With over a hundred works, the Sufi Ismail Hakki Bursevi (1653-1725) ranks as one of the most prolific Ottoman authors of all time. Among his writings, there are about a dozen that he composed as gifts (tuhfe) for individuals. Bursevi dedicated a significant number of these writings to high-level Ottoman officials, including the Grand Vizier Çorlulu Ali Paşa, the head of the palace school Seyyid Ahmed Vesîm Aga, the chief haseki Tûbâzâde Mehmed Aga and the governor of Damascus Receb Paşa. The form and content of the tuhfes displays a considerable diversity: the treatises include Qur’anic exegesis and hadith quotations, Ottoman, Persian, and Arabic poetry, the author’s analysis of current events, and discussions on Islamic theology and metaphysics, among others. In this talk, I will examine the ways in which Bursevi employs metaphysics across the Tuhfe-i ‘Aliye, Tuhfe-i Hasekiye, and Tuhfe-i Vesîmiye to comment indirectly on the decreasing influence of the Sultan in internal affairs, which became particularly pronounced after 1703 when a janissary revolt led to the deposition of Mustafa III in favor of Ahmet III. In the two decades following the coup, Bursevi composed several tuhfe works in which he comments on the political marginalization of the sultan through a complex metaphysical system. In particular, he portrays key positions in the Ottoman bureaucracy as the loci of manifestation of the different names of God (esma-i husna). I will examine how Bursevi employs this metaphysical system to portray the growing influence of the Grand Vizier and palace courtiers vis-à-vis the Ottoman sultan and lament the increasing decentralization of religious authority leading to what he perceives as a dangerous decline in the social and political influence of Sufis. Bursevi’s simultaneous legitimation of the growing power of Ottoman courtiers and subtle criticism of the establishment for forgoing Sufis’ guidance is an important example of the complex discursive practices that elite mystics in the early-modern period employed towards maintaining their status and privilege as the main pillars of Ottoman religious authority.