Negotiating Aristotelian-Avicennan Natural Philosophy in the Early Ottoman Madrasa

Abstract

As the most widely circulated early Ottoman gloss on Aristotelian-Avicennan natural philosophy, Ḫocazāde’s paratext on Mullāzāde’s commentary on Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma illuminates the reception and defense of hylomorphism in postclassical madrasas. Working largely within an Avicennan framework, this previously unedited and unstudied text clarifies and reformulates key doctrines to address rival theological objections and misconceptions about hylomorphic composition. Read alongside Ḫocazāde’s Tahāfut al-falāsifa , where hylomorphism remains compatible with divine creation, the gloss affirms it as both constitutive of natural philosophy’s subject matter and indispensable to metaphysical inquiry. The coexistence of hylomorphism with theologians’ atomism in other madrasa handbooks points to the disciplinary compartmentalization of rival doctrines within Ottoman curricula.