The Life of Mahmud Efendi
In this video about the life of Mahmud Efendi (may Allah sanctify his secret), our Efendi (Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu) speaks briefly about himself. Although this nine-and-a-half-minute video falls short of describing Sheikh Mahmud al-Ufi Efendi, it will help those who never knew him to become acquainted with him.
Who Is Mahmut Ustaosmanoglu?
Mahmud Efendi was born in 1927 in the village of Miçço (now called Tavşanlı) in the Of district of Trabzon. His father was Ali Efendi, son of Mustafa, and his mother was Fatima Hanım, daughter of Tufan. His parents were respected people, known for their scrupulous piety and God-consciousness (taqwa).
A video briefly telling the life of our crown, our master, Mahmud Efendi (may Allah sanctify his secret):
Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi: Uniting Knowledge and the Spiritual Path
Mahmud Efendi, like his sheikh Ali Haydar Efendi, was a man of two wings (dhu al-janahayn), uniting knowledge and Sufism.
While Mahmud Efendi was meticulous about the spiritual path (tariqah), he never allowed the slightest compromise on the sacred Sharia. He always said that too much importance should not be given to dreams, spiritual manifestations, unveilings, miracles and other extraordinary states, and that the real aim is to remain steadfast on the highway of the Sharia.
The words we cite below show how careful he was on this matter:
“If a person known as a spiritual guide upholds the Sharia, then that person also has the tariqah. If there is no Sharia, there is no tariqah either, and that person cannot be a guide.”
“You may see yourselves in very beautiful states in a dream or a spiritual vision. If you see such dreams while your conduct and behavior are contrary to the Sharia, know that these dreams are istidraj for you. Istidraj means that Allah the Exalted draws a disobedient servant toward destruction step by step. Why do we work so hard? So that we may practice the Sharia well. Round and round, it is always the Sharia.”
“Imam Rabbani (may Allah sanctify his secret) says in the 50th letter of the second volume: ‘To reach the reality of the Sharia, it is necessary to follow its outward form. For all the perfections of sainthood (wilayah) and prophethood (nubuwwah) are built upon the outward form of the Sharia.’”
The Importance Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi Gave to Dhikr
Because Mahmud Efendi saw the sacred Sharia as a whole, he never approved of laxity in the duties of the tariqah, which is like a school of the remembrance of Allah (dhikrullah) in worship, in conveying the religion, or in enjoining good and forbidding evil (amr bi’l-ma’ruf wa nahy ani’l-munkar), simply because one was busy with knowledge alone.
Recalling the words he spoke on this subject will help us understand his way, even a little.
“Before going to sleep, let us spend a little time on our lesson (the daily recitations of the tariqah). Let us continue after the tahajjud prayer. Let us finish at the time of ishraq. All our remaining time after that we will spend on knowledge.”
“Dhikrullah is the greatest way of following our Master (peace be upon him). The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) never went without dhikr. One should say, ‘The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) commanded me to remember Allah, and so I do,’ and remember Allah the Exalted morning and evening without ceasing.”
Explaining that enjoining good and forbidding evil (amr bi’l-ma’ruf wa nahy ani’l-munkar) must be carried out, he would say:
“Even if every house in Istanbul were a madrasa, it would be worth nothing without enjoining good and forbidding evil.”
“For Allah’s sake, have mercy on these people. They are flowing toward Hell like a flood.”
He often quoted this saying of his master, Ali Haydar Efendi:
“The continuation and survival of the clear religion of Islam depends on the continuation and survival of enjoining good and forbidding evil, and its collapse depends on abandoning them.”
May Allah the Exalted grant all of us the blessings of this great Ghawth’s spiritual care in this world and his intercession in the Hereafter. Amin!
Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi: Adherence to the Sharia and the Sunnah
Mahmud Efendi encouraged people to knowledge and worship not only with his words but also with his own conduct. He never gave up any act of worship he had begun, and his steadfastness inspired all who saw him.
Besides the sunnah prayers before and after the obligatory prayers, he never abandoned voluntary prayers such as tahajjud, ishraq, duha, awwabin, tahiyyat al-masjid and the prayer of gratitude after ablution. He once said, “Better that Mahmud die than that he give up the duha prayer.”
He was never seen to abandon fasting on Mondays and Thursdays or spending the last ten days of Ramadan in i’tikaf. He kept up the voluntary prayers, fasts, dhikr and other acts of worship mentioned in the noble hadiths, and encouraged Muslims to do the same.
His reviving of forgotten sunnahs, and his observing even etiquettes beyond the sunnahs as if they were obligatory, made him loved and admired by Muslims. As a result of this care, he became the first name that comes to mind in Turkey whenever “God-consciousness (taqwa)” or “following the blessed Sunnah” is mentioned.
When he once heard that his community was being called “the Mahmudists,” he was deeply saddened and said in a Friday sermon: “They call us Mahmudists. For Allah’s sake! Have I invented a new religion?! The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) has more than four thousand sunnahs practiced in daily life. Whoever sees me abandon even four of them, let him not pray behind me.”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi: Respect for Scholars
He showed great respect to scholars and students, cared about their circumstances, and personally looked after their difficulties. He treated with the utmost reverence both scholars who did not act upon their knowledge and mere memorizers of the Qur’an (hafiz). When they came into his presence he would stand up, and when they left he would accompany them to the door. Even in a car, if a hafiz was seated in the front seat, he would not stretch out his feet toward him but sit modestly.
He used every means within his power to support, materially and spiritually, those who studied and those who taught.
A student from Konya who joined his study circle in 1962 recounts:
“I was a muezzin in Fatih. After the morning prayer I would go to İsmailağa and study with Hoca Efendi until noon. In the afternoon I would occupy myself with review and reading. I had five children. I was struggling even to pay the rent. I decided to take on extra work. For that I would have to give up my lessons. One day after the lesson I explained my situation to Hoca Efendi. He was deeply saddened. He told me to wait, got up himself and went home, and came back with three bracelets from his wife’s jewelry. ‘Take these, they are our gift to you. Have them sold, pay your rent, but do not fall behind in your lessons,’ he said.”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi: The Importance He Gave to Knowledge
With the passing of his sheikh Ali Haydar Efendi, a new stage began in Mahmud Efendi’s life. On one hand he served as imam to his congregation, on the other he taught students, and in addition, in accordance with Ali Haydar Efendi’s will, he guided the brothers of the tariqah.
He used the İsmailağa Mosque, where he served as imam, as a Sufi lodge, a madrasa and a center for enjoining good and forbidding evil all at once. Following the method used in the Ottoman madrasas, he had already taught many students and granted ijazahs to many people in his hometown before going to military service. In Istanbul as well, many imams, preachers and muftis studied under him.
He always encouraged people toward knowledge, action and sincerity. In those days, studying and teaching, and above all doing so without compromising the blessed Sunnah, was not easy at all.
It had become difficult even to find people in villages to lead funeral prayers, to lead tarawih in Ramadan and to recite the Qur’an in full (muqabala). Ordinary people had become unable to read the Holy Qur’an, did not know how to pray, were unaware of their religious duties, could not list the articles of faith, and could not even pronounce the declaration of faith (kalimah al-shahadah).
For eighteen years the Muhammadan call to prayer had been recited in Turkish, and those who recited it in Arabic were pursued and punished. Religious men and devout people were vilified through the press and broadcast media, slandered and discredited in the eyes of the public, and much ground had been gained in this effort.
Bearded men and men in turbans were branded as priests, women in the chador were portrayed as bogeymen and were even targeted with vile accusations. For this purpose countless films, theater works and plays were staged. It even reached the point of ceremonies in public squares to remove women’s chadors. From primary school on, children began to be raised on these suggestions. People were encouraged to imitate Europe blindly, all standards were trampled underfoot, and every kind of indecency came to be committed openly.
Not to mention books of religious sciences, even reading the Holy Qur’an had been forbidden. Under these conditions, those who wished to learn their religion tried to study in mountains, caves, barns and graveyards, hiding in corners and leaving lookouts outside.
In these harsh conditions, when even reading the Qur’an in its original Arabic was extremely difficult to attain, it is clear that Mahmud Efendi’s raising of thousands of male and female teachers and tens of thousands of students in a short span of forty to fifty years, and his being the cause of millions of bearded men and women in chadors coming into being, was a service beyond all praise.
That young people of fifteen or sixteen did not shave their beards, wore turbans, baggy trousers and robes, memorized the Qur’an and studied the Qur’anic sciences, and that young girls wore the chador and reached the level of understanding the meaning of the Qur’an at an early age, are without doubt the fruit of great effort and a lofty spiritual influence.
Mahmud Efendi traveled through nearly every province, town and thousands of villages, enjoining good and forbidding evil, and all the while kept calling people to learn knowledge. When asked, “Do you have any command or wish?” he would answer, “Build a madrasa for girls and a madrasa for boys in every neighborhood.”
Some of his words encouraging people toward knowledge are as follows:
“O students! You are the rain-laden clouds of parched lands, the pillars of a dome that has no pillars.”
“If I had only three breaths left of my life, I would tell you: study, study, study.”
“If I were in your place, I would start studying this morning before even having breakfast.”
His Method in Spreading Knowledge
The gradual approach Mahmud Efendi used to raise the level of knowledge, according to the times he lived in and the condition of people in Turkey, is astonishing.
Some people of knowledge, not grasping the subtlety of this approach, even criticized him. For he encouraged people toward knowledge by saying, “Studying Emsile, Bina and Avamil is enough.”
Had he told a nation that could not even read the Qur’an and was consumed by the struggle to earn a living, “You must study for fifteen or twenty years,” who would have accepted this knowledge?
After a time he raised the level and added other books such as Izhar and Izzi to those mentioned, and motivated people by saying, “One who studies Izhar is a teacher.”
Later he added still higher books to these, such as Kafiya, Molla Jami, Nur al-Idah, Multaqa, Talkhis, Sharh al-Amali and Sharh al-Aqaid.
Having laid the foundation of knowledge in this way and raised many students, Mahmud Efendi was not content with that. He raised the level further with sayings such as “Multaqa must be memorized,” “Hidaya must be read,” and “I do not call someone a teacher until he has read and finished, with understanding, Majma al-Anhur, the commentary on Multaqa.”
Now he was saying “Read long tafsirs, long hadith collections, and long works of fiqh,” and, saying that after becoming a teacher one should specialize in fiqh for seven years, he expressed the intention he had held within.
Meanwhile, since he could not accept women remaining ignorant, he was also working on a new effort in this area. Because women could most easily explain Islam to other women, it was necessary to raise women teachers as well. Since men teaching women who are not their mahram would bring many drawbacks, especially in such a corrupt age, he found this remedy: he first taught the men, then instructed the male teachers to teach their wives and daughters. The women who studied under their husbands or fathers then taught other women.
Because there are fewer things that dim women’s light than men’s, women’s madrasas multiplied and spread in a short time.
So much so that the number of women studying exceeded that of men. Many girls memorized the Qur’an, and many became teachers and a means of guidance for other women.
In his sermons, to encourage people toward knowledge, Mahmud Efendi repeated these words many times: “Can ordinary carpenters and blacksmiths build the Bosphorus Bridge? Great engineers and great architects are needed. In the same way, this bridge of religion cannot be built by small teachers; great scholars are needed.”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi: Meeting His Sheikh
Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi, during his military service, met Ali Haydar Efendi, his greatest master and sheikh, who would change the course of his life. Efendi Baba Ali Haydar Efendi was among the court teachers (huzur hocasi) of the last four Ottoman sultans, and had been Head of the Compilation Committee (Heyet-i Telifiyye) in the Office of the Sheikh al-Islam.
Ali Haydar Efendi, a staunch Hanafi, knew the jurisprudence of all four schools so well that he could say, “If the fiqh books of the four schools were lost, I could have them all written down from memory,” and he was also a mufti of the four schools. The preparation of the “Sales and Leases” (Buyu ve Icare) section of the Mecelle had been entrusted to him, and with a scholarly committee of eight he chose, he completed this part. A capable jurist such as Omer Nasuhi Bilmen, who later served as Mufti of Istanbul and President of Religious Affairs, was the fourth secretary of this committee.
Ali Haydar Efendi once scolded the late Zahid al-Kawthari, regarded as one of the greatest Ottoman scholars of the final era, in the Office of the Sheikh al-Islam over a fatwa. Later, when his student Emin Saraç Hoca Efendi was about to go to Cairo, he sent word to him: “He has now become an emigrant, and I once scolded him; let him forgive me.” Al-Kawthari spoke of him with praise: “He is our teacher; he always has the right to scold us.”
Because Mahmud Efendi was among the chosen (murad) servants selected by Allah the Exalted, such a great scholar and sheikh as Ali Haydar Efendi was sent to his feet. It came about like this: his sheikh, Ali Riza Bezzaz, who had passed away forty years earlier and was buried in Bandirma, appeared one night in a spiritual manner to Ali Haydar Efendi at the lodge in Istanbul. Presenting Mahmud Efendi, who was then serving in the army there, he commanded: “Come to Bandirma at once and receive the trust that is here.”
Thereupon Ali Haydar Efendi went straight to Bandirma, arrived at the Tekke Mosque, and told the disciples with him: “There is a soldier here. Find him and bring him to me.” At this command they began searching for a soldier in Bandirma. But since this soldier’s name, surname and address were unknown, their task was far from easy.
Mahmud Efendi tells the rest as follows:
“Since my early years I had a love for scholars and sheikhs. Wherever I learned there was a scholar or a friend of Allah, I would visit him. While doing my military service in the training unit in Bandirma, I wondered whether there was a learned person or a sheikh there whom I could visit and whose prayers I could receive. There was a God-fearing man named Halil Efendi. Once I asked him: ‘Is there no sheikh around here?’ He pointed to the grave of Ali Riza Bezzaz Efendi and said: ‘This man has a successor, but he is in Istanbul.’
So I visited that blessed man’s grave. Since I wished to visit his successor and receive his prayers, I began to think, ‘How can I find an opportunity to go to Istanbul?’ At that very moment my heart flowed toward that person. From then on I thought of him constantly.
One day I performed the Friday prayer at the Haydar Çavuş Mosque by the sea in Bandirma. After the prayer I saw, in a corner of the mosque, a majestic and radiant man in a white turban and white robe. He seemed to me as imposing as a sultan. When I asked who he was, they told me: ‘That is Ali Haydar Efendi, the one you wished to see.’
I was overjoyed and wanted to meet him. But those close to him were cautious and told me: ‘Times are very bad, and this man is under surveillance. Come at night and you can meet him.’ When I went at night, he had gone to bed early because he was unwell. It was only the next day that I was granted the chance to meet him. As soon as he saw me when I entered his presence, he said: ‘This is the person to whom I will hand over my books.’ So we met and became acquainted. He told me that his own Sheikh had spiritually entrusted me to him, and instructed me not to part from him. I never left him again.”
Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi: His Ijazah
Mahmud Efendi memorized the Qur’an at the age of six, under his father and mother. Influenced by the piety of his family and the environment in which he grew up, he prayed in the mosque despite his young age and took care to perform voluntary acts of worship.
After completing his memorization, he went to Kayseri during the month of Ramadan and studied morphology (sarf), syntax (nahw) and Persian with Tesbihcizade Ahmed Efendi, one of the respected scholars of that region. After staying a year in Kayseri, he returned to his hometown of Of and recited the Qur’an in the qira’at tradition to Mehmed Rüşdü Aşıkkutlu Hoca Efendi, the most famous scholar of recitation of the time.
He completed the remaining Islamic sciences, such as rhetoric, theology (kalam), tafsir, hadith, fiqh and the principles of fiqh, under his brother-in-law Çalekli Hacı Dursun Fevzi Efendi, a scholar specialized in both the rational and transmitted sciences and one of the public lecturers (dersiam) of the Süleymaniye Madrasa, and received his ijazah at the age of sixteen.
He had begun teaching students while he was still studying himself, and after teaching them for about seven years, he granted them ijazahs before going to military service (which was very hard to achieve in those days).
The Birth of Mahmud Ustaosmanoglu Efendi
Mahmud Efendi was born in 1927 in the village of Miço (Tavşanlı) in the Of district of the province of Trabzon. His father, Ali Efendi, son of Mustafa, and his mother, Fatima Hanım, daughter of Tufan, were respected people known for their scrupulous piety and God-consciousness. Ali Efendi served as imam in the village mosque and also farmed his own field. Although his field was far from the mosque, he never neglected his duty; he always came to the mosque, called the adhan and led the prayer.
At times the villagers, busy with farming, could not come to the mosque. Even though Ali Efendi knew he would have to pray alone, he would leave his work and still pray in the mosque.
Ali Efendi was devoted to worship, recited the Qur’an often, and was content with what he had. In 1954, with money he had saved with difficulty, he went on Hajj. He fell ill in Mecca and passed away, and was buried in Jannat al-Mu’alla, near his own father, Mustafa Efendi, who had died there before him.
His mother, Fatima Hanım, was very careful about the rights of others. When she took her cows out to pasture, she would tie their mouths so they would not graze in anyone’s garden. If a cow happened to graze in someone else’s garden, she would immediately ask the owner’s forgiveness and give all the milk she drew from that cow to the garden’s owner.