1. uluslararasi prof. Dr. Fuat sezgiN İSLÂM

The Hoca’s Ascetic Life

Whenever I picture Fuat Hoca, no matter when it was during our 38-year association, I see him sitting at his desk at the Institute diligently working away, as he did every day. And I do not use the term every day lightly; he worked on weekends, Sundays, national holidays, religious festivals and on the 1^st of January too. He viewed time as precious and did not approve of idling. For every spare or wasted moment, he would ask, “How will I account for those wasted moments to the Creator?” He saw work as a form or worship, and he wanted to spend every moment in worship. He liked to say that “there was no reason not to work.” He once talked to me about a scholar who spent 20 years captive in a dungeon in which he was only able to see the sky through an iron grille in the ceiling overhead but who still managed to write; Fuat Hoca said that there was no reason for us not work when even that man under those harsh conditions managed to pen dozens of books. I happened to see just such a dungeon in Bukhara. Located next to the emir’s winter castle, it was a well around 4 metres deep and 3 metres in diameter covered by an iron grille across a hole around half a metre across in the ceiling looking out at the sky. Food for the captive would have been lowered down with a rope. It was after seeing this that Fuat Hoca’s words resonated even more deeply with me. He used to say that the old scholars of Islam would study and carry out research in the name of God and would see the advancement of knowledge as moving closer to God, to the extent that whenever a scientific or intellectual problem had been solved, they would go to the mosque to donate alms.
According to Fuat Hoca, “an individual could do much, all he needed was self-belief and persistence.” This is why one of his most urgent priorities was to raise the self-confidence

of Muslim youths and to rescue them from their complex with regard to the West. One of the matters to which he gave the greatest importance was the learning of languages. He told us that in order to read a book in its original form, he would learn the language in which it had been written. As such, reading was of profound importance to him; he read slowly but thoroughly and methodically. Most of the time, he would not even notice when somebody had entered his office.

Fuat Sezgin Hoca always preferred the humble, indeed, almost ascetic life. At the Institute, he would make his own soup and wash his own dishes without relying upon others to serve him. He saw his work as a sacred duty and approached it thus. As a result, downplaying oneself and one’s own needs became a maxim for him. He was also known to neglect his own health for the sake of his work. It was only when his health was critically threatened that he would call me, as his doctor, and describe his symptoms. I recall a number of such instances. One day, Hoca called me and told me his left leg had swollen and that it was causing him great pain. He eventually came to the clinic, but only after I had insisted and quite forcefully too. The situation was indeed grave; his entire leg had swollen up and was inflamed, and the infection was now so advanced that pus had begun to ooze from a wound in his lower leg. The lab reports made for an uncomfortable reading. The diagnosis was erysipelas. Hoca was over 80 at the time and at that age he needed to be admitted to a hospital bed otherwise the consequences could have been fatal. However, try as we might, we could not convince him to go to hospital for treatment as an in-patient, and he insisted upon ambulatory care. By the grace of God, the treatment was successful, and he was able to continue with his work at the Institute. On another occasion, he phoned me to say he wanted to see me, saying he had a terrible cough and that he did not feel well. When I examined him, there was severe damage to both of his lungs and his blood count readings were terrible. He had a severe case of pneumonia. Hoca was nearing 90 on this occasion and pneumonia at that age is a potentially fatal condition, but once again, Fuat Hoca refused to be admitted to hospital and asked for ambulatory care. Even during his treatment, he went to the Institute every day to work. There are many other cases regarding Fuat Hoca’s health that can be related here, from gastric bleeding to trauma, but all were treated and overcome with Hoca as an outpatient. Fuat Hoca’s faith and spirituality undoubtedly also had a huge part to play in his overcoming his ailments under such trying conditions.

4. GAS

Fuat Hoca’s magnum opus was the 17-volume Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, or GAS, (‘The History of the Arabic -Islamic Sciences’), a work that changed the course

of the History of the Sciences. In the volume dealing with geography, for instance, the theories put forward by Western historians downplaying Muslims’ role in the development of science were debunked; in this work, Fuat Hoca’s volume proved that most of the maps in the possession of the West – including those of Marco Polo – had been unconsciously copied from Muslim maps. A work such as this should of course be open to criticism, whether it be positive or, if the case may be, negative, but the West’s profound silence with regards to this book is a sign of its incapacity to deal with the material. In all the major libraries I have visited around the world, including the National Library in Washington and the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, the 17-volume GAS by Fuat Hoca is a cornerstone work. One must also point to the Institute’s thousands of publications covering a wide range of disciplines. Another of Fuat Hoca’s great services here was not only to gather the various sources he had assembled over the years and publish them in book form but also to collect and publish the secondary literature and studies on these sources.

At this juncture, I would like to touch upon Fuat Hoca’s moral sensibilities. In 2010, when the state of Hessen in Germany wished to present him with an award, the Vice-President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Salamon Korn, was also due to receive an award. Fuat Hoca, however, rejected the prize as he did not wish to appear on stage with a man that supported the state of Israel’s brutal actions against Palestine at the time, a decision that created quite a stir in the German media. It underlines the sensitivity and discernment shown by Fuat Hoca when accepting an award.

5.