His real name is Shamsuddin Muhammad bin Hamza. However, he became famous with the name Akshamsaddin or simply Akshaykh. He was born in Damascus in 792 (1390). He is the son of Sheikh Hamza, one of the grandsons of Sheikh Shehabeddin Suhrawardi, the owner of the Avârifü'l-maʿârif. His paternal lineage goes back to Hazrat Abu Bakr.

After memorizing the Quran and receiving a strong religious education, he became a teacher at the Osmancık Madrasa. It is also understood that he received a good medical education during this time. Since Akşemseddin was almost always with his sheikh Hacı Bayram in his relations with Murad II, he also met his son Mehmed II and continued to meet with him after he ascended to the throne. Although the exact date is not known, Akşemseddin went to Edirne to Fatih twice before the conquest of Istanbul. The first time he treated Çandarlıoğlu Süleyman Çelebi, the kazasker of Murad II, and the other time he treated one of Fatih's daughters, and Fatih's daughter gave him the rice fields in Beypazarı.

Akşemseddin read the sermon at the first Friday prayer held in Hagia Sophia after the conquest, and upon Fatih's request, he also discovered the grave of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, one of the companions who had been martyred in one of the previous sieges of the Islamic armies. It is understood from an inscription above the window on the southern surrounding wall of the Zeyrek Mosque, which was first used as a madrasah until Fatih's madrasahs were built after it was converted from a church by Fatih, that Akşemseddin lived and taught here during his years in Istanbul.

Akşemseddin, who is thought to have spent the last years of his life in Göynük, died here at the end of Rebiülâhirin 863 (February 1459) according to Menâkıbnâme. His tomb is still a place of pilgrimage.

It is accepted that Akşemseddin, who is also stated in the sources to be a “doctor of the first ages”, who gained fame as a good physician of his time and who had works on medicine, was the first physician in the history of medicine to bring up the issue of germs and to put forward the idea that diseases were transmitted in this way, at least 100 years before the Italian physician Fracastor, who provided definitive information in this field.1

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1 Encyclopedia of Islam – Akşemseddin

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