Yunus Emre

Yunus Emre is among the most beloved figures of Turkish literature, a wandering mystic-poet whose hymns in plain Anatolian Turkish are still sung today. He is generally placed in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, but almost nothing about his life is documented; what survives comes largely from his own verse and from later legend (manaqib), so most details are traditional rather than attested.

He is reported to have been born at Sarıköy, near Sivrihisar in central Anatolia, then part of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum during a period of Mongol overlordship. Tradition holds that he served a Sufi master, Tapduk Emre, for many years (often given as forty) at his lodge (dergah, a Sufi gathering-place), carrying firewood as an act of humble discipline. A famous story linking him to the dervish saint Hacı Bektaş is legendary, not historical.

What is firmer is the poetry. One work, the Risalat al-Nushiyya ("Treatise of Counsel"), a didactic poem on virtues and vices, is dated 707 AH (1307-08 CE). Yunus Emre is credited with helping shape literary Old Anatolian Turkish, writing of divine love in language close to ordinary speech rather than the courtly Persian or Arabic then favored.

He died around 1320-21, and was later venerated as a saint. His tomb is disputed: many widely scattered Turkish localities, among them sites near Eskişehir and Karaman, claim to hold his grave, and scholars remain divided.