BOLGAR ISLAMIC ACADEMY

The first joint project between the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan and Bolgar Islamic Academy under the cooperation agreement signed in 2019 is the preparation of an academic edition of the book “Zuhrat al-Riyad wa Nuzhat al-Qulub al-Mirad” (“The beauty of gardens and the consolation for suffering hearts”) by the Bulgar scholar Suleiman bin Daud al-Saksini.

Suleiman bin Daud (al-Suvari) al-Saksini is a medieval scholar of the first half of the 12th century, a student of the qadi of the city of Bulgar Abu-l-‘Ala Hamid ibn Idris al-Bulgari. Many medieval scholars were familiar with al-Saksini’s writings and made references to them. The precise years of al-Saksini’s life are unknown. At the beginning of each chapter, before mentioning the series of hadith narrators, al-Saksini mentions the name of his teacher. According to Shihabutdin Marjani, Hamid al-Bulgari was alive in 1106, therefore, al-Saksini must have lived and worked in the second half of the 12th century. His nisbas al-Suvari and al-Saksini indicate that he was born or lived in the Bulgarian cities of the pre-Mongolian period.

“Zuhrat al-Riyad wa Nuzhat al-Qulub al-Mirad” is a book on religious and philosophical issues written in Arabic. According to the Turkish scholar of the 17th century, author of “Kashf al-Zunun” Haji Khalifa and the author of the book “Tuhfat al-Salawat” Hussein bin Ali al-Kashifi, the book of al-Saksini is an augmented and expanded version of his other book “Bahjat al-Anwar min Haqyqat al-Asrar” (“The beauty of rays from the truth of secrets”) written in Persian.

The book of Suleiman bin Daud al-Saksini consists of 66 parts called majālis, they include comments on Quranic texts, hadiths, Sufi parables and stories. There is speculation that “Zuhrat al-Riyad” could serve as a plot basis for many works of medieval Tatar literature since it contains plots typical of Eastern Muslim literature. The book of Suleiman bin Daud al-Saksini is valuable and is the most ancient of the discovered works from the Volga Bulgaria period, prior to it “al-Tiryaq al-Kabir” from the 13th century was regarded as the oldest book. This work makes it possible to better grasp the Islamic religious and philosophical thought of the Bulgar period, as well as how the Middle Volga region’s inhabitants formed ideological interrelations with the Arab-Muslim world. Suleiman bin Daud al-Saksini’s work is of high scientific significance given the fact that there is hardly any texts preserved from the Bulgarian period.

The first known copy of the Bulgarian scholar’s work dates back to June 1329 and was authored in Tabriz (the original of this manuscript is now preserved in the Suleymaniya library in Istanbul). The list indicates 526 sheets (25 lines each). Short comments and translations of particular phrases into Turkic are frequently written between the lines of the text in the same handwriting. This list became the primary source of information for research and textual work, as well as for the creation of a consolidated, critical text of the book.