Mausoleum of Uftade Mehmet Muhyiddin
Mausoleum of Uftade Mehmet Muhyiddin
His Excellency Uftade (1490-1580) was a famous mystic, writer and people’s poet from Bursa. He is both founder of and sheikh at religious Celveti order. “Celvet” means being together with the Lord and among the people, instead of running and retreating from the people. Next to his mosque and mausoleum in Hisar neighbourhood, there are also his “tekke”, or small dervish lodge, and his masjid at Ivazpasha neighbourhood, both ordered by him to be built.
According to translations, Uftade began his life of a mystic as disciple of Hızır Dede. While working as a honorary muezzin at “Ulucami”, or the Great Mosque, and at “Dogan Bey” Masjid, he was paid a salary of some pennies, whereupon he saw Sheikh Hızır Dede in his dreams that night saying to him “you stepped down from your rank”, whereupon he immediately gave back his salary, and henceforth has adopted the name “Uftade” as a nickname.
Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan Murad III and Nurbanu Sultan, his mother, as well as statesmen and other important personalities of that period respected Hz. Uftade to a high extent, and let him pray for them.
This mausoleum is built with a square ground plan. It is covered with a hipped timber roof. The epitaph board placed on the mausoleum’s western Wall states that Uftade Mehmed Muhyiddin Efendi died in 1581, and that he is buried in this mausoleum. The epitaph board over the structure’s entrance door, however, reveals that it was renovated in 1844 by Riza Pasha, minister of national defence. The structure has undergone a major repair work after the 1855 earthquake, and in 2009, respectively.
In this mausoleum, where Uftade Hazretleri is buried, there are also the sarcophagi of Mustafa, Mehmet, Hayrettin, and Ahmet, four of his children, as well as of nine persons whose identity is unknown.
