Üftade Tekkesi

Üftade Tekkesi is a dervish lodge and mosque complex in Bursa's Yerkapı quarter built for Üftade, an Ottoman Sufi scholar and poet born in Bursa around 1490, whose given name was Mehmed. After working in his youth as an apprentice silk merchant, he turned to religious study, later serving as a muezzin at Bursa's Grand Mosque and eventually as imam of the Emir Sultan Mosque. He became the spiritual teacher of the celebrated mystic Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi and is regarded as a founding figure of the Celveti Sufi order, which stressed returning to active life in society after a period of spiritual withdrawal. Üftade is said to have met with Ottoman sultans including Süleyman the Magnificent and Murad III, and left behind collected sermons and devotional poetry. The lodge bearing his name was completed around 1577 and still stands, having undergone a substantial municipal restoration between 2009 and 2014.