The death of a scholar: in memory of Fuat Sezgin Hodja

Our Esteemed Prophet (peace be upon him) decrees thus: "The death of a scholar is like the death of a world." This saying of course has an altogether different meaning for people of knowledge. Every scholar has a world. Entering and leaving this world is not as easy as supposed. Those who are truly people of knowledge observe very well how a world is built through knowledge, who has been able to enjoy himself in it and how much, how far into which edge, which tip of it each has entered and what share each has been able to take.

They do not share all of these observations with everyone. Even if they wished to share, they could not, because it is not possible for everyone to grasp the realities they observed, in the way they observed them, with the weight and significance they observed them. Even so, those who wish to enter their world too can have a share according to their own vessel, and they take from it what they can according to that vessel.

Yesterday we witnessed the death of a scholar, of a plane tree of knowledge, and thus the closing of a world. We saw off Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin Hoca on the last journey of his 94-year life, devoted to knowledge and in which he continued the same effort without losing his excitement until his last minute.

Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin Hoca, who started out from Bitlis and rose to being the greatest scholar in the world in his field, must be one of the names who best make one feel the experience of being a world. The experience of having worked on his own world with care by ignoring how the streams of life that continued in parallel in the world he lived in and tried to influence and determine his own life…

Much has been written and drawn about him for two days now. As far as I could see yesterday, very fine introductory pieces, each revealing a different side of him, were published by Yusuf Kaplan, Yaşar Süngü, Ergün Yıldırım, İsmail Kılıçarslan from our newspaper, Yıldıray Oğur from Karar, and Sibel Eraslan from Star Gazetesi. Today you will probably read pieces in many places again, in which many writers recount different anecdotes and cross-sections from Fuat Sezgin hoca's life. I do not want to fall into repetition.

An important feature of Fuat hoca that I want to emphasize here is precisely the incredible will he displayed in weaving his own world while protecting it from the events through which the world was passing and which he himself was obliged to experience.

As is well known, among the famous list of 147 that the 1960 junta members expelled from the universities on various pretexts, there was also Fuat hoca, then a young docent of 36. With the love of knowledge and the discipline he had absorbed from his German teacher named Hellmut Ritter, who could be described as a "good orientalist" according to one classification, he had already begun producing his first works. He had produced his work on the Sources of Bukhari, refuting all the assumptions of the orientalist hadith literature.

Just when he had also charted a route for himself in knowledge, such an obstruction stood before him. Fuat hoca was sought to be stopped by the tragi-comic cooperation of the political and scientific circles of the time, whose view of the university, of knowledge, of the intellectual was narrow, shallow, unable to go beyond an instrumental framework. He could have stopped on the spot with the pessimism into which many a scientist "subjected to the evaluation of the ignorant" can fall, he could have given up, or, after things were later put right, he could have continued from where he left off at a lower tempo.

Yet, seeing the shallowness, narrowness and ignorance of this experience he was living even more than its tyranny, he continued to build the true world he saw and to remain the king of that world. The achievement of a true scholar in being able to rise above the day-to-day-historical experiences he is living is also an expression of his being a person of his own world, or of his depth of knowledge.

Indeed, although Fuat hoca, in his own words, felt a temporary and minor sorrow on account of what he went through, he did not become angry and resentful toward his homeland and his people. As the king of his own world, he was not preoccupied with whether he was recognized in other worlds or whether he was treated well. He continued to expand the boundaries of his own world, to raise its quality, to work its beauty with care. That is why, although it is always remembered as a known reason for his moving to Frankfurt, he never dwelt on it or magnified it more than necessary. Indeed, with the work he produced in the place he went to, Frankfurt, with his work tempo and discipline, he even expressed that he was, in a way, ironically grateful to those who thought this oppression fit for him.

An important feature to be emphasized about Fuat hoca is precisely this work discipline and love of work. Among us, people almost go into retirement mode right after becoming docents; they feel they have gained a kind of exemption from academic discipline and understanding. From that moment on they either do not work at all, or in the work they happen to do they may not hold themselves bound by any academic rigor. And after becoming professors, there are so few who can produce careful, serious and new work. That is why it is not possible for the discipline and love of research to turn into a culture.

When I read a paper that Hans-Georg Gadamer, the famous name of philosophical hermeneutics who died at the age of 104 years ago, presented at a conference he attended at the age of 95, I had made the same comparison with ours. Despite his advancing age, Fuat Sezgin Hoca is, because of the determination, excitement and discipline to work that he persistently maintained until the last moment of his life, a scholar who must be constantly kept on the agenda to be a role model for our academic world.

Although he died as the scholar of a world of his own, much has remained to our world from that world. May God grant us to benefit more and in a more blessed way from that world. May He have abundant mercy upon him.