This paper examines the use of sources in Birgivi Mehmed Efendi’s (1523-1573) al-Tariqa al-muhammadiyya. The work in question is a manual of practical ethics written by a sixteenth-century Ottoman preacher, jurist and religious scholar, whose ideas would rise to great popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, inspiring a number of ‘revivalist’ movements and thinkers. Through a close textual study of parts of al-Tariqa al-muhammadiyya (in particular Birgivi’s discussion of the ‘vice of sanctimony’), I will examine how and what Birgivi read, as well as what ‘reading’ might have meant for him in the first place. Among other things, this will include a consideration of how and what Birgivi quoted, as well as when and how he didn’t quote, how and what he paraphrased, and so on. The question of what he didn’t read, but received through other (probably oral) channels will be examined, too. The paper will thus shed light on a number of issues broadly related to the complex of orality, literacy, reading practices and the transmission of knowledge in early modern Islamic thought. In fact, Birgivi’s Tariqa lends itself nicely to an examination of these questions because it is such a true work of synthesis: had?th-heavy, and at times quite legalistic (indebted to a relatively under-studied tradition of post-classical H?anaf? fatawa literature), it shows a clear emphasis on a particular form of sober Sufism, reminiscent of pietistic works such as al-Makk?’s Q?t al-qul?b and Ab? al-Layth al-Samarqand?’s Tanb?h al-gh?fil?n. Most interestingly, however, as I will argue, is Birgivi’s unacknowledged indebtedness to classical adab. His adoption of materials from anthologies such as Ibn ‘Abd al-Rabbih’s al-‘Iqd al-far?d, al-Qazw?n?’s Muf?d al-‘ul?m or al-Ibsh?h?’s Mustat?raf, which he might or might not have ‘read’ in person, can inform us, I believe, of practices of the transmission of knowledge in early modern Ottoman religious circles. By way of a detailed case study, the paper will thus shed light on some of the processes at work in this transmission and production of knowledge—of how an early modern Ottoman ‘alim read, selected and synthesized material from various strands of the Islamic tradition—how his ‘reading’ worked in concrete terms and how it informed the creation of a ‘new’ and original presentation of the ‘old.’