He was born in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. His real name was Abdülfettah Raûf. He was mostly known as Fettah Efendi among the people, and in some of his articles and personal documents he used the signature Fetah İshak or Fetah İshakoviç. His father, Raûf Efendi, belonged to the Hacı İshak family from Skopje, a well-known family in the region. He made every effort to ensure that Abdülfettah received a good education. Abdülfettah received his initial education in Skopje, likely in Serbian, before enrolling in the Meddah Madrasah founded by Atâullah Kurtiş (Atâ Efendi). In 1933, at the first icâzet ceremony, he received his icâzet along with his friends Hâfız Necâti, Hâfız Şâban, Hâfız Sâdullah, İdris, and Mehmed Efendi. Later, each of them contributed to various services in Macedonia and Kosovo.
Between 1933 and 1938, Fettah Efendi served as a lecturer of theology at the Meddah Madrasah, as well as an honorary preacher in various mosques in Skopje. During the months of Ramadan, he served in the village of Studeniçan in Skopje, the birthplace of his teacher Atâ Efendi, in the service of preaching and guidance. In 1938, upon his teacher’s appointment as a member of the Ulema Medžlis u Skoplju (Assembly of Ulemas), Fettah Efendi was appointed as the head professor of the Meddah Madrasah, a position he held until the madrasah was closed down, where he trained numerous students in Islamic studies. In 1944, Kemal Aruçi and Bekir Sadak, who traveled to Turkey and taught for many years at the Higher Islamic Institute in Istanbul and the Faculty of Theology at Marmara University, were among his students.
There is no definite information about him, but some articles mention that he served as a judge in the Sharia court in Skopje from 1944 to 1945 and was a member of the Assembly of Ulemas. When the communist government took over Yugoslavia in 1945, the Meddah Madrasah, along with Sharia courts and various religious institutions and madrasas, was closed down. Fettah Efendi and his friends were arrested and tried in courts. He was sentenced to seven years of heavy imprisonment and forced labor, with a three-year ban on politics, on the grounds that he was an opponent of the regime, a traitor to the state, and a wartime profiteer (Birlik, p. 4). It remains unclear whether Fattah Efendi’s aunt’s son, Şuayb Aziz, a graduate of Al-Azhar University and the founder of the illegal Yucel organization, had any actual ties to this organization. While in prison, he was sent to the town of Doboy (Doboj) in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a year to break stones. After his release from prison, he was closely monitored by the state for a long time, remained unemployed, and was not even allowed to work as a muezzin, despite being a famous muderris (cf. Engüllü, Yedi İklim, IX/64, p. 22; Ardıcı, p. 151). In the last years of his life, he was assigned as an expert at the Macedonian Archives to translate Ottoman documents from Macedonia. He died on April 24, 1963, in Skopje.
Fettah Efendi wrote poems in both syllabic and aruz meter. It is evident from his poetry that he was proficient in Ottoman Turkish, as well as Persian and Arabic. His initial poems were published in the newspaper Sadâ-yı Millet (1925) in Skopje. The themes of his poems mainly revolve around religious, patriotic, and social issues. Throughout his life, Fettah Efendi took pride in being an Ottoman intellectual, a sentiment he often conveyed in his poetry. Despite the dissolution of the sultanate and living as an expatriate in his homeland, he never succumbed to a sense of defeat. In many of his poems, Fettah Efendi expressed longing and sorrow for the vanished heritage of the Ottoman civilization, intermingled with historical legacies of the past. Particularly after World War II, he opposed migration from Yugoslavia to Turkey, arguing that it was impermissible from a religious standpoint. This opposition found its way into his poetry. Fettah Efendi can be regarded as one of the last poets in the Balkans of the Ottoman Turkish tradition, utilizing the aruz meter. His poems, housed in several notebooks, are kept in Muhammad Aruchi’s private library. Kemal Aruçi, one of his students, categorized most of these poems according to their themes, while Bekir Sadak collected some for publication. Additionally, it is reported that some of his poems are in the private library of Cavit Saraçoğlu, who had a longstanding association with Fettah Efendi and now resides in Istanbul.
Fettah Efendi also contributed articles to various newspapers. He authored an article and a eulogy on the death of Mehmed Akif in the Sofia daily Medeniyet (February 6, 1937). The same article, along with a second eulogy and poems titled “God”, “A Few Words with My God”, “My Will”, and “The Glorious Prophet Messiah”, were published in the Skopje magazine al-Hilâl (Volume III, Issue 15, September 1, 1989, p. 14) (refer to bibliography 14 for his poems published in this magazine).
Fettah Efendi collaborated with Vančo Boškov on two significant articles: “Rifaiskoto Teke vo Skopje” ([Rifāî Tekke in Skopje], published in Glasnik na Institutot za Nacionalna Istorija, Volume II, Issue 2, Skopje 1958, special fascicle) and “Edno Skopsko Vakafname od XVI Vek” ([A Skopje Vakafname of the XVIth Century], published in the same journal, Volume V, Issue 1, Skopje 1961). Additionally, in the series of Macedonian publications titled Turski Dokumenti za Istorijata na Makedonskiot Narod (Turkish documents on the history of the Macedonian people) [Volume I, Skopje 1963, Državna Arhiva na SR Makedonija, Serija Prva: 1607-1699], Fettah Efendi’s name is mentioned as Fetah Ishak among authors such as Metodija Sokolovski and Arif Starova, alongside Vančo Boškov.