Shaykh al-Islam Mustafa Sabri and his perception of the Quran

Mustafa Sabri Efendi is one of the last shaykh al-Islams' in the Ottoman Empire. He occupies an important position both scholarly regarding his works and studies, and consequentially regarding his political duties and the service as a shaykh al-islam during the last period of the Ottoman era, especially where the movements of thoughts and political turmoils were on the rise. He also advocated the traditional perception and understanding against the reform and renewal movements that took place in Egypt, where he stayed for a long time spending his life away from home. In this context, his discussions with numerous scholars and thinkers such as Muhammed Abduh, Musa Cârullah Bigiyev, Ferit Vecdi, Muhammed Heykel, Mahmud Şeltût and Mustafa el-Meragi as well as articles and works he wrote against them are significantly remarkable. Besides that, his work Mawkifu'l-Akl wa'l-Ilm wa'l-Âlem min Rabbi'l-Âlemin ve Ibâdihi'lMursalîn has not been widely known or come to the fore in our country due to various reasons. By means of touching on religion, philosophy and politics, his work takes an important place. In this study, our goal is to understand the perception of the Qur'an of this era by his way of reading and understanding the Qur'an, particularly based on his work called Mawkifu'l-Akl and his other works and articles as well. In this study, we analyzed all his works, fundamentally Mawkifu'l-Akl along with his other works with an analytical method based on the question "What is the understanding and perception of the Qur'an of the Ottoman shaykh al-Islam of the last period and the tradition it represents." Thus we found out all the verses and related themes that he referred in his works in order to build a mind map of his consideration of the Qur'an such as miracles, human's free will, the metaphysical field (al-ghayb) and Qur'anic sciences. We tried to convey comparatively the parts of the verses that he mentioned in his works -in the context of the focused issues- which have the quality of interpretation and their equivalents in Tafseer tradition. Keywords: Tafseer, Mustafa Sabri, Ottoman-Egypt, Improvement-innovation, Mawkif al-Akl, mother tongue piety, fate, miracles, commentary.