Divine Love in Yunus Emre’s Poetry

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Elsayed Erdemir R. A. M. M.

FSMVÜ III. ULUSLARARASI ARAP DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI ARAŞTIRMALARI KONGRESİ, vol.3, no.173, pp.532-542, 2025 (Conference Book)

Abstract

Abstract
Islamic Mysticism has always been one of the richest sources of
literary and philosophical inspirations throughout history to everyone
concerned with language, literature and philosophy around the world. One of
the most appealing characteristics of this field is that it combines the
aesthetics of the language along with the pondering thoughts of the mystic
writers and reflect their emotions in an intriguing manner. An iconic name in
this field is undoubtedly Yunus Emre the Darwish who lived in Anatolia in
Turkey in the 13th century. Yunus Emre is considered an influential name in
Anatolian mystical literature and philosophy. His contributions to the
Turkish language and literature are highly praised and appreciated
worldwide. He is indeed a school of thought on its own when it comes to
how he employed language to convey very deep mystical ideas. Although
the Turkish language is one of the oldest languages of the world, yet the
written language is considerably young with the development of the various
dialects of the Oguz tribes who arrived to Anatolia from minor Asia during
the 9th century. Yunus Emre pioneered to lay the foundations of a new
written language in which he expressed his renovating approach to language.
For this specific reason, he is coined as the biggest renovating writer and
poet in the history of the Turkish language. In this respect, the following
paper will shed light on one of his most important themes in his poems; that
is the theme of Godly Love and how it has been reflected in his poetry. On
one hand, the theme of love is a reflection of a pure humanistic attitude
which Yunus Emre showed at an early stage and continued to exhibit
extensively in his following writings. On the other hand, his work in general
praises the glory of God’s creation overall since he sees the act of creation as
an act of love at the first place. For Yunus Emre, Man-God relationship is a
relation based on love and mercy more than anything else. From this
perspective, the researcher will attempt to highlight how Yunus Emre
managed to captivate the hearts of his readers with an impressively subtle
language to carry and transfer to the readers his emotions. The linguistic
tools of Yunus Emre are not merely poetic vehicles but they are at core a
very well designed embodiment of sophisticated metaphysical thoughts.
Keywords: Mysticism, Divine love, Poetry, Creation, Humanism,
Yunus Emre.