The Zeyniye ?eyh in Istanbul, Müslihuddin Mustafa (d. 1491), also known as ?eyh Vef?, became an important political figure at the Ottoman imperial court in the second half of the fifteenth century. ?eyh Vef? did not only influence contemporary intellectuals, his prestige and teachings also gained him the support and respect of important statesmen, including the grand vizier Karamani Mehmed Pasha, and the sultan himself, Mehmed II. Among his many followers, Veliyüddin Ahmed Pa?a (d. 1497), scholar and court poet, composed a series of panegyrics in praise of the ?eyh and the dervishes. In this paper, I explore Ahmed Pa?a's verses as an attempt to present a normative description of the role that the Zeyniye order had at the Ottoman court as well as the importance of its ?eyh. I argue that Ahmed Pa?a used panegyric poetry as a means to negotiating political support from the ?eyh and his order. Indeed, the public act of allegiance that was the composing of a poem in praise of a contemporary polit?cal figure other than the sultan allows us to map the creation of support networks at the imperial court. To this end, I focus on the tensions between the various descriptions of the dervishes and ?eyh Vef?'s social qualities in these poems, and show how poetic composition was an active political act with the capacity of establishing networks of support between religious scholars,