İsmail Hakkı Bursevî (Turkish: Bursalı İsmail Hakkı, Arabic: إسماعيل حقي البروسوي, Persian: Esmā’īl Ḥaqqī Borsavī) was a 17th-century Ottoman Turkish Muslim scholar, a Jelveti Sufi author on mystical experience and the esoteric interpretation of the Quran; also a poet and musical composer.

[1] In 1673, aged 21, he went to Istanbul to the public classes of Osman Fazli, the head Sheykh of the Jelveti (Djilwatiyya) order, who initiated him into that discipline.

[1] İsmail Hakkı also attended the lectures of other scholars, and learnt Persian to study Attar, Rumi, Ḥāfiẓ and Jami.

In 1675, age 23, Osman Fazli sent him, with three assistant dervishes,[2] to Skopje (Üsküb), Macedonia, to establish a ṭarīqah (a monastery) for teaching Jelveti philosophy.

Despite Osman Fazli explaining to him that censure was not the Jelveti way he did not rein in his zeal and his antagonists forced them to leave, which greatly displeased his wife, it being her home town.

There he also began to write books, but so as to not be confused with the author Ismail Hakki Ankaravi, a famous commentator on the Mathnavi, he came to be always given a suffix, such as Hâlvetî, Bursevi, or Üsküdari[1][2] Amongst Sufis, Bursa in Anatolia was first made famous by the 14th century Shāikhs Somuncu Baba and Haji Bayram, but in 1685 the then Sheykh of Bursa died and Fasli appointed Ismail Hakki as the new Sheykh.

[6] In 1690 he journeyed to Cyprus to visit his master, Osman Farsli, who was in exile for his insistent criticism of Ottoman foreign policy.

[2] His most famous published works are: As a Sufi of Jelveti order, Ismail Hakki Bursevi put all his energy and resilience into being a ‘bearer of light’.