Abstract:

Ahmad Yassawi, is a great sufi st who fused within the love for Allah and gave various services to the Turkish people of Central Asia Turkish public with the motivating power of this love. He did not isolate himself from his environment; instead he had integrated with the society in which he lived in. He could and did establish dialogues with both villagers and urban citizens and fascinated even a simple nomad as well as the sultans of the era. His grasp on the love dimension lying in the sprit of Islam caused a revolution. As a matter of fact, being a true inheritor of Mohammed and a perfect human being he had built a reputation as a great Saint under the title of Pîr-i Turkestan, by means of the tariqa he established and dervishes and students he raised. Moreover he marked a big era in Turkish language and literature and provided spiritual and moral mentorship as well as linguistical and poetical guidance with his successors like Yûnus Emre, Eşrefoğlu Rûmî, Niyâzî-i Mısrî, Aziz Mahmûd Hüdâyîe in Anatolia and other sufi poets like Süleyman Atâ and Ali Şir Nevâî in Turkestan. Thus he became the Pir (Great Master) of the Turkish sufi poetry. Sufi and literary work written in Turkish language under the guidance of him formed a different branch and attained a steady position among the Islam literature. This great achievement which is seeded by Ahmed Yesevi during the 12th Century A.C is the result of his perfect human being (insan-ı kamil) and his being a “Pir”, i.e. his spiritual personality. As a matter of fact, he generated a work of literary art which has resisted and survived against the all revolutions and the shifts in the tastes and pleasures for eight centuries, been a role model for many poets along the last eight centuries and pioneered the taste of big masses of people. The tree of Turkish sufi poetry seeded by him gained a fair maturity in the speech of Yunus Emre in Anatolia and beard its ripe fruits there.