Finding the Commentary of a Story While Chasing the Story of a Commentary: Ahmad b. Ma？mūd al-？alabī's Shar？ al-Jawāhir al-Mu？ī？a and His Testimony to the Murder of Nasīmī

This study deals with a kalam commentary text written in Aleppo dating from the beginning of the last century of the Mamluk Turkish State. The research has shown that the poem commentated upon is Imāmzāda al-Bukhārī’s (d.573/1177) ？Uqūd al-？Aqā？id fī Funūn al-Fawā？id, which consists of 770 couplets and is the lengthiest Arabic creed (？aqā？id) poem in the ？anafī-Māturīdī tradition, and that the commentary entitled Shar？ al-Jawāhir al-Mu？ī？a is written by an otherwise unknown ？anafī scholar A？mad b. Ma？mūd b. Sulaymān al-？alabī (9th/15th century) in 823 (1420). Giving explicit first-hand information regarding circumstances of Nasīmī’s (d.823/1420) death and being the first text to mention the Nasīmiyya branch of the ？urūfism, the text has special importance. The commentary has been edited as part of a Master’s thesis, however, without taking into account the scientific methods of critical edition, and as a result, both the poem and the commentary were attributed by the editor to other people than their true authors. In the first part of this study, I tell the story of how I have identified the authors of both the text and the commentary. Then, I analyze the commentary in terms of Kalam and the politics of the time. Finally, I discuss the ground of existence of the Nasīmiyya movement in the Mamluk region and its reflection on the commentary