Müftüzade Muhammed Sad？k al-Erzincan？ and His Place in the Arabic Language

Müftüzade Muhammed Sad？k was born (1748?) in Erzincan. He completed primary school education there, and later moved to Istanbul where he served as a muderris (madrasah teacher) for a certain period of time. As result of his growing reputation during his tenure in Istanbul, Saman？zade ？mer Hul？s？ Efendi, Shaykh al-Islam at that time, invited him with the decree of Selim III to the lessons before the sultan as mukarrir (who gives a lecture by repeating). He spent his last days in Istanbul, Uskudar until his death in 1808, and was buried there. Turbulent and changeable political, social and cultural structure of the period Müftüzade lived in made a huge impact on the intellectual life at that time. This impact had negative sides as well as positive dimensions. There were multifaceted impacts on the Arabic language in terms of language, lexicon and literary style in particular. Having a complete command of the language structure of Arabic, Müftüzade made a name for himself especially with his works on Arabic language and literature. It is seen in the footnotes written by Müftüzade in Arabic on various writers’ works that he studied these works refinedly, explaining implicit and incomprehensible topics with a plain language. This study, aiming to present Müftüzade’s contribution to the Arabic language and literature to the science world’s attention, first introduces his scholarly personality, and then, attempts to demonstrate his place and prominence in the Arabic language considering the scholarly value of his works