Mahmud ibn 'Ali al-Sarai explained

Maḥmūd ibn ʿAlī al-Sarāī was a fourteenth-century CE scholar, known from one of the main surviving works composed in Khwārazm Turkish, namely Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928);: نهج الفراديس (Nahjatü l-farādīs).

Nahjatü l-farādīs

Nahjatü l-farādīs is known in Turkish today as Nehcü’l-ferâdîs or Nehcü'l-feradis, and has also been known as Fezâilü’l-mu‘cizât.^[1] It appears to have been composed in 1358 and is similar in both language and content to the more widely attested Qiṣaṣ-i Rabghūzī by Nāṣir al-Dīn Rabghūzī.^[2] The text contains four sections, each divided into ten chapters. The first section describes the life of Muḥammad; the second gives information about founding figures of Islam, including four caliphs and Fāṭima; the thirds discusses good deeds; and the fourth discusses bad deeds. As of 2006, over ten manuscripts were known.

Editions of the Nahjatü l-farādīs

• Nehcü’l-ferdis (tıpkıbasım), ed. by János Eckmann (Ankara 1956). Facsimile of a manuscript of the text. The introduction promises further volumes, but none appeared.

Notes and References

1. A. Azmi Bilgin, 'Nehcü’l-ferâdîs', in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul, 2006), XXXII 540-41.
2. M. van Damme, "Rabghūzī", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by P. Bearman and others, 2nd edn, 12 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), .