This article examines a group of reference letters (mahzars) written for Seyfîzâde Ahmed Efendi, who was appointed as the first professor (müderris) of the madrasa complex founded by Kapuağası Gazanfer Agha in Istanbul in the early 1590s. The opening of the Gazanfer Agha Complex, the appointment of its first professor, the first lecture given by Ahmed Efendi in the presence of the prominent bureaucrat-scholars of the time and dozens of students, and the ceremonies and banquets organized on these occasions were among the events that made quite a stir in those years. All these events were meticulously recorded in a manzume by the court historiographer of the time, Seyyid Lokman, who wrote several works under the patronage of Gazanfer Agha. The reference letters we are dealing with here are found at the beginning of the second manuscript copy of Seyyid Lokman’s manzume (Esad Efendi 3376), which we have already identified and published. These letters are essentially texts written in the style of şehâdetnâme and, as we have endeavored to show in our article, they provide critical insights into the dynamics of occupational solidarity among Ottoman bureaucrat-scholars in the last quarter of the 16th century, as well as the familial and personal relationship networks that some scholars established with each other, details not available in other historical sources.

Seyfîzâde Ahmed Efendi was the son of Seyfullah Efendi, a prominent scholar during the reigns of Murad III and Mehmed III. At an uncertain date (probably in the late 1580s), Ahmed Efendi was married with the daughter of Abdülmuhyi Pasha, one of the chancellors under Murad III. By the mid-1590s, Ahmed Efendi collected şehâdetnâmes from 19 high level ulama, known to both his father and himself, to testify to his scholarly qualifications before his appointment as the first müderris of Gazanfer Agha’s newly founded madrasa. The statement, “Ahmed Efendi, son of Seyfullâh Efendi, who is still a professor in the madrasa of Sultan Süleyman Han” (Esad Efendi 3376, fol. 1a) suggests that the letters in question were copied between 1595 and 1600.

The letters appear to follow a certain order according to the official standing of their authors within the Ottoman ilmiye hierarchy, starting with the letters written by three chief jurisprudents (şeyhülislâms) and one chief military judge (kazasker). The remaining letters belong to Seyfîzâde’s teachers, classmates, and friends, revealing the scope of his professional, familial, and individual network of people. For example, in their letters, Molla Ahmed Efendi, Lütfî Beğzâde, Sinân Efendizâde, Râʿî Hasan Efendi, Kâfzâde Feyzî Efendi, Bahrî Hasan Efendi, and Selâmîzâde Mehmed Efendi, attest to knowing Ahmed Efendi personally and recognizing his scholarly prowess. All in all, these letters reveal a wide and intricate network that Ahmed Efendi and his father established with several prominent members of the Ottoman ulema in the last quarter of the 16th century.

Some of these mahzars were written by scholars who knew Ahmed Efendi personally. Molla Ahmed Efendi, who was Ahmed Efendi's teacher at the Sultaniyye Madrasa, mentions that Ahmed Efendi was capable of understanding subtle meanings, that he learnt many disciplines, and that with these disciplines he became famous like İmru'l-Kays, one of the famous poets of the Jahiliyya period. Sinan Efendizâde, who taught Ahmed Efendi at one of the Sahn Madrasas, refers to his proficiency in both rational and transmitted sciences, his worthiness of the sultan’s favor, and the long years of service his father rendered as a preacher in Ayasofya Mosque. The information provided by Sinan Efendizâde and his reference letter are the longest and most detailed among the reference letters. Râ‘î Hasan Efendi, Kâfzâde, and Selâmîzâde, who studied together with Ahmed Efendi, also attest to his scholarly competence and claim to have personally observed it.

Among these letters some were clearly used in the context of another appointment. Sinan Efendizâde, Ahmed Efendi's classmate, drew attention to this situation in his reference letter, stating that Ahmed Efendi collected signatures to obtain a certain position or title. The presence of the term ‘azl’ in some reference letters also supports this situation. 

The reference letters, which contain carefully chosen and eloquent expressions, demonstrate a meticulous attention to style, aiming to create a unity both in the praise of Ahmed Efendi,  the description of the reference letter, and in addressing the recipient. It is important to note that in some of the letters, instead of the word mahzar, authors use expressions such as sahife, vesika, tomâr, varak, rıkk, ruk'a, defter, and cerîde. These expressions seem to have been employed both to indicate the large number of signatures and to add a more rhetorical level of meaning to the sentences in the mahzars.

Overall, all these letters, indicative of dense and complex networks of personal connections, show that, by the late 16th century, the Ottoman ulema often acted together on various matters, with mutual interests at stake. In other words, these şehâdetnâme-style letters reveal the nature of the intricate networks of relations among the Ottoman scholars of the period, and as a literary genre, they are texts that should be analyzed in their own right. In this context, the main purpose of this study is to introduce the mahzar/şehâdetnâmes written for Seyfîzâde Ahmed Efendi and to provide a preliminary study of the life, scholarly career, and professional networks of an Ottoman scholar in the late 16th century. The mahzars we are dealing with have been overlooked until now, and thus have not yet been used in studies on the early modern Ottoman scholarly organization and ulema. In this respect, we would like to contribute to future studies on the occupational solidarity and personal/familial relationship networks among different groups in the early modern Ottoman world by presenting partial transcriptions of these important source texts as an appendix to the article.