English Text
Manastırlī Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī (1846-1912) was an Ottoman religious scholar and preacher born in Manastır (present-day Bitola in North Macedonia). The *Encyclopaedia of Islam* (2nd ed., vol. XII) records both his biography and his works.
**Career and institutional role:** After arriving in Istanbul and completing his medrese training, he taught at the Fatih Mosque, became preacher at the Dolmabahçe and Aya Sofya mosques (drawing large crowds), taught jurisprudence at the Hukuk Mektebi from 1884, gave religious instruction at the Darülfünun and Muhendiskhane, taught Qur'anic exegesis at the Preachers' Seminary, and was elected senator in the ʿAyān Meclisi after the 1908 revolution.
**Works and connection to the Ḥanafite creed tradition:** His theological legacy centres on three works: (1) a translation of and commentary on Khiḍr Beg's *al-Qaṣīda al-Nūniyya* — a verse-form creed in the Ḥanafite tradition; (2) *Mawāhib al-Raḥmān fī manāqib al-Imām Abī Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān* (Istanbul 1310/1892-3), a translation of Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī's account of Abū Ḥanīfa's merits; and (3) *Beyyinat-i Ahmediyye* (Istanbul 1329/1911), an annotated translation of Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Jisr's *al-Risāla al-Ḥamīdiyya* — a major 19th-century apologetic work. He also authored *Hakk ve Hakikat*, a critique of Reinhart Dozy's *Essai sur l'histoire de l'Islamisme*. These works identify him as a representative of late Ottoman Ḥanafite religious scholarship engaged in both transmitting classical creed literature and defending Islam in a modern intellectual environment.