In this video about the life of His Eminence Mahmûd Efendi Hazretleri (Kuddise Sirruhû), information about His Eminence (Mahmûd Ustaosmanoğlu) himself is briefly included. Although this nine-and-a-half minute video falls short of describing His Eminence Shaykh Mahmûd al-Ûfi, it will be instrumental in introducing His Eminence to those who have never met him.
Who is Mahmut Ustaosmanoğlu?
Born in 1927 in the village of Miçço (now Tavşanlı) in the district of Of in Trabzon, Mahmud Efendi’s father was Ali Efendi, son of Mustafa, and his mother was Mrs. Fâtima, daughter of Tufan. His Eminence’s parents were well-known and respected people with verâ and taqwa.
Here is a video that briefly describes the life of our master, our master, Mahmûd Efendi Hazret (Kuddise Sirruhû):
Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Effendi’s Knowledge and Tariqa Cemi
Mahmud Effendi Hazretleri, like his sheikh Ali Haydar Effendi Hazretleri, was a zulcenâhayn who combined science and Sufism.
Although Mahmud Effendi emphasized tarîqat, he never allowed an iota of compromise from Sharî’ah. He always stated that dreams, visions, discoveries, miracles and other phenomena should not be given much credence, and that the main purpose was to steer on the path of Sharî’ah.
His words below reveal how sensitive he was in this matter:
“If a person known as a murshid has the practice of Sharî’ah, that person also has tariqat. If there is no Sharî’ah, there is no tariqah, and that person cannot be a Murshid.”
“You may see yourself in very beautiful states in dreams or visions. If you have such dreams even though you have behaviors and actions contrary to Sharî’ah, know that these dreams are istidraq for you. Istidraq means that Allâhu ta’âlâ draws a disobedient servant to destruction by degrees. Why are we working so hard? So that we can do Sharî’ah well. It is always sharî’ah.”
“Imâm-i-Rabbânî (Quddise Sirruhu) says in the 50th letter of the 2nd volume: ‘To attain the truth of Sharî’ah, it is necessary to follow the form of Sharî’ah. Because all the perfections of wali (guardianship) and prophethood (prophethood) are based on the form of Sharî’ah.”
The Importance Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Effendi Hazretret gave to Zikr
Since Mahmud Effendi Hazretleri saw the Shari’ah as a whole, he would never approve of being busy only with knowledge and being lax in worship, in the duties of the tarîqat, which is the madrasah of dhikrullâh, in communicating the religion, and in emr-i bi’l-mâruf nehy-i ani’l-münker.
The following words he said on this subject will help to understand his way.
“Before going to bed, let us engage in a small lesson (tarīqat virdi). Let us continue it after the Tahajjud prayer. Let us finish it at the time of ‘Isha’. After that, let us spend all our time on knowledge.”
“Zikrullah is the greatest obedience to our Master (saw). Rasulullah (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) was never without dhikr. One should say, ‘Rasulullah ordered me to dhikr, so I dhikr,’ and one should dhikr Allaah morning and evening without ceasing.”
When explaining the necessity of doing emr-i bi’l-mâruf wa nehy-i ani’l-münker (enjoining good and forbidding evil), he used to say:
“If all the houses of Istanbul were madrasas, they would be worthless without emr-i bi’l-mâruf and nehy-i ani’l-münker.”
“Have pity on these people for the sake of Allah. They are flowing into hell like a flood.”
He used to quote his master Ali Haydar Effendi a lot:
“The continuation and survival of Islam depends on the continuation and survival of emr-i bi’l-maruf wa nehy-i ani’l-munker, and the destruction of Islam depends on the abandonment of emr-i bi’l-mâruf wa nehy-i ani’l-munker.”
May Allah (swt) not deprive us of the blessings of this great wali in this world and his intercession in the hereafter. Amen!
Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Effendi’s Obedience to Sharia and Sunnah
Mahmûd Efendi Hazretleri encouraged people to knowledge and worship not only in word but also in deed; he never stopped any worship he started, and he inspired those who saw him with his direction.
In addition to the sunnah prayers before and after the obligatory prayers, he never abandoned the nawafil prayers such as tahajjud, ‘ishaqr, khushluk, awwābīn, tahiyyat al-masjid, and the wudhu thanksgiving prayer, and even once said, “It is better for Mahmud to die than to abandon the khushluk prayer”.
He never abandoned fasting on Mondays and Thursdays, or i’tikaaf for the last ten days of Ramadan. He continued the supererogatory prayers, fasting and dhikr mentioned in the hadiths and encouraged Muslims to do the same.
His resurrection of forgotten sunnahs and his observance of even the manners other than sunnahs as if they were obligatory have led him to be loved and appreciated by Muslims. The fact that he is the first name that comes to mind when it comes to “Taqwa” and “Ittibâ to Sunnah-i seniyyah” in Turkey is the result of this attention.
At one point, when he heard that his congregation was being referred to as “Mahmudçular”, he was very upset and said the following in his Friday sermon: “They call them Mahmudçular. For the sake of Allah! Have I invented a new religion! There are four thousand sunnahs of Rasûlullâh (Sallâllâhu ‘alayhi wa sallam) that are practiced in daily life, and if anyone sees me abandoning four of them, let him not pray behind me.”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu’s Respect for the Ulema
He was very respectful to scholars and students, attentive to their conditions and personally dealt with their problems. He showed the utmost respect to both scholars who were not knowledgeable and mere scribes, stood up when they entered his presence, escorted them to the door when he saw them off, and even in the car, if the scribe was sitting in the front seat, he did not stretch his feet towards him, but sat neatly.
He used every means at his disposal to help those who studied and those who taught, both materially and spiritually.
In 1962, one of his students from Konya, who attended his lecture circle, tells as follows:
“I was a muezzin in Fatih. After the morning prayer, I would go to İsmailağa and read from Hodja Effendi until noon. In the afternoon, I would be involved in discussions and mutâlaa. I had five children. I was also having difficulty paying the rent for the house. I decided to take a side job. For that I had to stop studying. One day after class, I told Hodja Effendi about the situation and he was very saddened. He told me to wait and then he got up, went home, took three of his wife’s bracelets and came back. ‘Here, these are our gift to you. Pay your rent, but don’t stay behind in class.”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Efendi’s Importance to Knowledge
With the death of his shaykh Ali Haydar Effendi, a new stage in Mahmûd Efendi’s life began. On the one hand, he was busy with the congregation as an imam, on the other hand, he was busy teaching students, and on the other hand, as per the will of His Holiness Ali Haydar Effendi, he was busy with irshâd for the people of the tariqa.
He used the Ismailağa Mosque, where he served as imam, as a lodge, a madrasah and a center for emr-i bi’l-mâruf and nehy-i ani’l-münker. Many imams, wâiz and muftis in Istanbul took lessons from Mahmûd Efendi, who taught many students in his hometown and gave ijazat to many people even before he joined the army, in accordance with the method followed in Ottoman madrasas.
He always encouraged people to knowledge, good deeds and ihlâs. At that time, it was not easy to study and teach science, especially to do so without compromising the Sunnah.
In the villages, it was even difficult to find people who could take funerals, lead taraweeh in Ramadan and recite the muqābala. The common people could not read the Qur’ân al-kerîm, could not pray, were ignorant of religious obligations, could not even list the pillars of faith and could not even pronounce the word of shahada.
For eighteen years, the adhan-i Muhammadî was recited in Turkish, and those who recited it in Arabic were persecuted and punished. The clergy and pious people were vilified through the press and media, slandered and slanderously tried to discredit them in the eyes of the public, and they went a long way in this endeavor.
Those with beards and turbans were labeled as priests, those in burqas were portrayed as bogeymen and even prostitutes were targeted. Many films, theaters and plays were organized for this purpose. This went as far as holding burqa removal ceremonies in squares. From elementary school onwards, children were raised with this indoctrination. People were encouraged to blindly imitate Europe, and in this regard, all measures were trampled on and all kinds of outrages were openly committed.
Even reading the Qur’ân al-kerîm was forbidden, let alone books containing religious sciences. Under these conditions, those who wanted to learn their religion were trying to study in the mountains, caves, stables and cemeteries, fleeing to nooks and crannies and leaving guards outside.
In these harsh conditions, where even being able to read the Qur’ân al-kerîm in Arabic was a very difficult task, it is obvious that Mahmûd Efendi Hazretleri’s raising thousands of teachers, men and women, tens of thousands of students and causing millions of bearded men and chador-clad women to grow up in a short period of forty to fifty years is a service beyond all appreciation.
The fact that young people at the age of fifteen or sixteen do not use razor blades on their beards, wear turbans, shalwar and robes, become hafiz and study Qur’anic sciences, young girls wear burqas and reach the level of understanding the meaning of the Qur’an at a young age is undoubtedly the work of a great effort and a sublime spiritual saving.
Mahmûd Efendi Hazretleri traveled to almost all provinces, towns and thousands of villages, doing emr-i bi’l-mâruf and nehy-i ani’l-münker, always calling people to learn knowledge. To those who asked him, “Do you have an order or a desire?” he would reply, “Build a madrasah for girls and a madrasah for boys in every neighborhood”.
Some of his words of encouragement to knowledge are as follows:
“O students! You are the rain-laden clouds of the dry land, the pillars of the pillarless dome.”
“If I had three breaths of my life left, I would tell you to read, read, read.”
“If I were in your place, I would start studying this morning without having breakfast.”
The Method He Followed in the Publication of Knowledge
The gradual manner in which Mahmûd Efendi used to increase knowledge according to the time he lived in and the conditions of people in Turkey is astonishing.
Some scholars even criticized him because they could not understand the subtlety in this matter. Because he encouraged people to study by saying, “Just read Emsile, Bina, Avâmil”.
If he had said to a people who did not even know how to read the Qur’ân al-kerîm and were struggling to make a living, “You should study science for fifteen or twenty years,” I wonder who would have accepted this science.
After a while, he raised the level of knowledge and added other books such as Izhar and Izzî to the aforementioned books and encouraged people by saying, “He who reads Izhar is a teacher”.
Later, he added to these books higher books such as Kâfiye, Molla Jâmî, Nûru’l-îzah, Mülteka, Talhis, Sharh al-Amalî, Sharh al-akaid.
Mahmûd Efendi Hazretleri, who laid the foundation of knowledge in this way and raised many students, was not satisfied with these and raised the level of knowledge even higher with words such as “Mülteka should be memorized”, “Hidâye should be read”, “I would not call anyone who does not read and finish Mecmeu’l-enhur, the commentary of Mülteka, by understanding it”.
He now said, “Read long tafsirs, long hadiths and fiqhs” and expressed his intentions by saying that one should specialize in fiqh for seven years after becoming a hodja.
Moreover, since he could not bear the thought of women remaining ignorant, he initiated a new effort in this regard as well. Because women could most easily explain Islam to other women, it was necessary to train female teachers. However, since men teaching women who were not their mahram (non-relative) — especially in such a corrupt time — would bring about many problems, he found a solution: First, he educated the men, then he instructed the male teachers to teach their wives and daughters. Women who learned from their husbands or fathers then went on to teach other women.
Since the factors that extinguish the spiritual light of women were fewer than those for men, women’s madrasas (Islamic schools) quickly multiplied and spread.
So much so that the number of educated women surpassed that of men. Many girls memorized the Quran (became hafiz), and many became teachers, guiding other women to the path of righteousness.
Mahmud Efendi Hazretleri, in his sermons encouraging the pursuit of knowledge, repeatedly emphasized the following words: ‘Can ordinary carpenters or blacksmiths build the Bosphorus Bridge? No, great engineers and architects are needed. Similarly, small teachers cannot build this bridge of religion; great scholars are required.'”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Efendi Hazretleri’s Meeting with His Sheikh
During his time in the military, Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Hazretleri met the greatest master and sheikh of his life, who would change the course of his destiny: Ali Haydar Efendi. Efendi Baba Ali Haydar Efendi Hazretleri was one of the private teachers (huzur hocaları) of the last four Ottoman sultans and served as the Head of the Composition Committee (Hey’et-i Te’lîfiyye Reisi) in the Islamic Jurisprudence Council (Meşîhat-ı İslâmiyye).
A staunch Hanafi, Ali Haydar Efendi was so deeply knowledgeable in the jurisprudence of all four schools of thought that he once said, ‘If the books of the four schools were lost, I could rewrite them all from memory.’ He was also a mufti qualified to issue fatwas in all four schools. He was entrusted with the preparation of the ‘Buyu and Ijara’ (Sales and Leasing) section of the Mecelle (Ottoman civil code), which he completed with a scholarly committee of eight members. Among this committee was Ömer Nasuhi Bilmen, a highly competent jurist who later served as the Mufti of Istanbul and the head of religious affairs (Diyanet). Bilmen was the fourth scribe in this committee.
Ali Haydar Efendi once confronted the late Zahid al-Kawthari, one of the greatest scholars of the late Ottoman period, over a fatwa issued by him at the Meşîhat. Later, when his student Emin Saraç Hoca Efendi was about to depart for Cairo, Ali Haydar Efendi sent a message to Zahid al-Kawthari, saying, ‘He is now an emigrant (muhajir). I once confronted him, so I ask him to forgive me.’ Upon receiving this message, Zahid al-Kawthari praised him, saying, ‘He is our teacher; he has the right to confront us at any time.’
Mahmud Efendi was one of those chosen servants (murad kullar) of Allah (Allâh-u Teâlâ), and thus, a great scholar and sheikh like Ali Haydar Efendi was sent to him. The story goes as follows: Ali Haydar Efendi’s sheikh, Ali Rıza Bezzaz Hazretleri, who had passed away forty years prior and was buried in Bandırma, appeared to Ali Haydar Efendi in a spiritual vision at his tekke in Istanbul. He presented Mahmud Efendi, who was serving in the military there at the time, and instructed, ‘Come to Bandırma immediately and take the trust (emanet) here.’
Upon this, Ali Haydar Efendi immediately went to Bandırma and arrived at the Tekke Mosque. He instructed his disciples, ‘There is a soldier here; find him and bring him to me.’ They began searching for the soldier in Bandırma, but since they did not know his name, surname, or address, the task was far from easy.
Mahmud Efendi Hazretleri later recounted what happened next:
‘Since my early years, I have had a deep love for scholars and sheikhs. Whenever I heard of a scholar or a friend of Allah, I would visit them to seek their blessings. While serving in the military in Bandırma, I wondered if there was a scholar or sheikh there whom I could visit and seek blessings from. There was a pious man named Halil Efendi in Bandırma. Once, I asked him, ‘Is there a sheikh around here?’ He pointed to the grave of Ali Rıza Bezzaz Hazretleri and said, ‘This person has a successor, but he is in Istanbul.’
Upon this, I visited the grave of that saintly figure. Desiring to meet his successor and receive his blessings, I began thinking, ‘How can I find an opportunity to go to Istanbul?’ At that moment, my heart was drawn to that person. From then on, I constantly thought of him.
One day, I performed the Friday prayer at the Haydar Çavuş Mosque by the seaside in Bandırma. After the prayer, I saw a majestic, luminous figure in a white turban and white robe in a corner of the mosque. He appeared to me as majestic as a king. When I asked who he was, they told me, ‘That is the person you wish to see: Ali Haydar Efendi Hazretleri.’
I was overjoyed and wanted to meet him. However, those close to him advised caution, saying, ‘The times are very troubled; this person is under surveillance. If you come at night, you can meet him.’ When I went at night, he had already retired early due to illness. I was only able to meet him the next day. When I entered his presence, he immediately said upon seeing me, ‘This is the person to whom I will entrust my books.’ Thus, we met and became acquainted. He informed me that his sheikh had entrusted me to him spiritually and instructed me never to leave his side. From that day on, I never left him.'”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Efendi Hazretleri’s Authorization
Mahmud Efendi Hazretleri completed his memorization of the Quran (hafızlık) under the guidance of his father and mother at the age of six. Influenced by the piety of his family and the environment in which he was raised, he performed his prayers in the mosque and paid great attention to voluntary acts of worship, despite his young age.
After completing his memorization of the Quran, he traveled to Kayseri during Ramadan and studied Arabic grammar (sarf), syntax (nahiv), and Persian under Tesbihcizade Ahmed Efendi, one of the respected scholars of the region. After spending a year in Kayseri, he returned to his hometown, Of, where he studied Quranic recitation (kıraat) under Mehmed Rüşdü Aşıkkutlu Hoca Efendi, one of the most renowned Quran recitation scholars of the time.
He completed his studies in the Islamic sciences, including rhetoric (belağat), theology (ilm-i kalam), exegesis (tefsir), hadith, jurisprudence (fıkıh), and the principles of jurisprudence (usûl-ü fıkh), under his brother-in-law, Çalekli Hacı Dursun Fevzi Efendi. Dursun Fevzi Efendi was a specialist in both rational (akli) and transmitted (nakli) sciences and a lecturer at the Süleymaniye Madrasa. By the age of sixteen, Mahmud Efendi had received his formal authorization (ijaza) to teach.
While still a student himself, he began teaching others. After teaching his students for about seven years, he granted them ijaza before leaving for military service—an achievement that was exceptionally rare and difficult at the time.”
The Birth of Mahmud Ustaosmanoğlu Efendi Hazretleri
Mahmud Efendi Hazretleri was born in 1927 in the village of Miço (Tavşanlı), in the Of district of Trabzon province. His father, Ali Efendi, son of Mustafa, and his mother, Fatıma Hanımefendi, daughter of Tufan, were respected individuals known for their piety and God-consciousness (verâ and takva). Ali Efendi served as the imam of the village mosque while also working in agriculture on his own land. Despite his field being far from the mosque, he never neglected his duties. He would always come to the mosque, call the adhan, and lead the prayers.
Sometimes, when the villagers were busy with farm work and could not come to the mosque, Ali Efendi would still leave his work to pray in the mosque, even if he knew he would have to pray alone.
Ali Efendi was a devout worshipper, someone who frequently recited the Quran and lived a life of contentment. In 1954, after saving money with great difficulty, he went on Hajj. However, he fell ill in Makkah al-Mukarramah and passed away there. He was buried in Jannat al-Mu’alla, near his father, Mustafa Efendi, who had also passed away and was buried there earlier.
His mother, Fatıma Hanım, was very careful about the rights of others. When she took her cows to graze, she would tie their mouths to prevent them from eating from anyone else’s garden. If a cow accidentally grazed in someone else’s garden, she would immediately seek forgiveness from the owner and give them all the milk produced by that cow.
