Reading Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifāʾ in the Ottoman world: the circulation of the work within the school of Asʿad al-Yānyawī

The present paper focuses on two manuscripts preserving the section of logic (ğumlat al-manṭiq) of Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (namely mss. İstanbul; Süleymaniye kütüphanesi; Ragıp Paşa 909 and Atıf Efendi 1565); whose production and circulation have to be connected to the circle of Asʿad Ibn ʿAlī Ibn ʿUṯmān al-Yānyawī (d. 1143 H/1730) in the madrasa of Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī in Constantinople. Firstly; it will be argued that both manuscripts can provide new insights into the intellectual production within the school of Asʿad al-Yānyawī. In fact; they preserve a huge amount of marginalia; among which some yet unstudied glosses by al-Yānyawī himself on Avicenna’s Šifāʾ; and some quotations of certain newly discovered works by al-Yānyawī. Secondly; it will be claimed that both manuscripts also preserve a set of marginalia which attests a thirteenth-century exegetical activity on Avicenna’s Šifāʾ; so that the two manuscripts are themselves precious witnesses for the Ottoman reception of a much earlier exegetical tradition on the text.