"When we got close to him, Bediuzzaman was answering the questions being asked him. He was surrounded by scholars who were listening to him in rapt silence and wonder. Everyone was satisfied and pleased with the answers they received. He was replying to the assertions and ideas of the Sophist philosophers. He demolished their views with rational proofs.

"That was the first time I saw and met him. What I gathered about him was this: he knew all the dictionaries. Whatever word you asked him from the Arabic dictionaries, he would answer immediately and give its meaning. Then in theology there was no one superior to him. In these two sciences his knowledge was endless. He knew Arabic literature, Persian literature, Eastern and Westem literature. And there was another piece of information about him that was well-known: as a man of religion he did not accept gifts, money, etc., from anyone. He could have owned lots of things if he had wanted. He did not own a stick in the world."

And Abdullah Enver Efendi, known as the Walking Library, gave the following account in an interview with Necmeddin Sahiner:

"Harbizade Tavasli Hasan Efendi, a teacher in the Fatih Medrese, was a scholarly and respected figure. He lived into his nineties, teaching right up until his last days. He was someone who never missed a day at his duties; there was not one day throughout his whole teaching life that he did not go to teach. But that day Hasan Efendi said to his students: `I cannot come to teach today, because someone from eastern Anatolia called Bediuzzaman has arrived, and I am going to visit him.' He left the Medrese and went to visit Bediuzzaman in the Sekerci Han. On his return, he expressed the astonishment and love he felt, saying to his students: `Such a person has not been seen before, he is a rarity of creation. The like of him has yet to appear.”