, learn mathematics well. Muslims had also produced great mathematicians,” he explained. During the speech, he mentioned a few names: Al-Khwarizmi, Abu’l-Wafa Buzjani, Ibn Haytham, Biruni, etc. These were names I had never known or even heard of. I was horrified. When my teacher saw my state, he explained: ‘These and many others were great scholars, and they were on the same level as later European scholars, and in some places even superior to them. After this conversation, I decided to study the history of science.”

“Ritter’s words played the role of a whip for me to learn the history of Islamic sciences. I left the whole world and worked for it day and night.”

Although Turkey did not participate in the Second World War, it was influenced by it. When university education in Turkey was suspended in 1943 due to the circumstances of the time, Ritter advised his students to take advantage of the long break and learn Arabic. At that time, Fuat Sezgin decided to compare the Islamic scholar Jarîr al-Tabari’s commentary on the Holy Qur’ân al-kerîm with books containing the Turkish translation. During this time, he studied Arabic continuously in order to understand the tafsir, which was written in a difficult language. At the end of six months, he could read Tabari’s commentary in Arabic with ease. When Hellmut Ritter put the book Ihyâu Ulûmi´d-Dîn by the Islamic thinker Abû Hamid al-Ghazâlî in front of Fuat Sezgin to read, he was delighted that his student was able to do so easily. He advised Fuat Sezgin, who had a great talent for learning languages, to start learning five languages at the same time and learn a new language every year. Sezgin maintained this high work pace until his old age.

In 1945, when Fuat Sezgin started his third year at the university, he started free undergraduate studies in Arabic Philology with a thesis and in Old Turkish Literature, New Turkish Literature and French Literature without a thesis.
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applied. As Hellmut Ritter saw Fuat Sezgin’s determination in scientific studies and his devotion to him, he took him with him in his studies and they started to examine the manuscripts and researches in the field of Islamic history of science in libraries together. As a result of these studies, Fuat Sezgin had the opportunity to better identify the deficiencies in the study of the history of Islamic science. After reading Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur (History of Arabic Literature), which was written in this field, he realized some of the deficiencies of this work and came to the conclusion that it should be completed. Indeed, his teacher Ritter agreed with him on this point. When he was still a student, he started collecting sources on the topics he was going to research.

Fuat Sezgin graduated from Istanbul University, Faculty of Literature, Department of Arabic and Persian Philology in 1947. At the same time, the Evolution of the Science of Bedī’ and the Catalog of Bedīyat Manuscripts in Istanbul He also completed his bachelor’s thesis. This thesis dealt with the development of eloquence as a branch of literature in classical Islamic civilization. In October 1947, he applied for a doctorate and continued his scholarly studies under the supervision of Hellmut Ritter. His doctoral dissertation was on the tafsīr Maj?zu’l-?ur?an of Abū Ubayda Ma´mar Ibn al-Musna al-Taymī (d.210/824-5), a scholar of Arabic language and tafsir sciences. The subject of this thesis was about the figurative expressions used in the Qur’an other than its literal meaning. He completed and submitted his doctoral thesis in 1950. At this time, Fuat Sezgin was working as a clerk at the Istanbul University Library.

Fuat Sezgin left Istanbul University in 1950 to work as an assistant at Ankara University’s Faculty of Theology, where he continued his doctoral studies and worked. Fuat Sezgin, who was one of the first assistants of Prof. Muhammet Tayyib Okiç’s Chair of Dogmatic Sciences (Department of Basic Islamic Sciences) at Ankara Theology, held this position between 1950 and 1953. During this period, he served his military service as a reserve officer. During his assistantship, he spent some time in Cairo in order to publish Maj?zu’l-?ur??n, which he had studied for his doctorate. Fuat Sezgin left his assistantship in 1953 to return to Istanbul University, where he had worked for many years.

On February 28, 1953, he started to work as an assistant at the Chair of General Turkish History in Istanbul, where Zeki Veli Togan was the chairman. As Fuat Sezgin continued his research for his doctoral thesis, he realized that some parts of Bukhari’s hadith book were taken from Majâz’ul-Qur’ân. Bukhārī’s use of written sources proved that previous arguments that hadith collections were based solely on oral tradition were wrong.

On the one hand, while working as an assistant and on the other hand as an associate professor He was busy collecting material for his thesis on the Written Sources of Bukhari’s Tafsir. In the Library of the Institute of Islamic Studies, he registered and cataloged the incoming books. He helped to publish the journal Islamic Studies and prepared articles for this journal.

Fuat Sezgin, assistant to the Chair of General Turkish History, habilitation in the 1953/54 academic year
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He completed his thesis and successfully completed the foreign language phase of the associate professorship exam. Fuat Sezgin published his associate professorship thesis, Research on the Sources of Bukhari, in 1956.

In 1957, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation scholarship, which is based in Germany and supports scientists all over the world. With the help of this scholarship, he stayed in Germany between 1957-58 in order to make scientific studies and improve his German.

In 1960, Sezgin had to continue his studies outside Turkey after his name was included in the list prepared by the government that came to power in Turkey after a military coup and 147 academics were expelled from universities.

“A new path in my life”

Fuat Sezgin had to say goodbye to his beloved homeland. He was sad to leave his homeland but determined to take this step for the sake of knowledge.

“It was towards the end of 1960, one day I went out of my house. I looked and saw the guys selling newspapers shouting: ‘It’s writing, it’s writing, it’s writing that 147 professors were expelled from the university!’ I was on my way to the institute. I picked up the newspaper, I looked, my name was written in it. I put the newspaper in my bag, I went to Süleymaniye Library, not to the institute. I started reading books. My students and assistants wondered where I was, they looked for me and found me working in Süleymaniye Library. Actually, I did not expect such a thing, but I also saw the reality that the atmosphere in Turkey had changed. Sometimes I even wanted to go out, but I couldn’t go out on my own. I loved my homeland very much, I wanted to do many things. I had established an institute, it worked like clockwork. I had brought there everything I had learned in Europe. I had previously been to Europe as a visiting associate professor. I had accepted this reality. I went to Süleymaniye. I wrote a few short letters to my friends in America and Germany. ‘As of today, I am a person who has been expelled from my university, I would like to work for you, is there a place for me?’ I received replies from three universities: Frankfurt University, Berkeley University in California and Yale University. I thought and thought, but I hadn’t finished collecting all the materials for my book (History of Islamic Science). I didn’t want to move away from Istanbul, I didn’t want to move away from the East, from Egypt and Iran, because I still had a lot of material to collect. I decided on Frankfurt, the only History of Sciences Institute in the world. Its director was my friend. As soon as I received the reply ‘You will come to Frankfurt University as a visiting professor’, I slowly finished my work and went there.

The last night before I left, I went to the Galata Bridge. Near Karaköy, facing the Anatolian side, leaning against the railings for about half an hour, I began to think deeply. I was asking myself how I could live my whole life away from Istanbul, which I loved so much, and the reasons for the events that upset my hometown. For the past forty-seven years, every time I visit Istanbul, I always remember the half-hour of reflection I spent at the northern corner of that bridge and the way I left with moist eyes.

I left with a suitcase. In the suitcase were some clothes and receipts for a few important manuscripts; around 20-25 thousand… I took them and left. But there was a strange, childish fear in me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was going to an unknown world, a life. I didn’t know how it was going to be. The director of the Oriental Institute there was going to study in Cairo for six months, and they hastily gave me his place to teach there for six months. But they didn’t tell me, ‘You will come for six months. If they had asked me, then I would have wondered whether I should go to Germany or America. I’m glad they didn’t.

The man who sent me the invitation, Professor Hartner, was a very virtuous man, we were friends. Anyway, I went and started my class there immediately. In his fourth month, my friend Willy Hartner called me one day and said, ‘Let’s have a coffee. I left. He said to me: ‘We have called you for six months, what do you intend to do after six months?’ I said: I did not know that you called me for six months. He was my friend too, who went to Cairo. He gave the university this condition: Sezgin can only stay here for six months! They accepted this condition to help me. Hartner told me this detail and said, ‘Do you want to go to America? It is not possible for you to stay in Frankfurt. I’m afraid we made such a mistake in order to help you.’ Willy Hartner said this in a flurry and embarrassed.

I listened very comfortably. After that revolution in Turkey, I became a new person. I started to tell Willy Hartner what this new person was. And I said: ‘Don’t worry at all. ‘I always planned my life. I said, “I will finish high school at this time, university at that time… I will be an associate professor at this age” and I succeeded in all these things. I realized that I was succeeding in everything, I started to get spoiled. Then came a military coup. I was caught in that net like a net thrown over a fish. Then I realized that there was a limit to my will as a human being. After that incident, I decided this: If I am guaranteed a six-week future in my life, I will not think about the seventh week. I have two more months ahead of me. I have also saved money, so I don’t think about them.’ The man looked at me… He stood up and embraced me. He said to me: “I am an atheist, I don’t believe in God, but I envy people who believe so much!” Then the man worked without letting me know, I don’t know who he met with.

There is the city of Marburg, the head of the Hittites department of the university there came and said to me: “We have established a new Oriental Studies Chair here, there is no one to give lectures there, can you take over these lectures?” I said, “Okay, fine. All this happened less than six weeks ago!

So I started to believe that the new path I was taking in my life was the right one. In 1965, I did a second associate professorship at the institute. After associate professorship, they gave him the title of Professor of History of Sciences…”

Fuat Sezgin said, “Perhaps one of the most important events of my life, a fortunate coincidence in my life” . Dr. Ursula Ms. He married her in 1966. Their daughter Hilal Sezgin was born in 1970.

“I met my wife in the fourth month of my stay in Germany. She was a young German who had converted to Islam before we met. She was studying geography and political science. Then she dropped out. She studied Oriental Studies: Arabic, Persian, Turkish, etc… Without her, my job would have been very difficult. I had faith. I had absolute faith in God. And also my wife’s very high human qualities and her belief in me and her support for me in achieving my goal. In 1961, in the fourth month of my stay there, I started writing my book. While I was writing my book, my wife was taking my manuscript and studying it. My German was not very good, she corrected it and made it ready for the printing press. My wife was very important to me!”

Fuat Sezgin continued his research and teaching activities at the University of Frankfurt. The focus of his scientific work here was the history of Arab-Islamic natural sciences. His associate professorship on Jābir bin Hayyān in this field
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(habilitation) thesis at the Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften at the University of Frankfurt in 1965 and was promoted to professor a year later.

Since his student years, Sezgin started collecting sources with the intention of improving Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, and as a result of his researches, he published the first volume of the History of Arabic-Islamic Sciences(Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums) in 1967, the most comprehensive work written in the field since the beginning of science until today. Comprising 17 volumes, this comprehensive work covers the following topics in its various volumes: Qur’anic sciences, hadith sciences, history, jurisprudence, kalam, mysticism, poetry, medicine, pharmacology, zoology, veterinary medicine, alchemy, chemistry, botany, agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, meteorology and related fields, grammar, mathematical geography and cartography.

A committee of more than ten scholars selected from different countries interested in improving Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur appreciated GAS and decided to leave it to Sezgin to improve Brockelmann’s work. When Fuat Sezgin sent a copy of the first volume to his teacher Ritter, who was in Istanbul at the time, for his expert evaluation of the GAS, the experienced orientalist congratulated his student, stating that “no one had done such a work before and no one would ever do it again”.

In 1978, Fuat Sezgin was awarded the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Sciences, and when this award was presented to him, he took advantage of this support and founded the Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften (Institute for the History of Arab-Islamic Sciences) at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in 1982.

In 1900, the German physicist Eilhard Wiedemann began modeling the instruments found in works of Islamic scientific history in order to promote them. By 1928, in about 30 years of his life, he had managed to model only five instruments. Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin started his studies with the thought “I wonder if I can succeed in making 30 instruments?”, “Can I fill a room, if not a museum?”. At the Museum of the History of Islamic Science in Frankfurt, he modeled more than 700 instruments, a feat far beyond his wildest dreams. In the same building was the Library of the History of Sciences, which contained 45,000 volumes of books that he collected with great care and effort from all over the world during his lifetime.

“In 1982 I founded an institute at the University of Frankfurt. It was an ambitious institute. I had two goals; firstly, I had to expand the boundaries of my research and studies in the history of Islamic sciences. Secondly, I thought that a large group of people could fulfill the task of correcting the misjudgments and misrepresentations of Muslims in the history of general sciences. With these two goals, I founded the institute. Gradually, as I thought, projects developed. One of these projects was the idea of presenting samples of the tools made by Islamic scholars during the eight hundred years of creativity and realizing a museum containing them. Today, in our institute, we have been able to make models of eight hundred tools, which is a step that I could not have imagined. I thank Allah that we have reached this stage.”

Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin decided to establish a Museum of the History of Islamic Science similar to the one he founded in Germany in his homeland, Istanbul. His goal was to enable Turks to see more concretely the extraordinary achievements of their civilization and the contributions of Muslim scientists to the history of sciences. He returned to Turkey and began preparations for the museum. The opening of the Museum of the History of Islamic Science and Technology, which Fuat Sezgin had been dreaming of for years as a result of his efforts and efforts in his own country and for his own nation, took place on May 25, 2008. It was inaugurated by then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Located in Gülhane Park in Istanbul, the museum contains approximately 600 artifacts. These two museums, established in the field of the history of Islamic science, represent a great innovation in their field by presenting the evolution of the history of science in different disciplines and the inventions and discoveries that Muslim scientists have gifted to humanity for centuries.

There is a 5-volume catalogue work titled Science and Technique in Islam written by Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin to introduce the instruments in these museums. As a museum catalog, such a comprehensive and holistic work has been written for the first time ever and published in 4 languages: Turkish, English, German and French.

Fuat Sezgin talks about the Museum of the History of Islamic Science and Technology he founded in Istanbul as follows:

“First of all, I praise Allah. This inauguration phase has taken place and our nation, and humanity in particular, has such a museum in an international city like Istanbul. I believe that the opening of this museum in Istanbul will change the wrong views and ignorance of Turks towards their own civilization. This is my first goal. Beyond that, Istanbul is a city visited by millions of tourists. Millions of tourists will see what a high civilization Islamic civilization is and what a great place it occupies in the history of sciences thanks to this museum established in Istanbul. As you know, the artifacts in this museum are copies of the artifacts in the museum I started to prepare 26 years ago at Frankfurt University. A few of the tools we show here are models of tools left here and there. But ninety-five percent of them have not survived to this day, they have been lost and their recipes are only found in books. When I started creating these tools 25 years ago, I didn’t know either. When I started, I thought I could only create five to ten instruments. Over time, the business evolved, and the number of tools we created reached or even exceeded eight hundred. It was an unattainable dream for me. In recent years, there has been a desire to transfer one of these instruments to Turkey. But how could I fulfill this desire? With great gratitude, I would like to mention again that this building, which I saw by chance in Gülhane Park with a friend, made me believe that my dream could come true. Mr. Kadir Topbaş, the Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, came and visited us and said he would give us this building. After that, we started to fulfill the requirements of this job. I must say that the Turkish government, especially the Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), has given us great facilities to make this place a museum. Most of the equipment was donated by our institute. Twenty percent was financed by the state. And of course, there were expenses in terms of repairing the building. All this was generously provided by the state. Praise God, the inauguration was held on May 24th and it is attracting great interest. I see that it is a place where Turks and foreign tourists rush.started to be used. I am very happy and thank God for this.”

The Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin Foundation for the History of Islamic Science Research was established in 2010 to support the museum’s activities. In addition, under the leadership of Fuat Sezgin, the Department of History of Science was opened at Fatih Sultan Mehmet Foundation University in 2013, providing undergraduate, graduate and doctoral education. Fuat Sezgin’s last great service to Turkey in the field of history of science was to establish the Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin and Dr. Ursula Sezgin History of Sciences Library. During all these studies of Fuat Sezgin, Dr. Ursula Sezgin always supported her husband. Established in 2017 in Gülhane Park, the library has approximately 27,000 books. Fuat Sezgin, who closely followed the work of the books inventoried in the library, often visited the students of the History of Science Department of Fatih Sultan Mehmet Foundation University who took part in this work. He emphasized the importance of the books cataloged and advised that he had entrusted the field of the history of Islamic science to his students and that they should work with determination. Even in the last days of his life, he did not stay away from the field of Islamic history of science and its books.

“The Death of the Scholar is Like the Death of the World”

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Fuat Sezgin passed away on June 30, 2018 in Istanbul, where he spent his last years and continued his studies. He devoted his life to science with a rare determination and hard work that pushed the limits of human power, and left behind his valuable works and thoughts. Fuat Sezgin was an exceptional value who was followed with interest and benefited from his works by scholars working on the history of Islamic science and thought.

“May Fuat Sezgin’s soul rest in peace, and may the prayers of the scientific community be the witness and charity of his contribution to science.”

[1] Due to a practice in the civil registry offices in those years, Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin’s date of birth was recorded as July 1, 1924 on his birth certificate. However, Fuat Sezgin’s real date of birth is October 24, 1924.



[2]

At that time, in addition to undergraduate education, the program was applied for certificates in different fields and allowed for specialization by writing a thesis.

[3]Habilitation is earned by submitting one more scientific work after a doctoral degree in a discipline. In countries where this practice exists, a habilitation is required to become a professor.



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Fuat Sezgin did a habilitation study in this field in order to be able to teach the history of natural sciences at the University of Frankfurt.