Yunus Emre

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Yunus Emre (1238?–1320?) was a Turkish poet and Sufi mystic. ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} He has exercised an immense influence on Turkish literature, from his own day until the present.

Following the Mongol invasion of Anatolia facilitated by the Seljuk Turkish defeat at the 1243 Battle of Köse Dağ, Islamic mystic literature thrived in Anatolia, and Yunus Emre became one of its most distinguished poets. He is one of the first poets known by name to have composed extensively in the Turkish language, and his poems—despite being fairly simple on the surface—evidence his skill in describing quite abstruse mystical concepts in a clear way. He remains a popular figure in a number of countries, stretching from Azerbaijan to the Balkans.

His poems, written in the tradition of Anatolian folk poetry, mainly concern divine love and human destiny:

Yunus'dürür benim adım

Gün geçtikçe artar odum

İki cihanda maksûdum

Bana seni gerek seniKudret 58

"Yūnus Emre is my name; my fire increases day by day. In the two worlds, my goal is this: it is You I need, You."Smith 124

The Turkish city of İzmir has an annual international song festival dedicated to Yunus Emre.

Notes

References

Kudret, Cevdet. Yunus Emre. Ankara: İnkılâp Kitabevi, 2003. ISBN 975-10-2006-9.
Smith, Grace Martin. The Poetry of Yūnus Emre, A Turkish Sufi Poet. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. ISBN 0-520-09781-5.

External links

[Yunus Emre & Humanism]

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