Yunus Emre (1240–1321) was a Turkish poet and Sufi mystic. He has exercised immense influence on Turkish literature, from his own day until the present. Because Yunus Emre is, after Ahmet Yesevi and Sultan Veled, one of the first known Turkish poets to have composed works in the spoken Turkish of his own age and region rather than in Persian or Arabic, his diction remains very close to the popular speech of his contemporaries in Central and Western Anatolia. This is also the language of a number of anonymous folk-poets, folk-songs, fairy tales, riddles (tekerlemeler), and proverbs.
Like the Oghuz language Book of Dede Korkut, an older and anonymous Central Asian epic, the Turkish folklore that inspired Yunus Emre in his occasional use of tekerlemeler as a poetic device had been handed down orally to him and his contemporaries. This strictly oral tradition continued for a long while.
He was a contemporary of Rumi, who lived in the same region. Rumi composed his collection of stories and songs for a well-educated urban circle of Sufis, writing primarily in the literary language of Persian. Yunus Emre, on the other hand, traveled and taught among the rural poor, singing his songs in the Turkish language of the common people.A story is told of a meeting between the two great souls: Rumi asked Yunus Emre what he thought of his great work the Mathnawi. Yunus Emre said, "Excellent, excellent! But I would have done it differently." Surprised, Rumi asked how. Yunus replied, "I would have written, 'I came from the eternal, clothed myself in flesh, and took the name Yunus.'" That story perfectly illustrates Yunus Emre's simple, direct approach that has made him so beloved.
Following the Mongolian invasion of Anatolia facilitated by the Seljuk Turkish defeat at the 1243 Karaman, Islamic mystic literature thrived in Anatolia, and Yunus Emre became one of its most distinguished poets. Poems of Sultan Yunu Emre — 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, with seven different and widely dispersed localities disputing the privilege of having his tomb within their boundaries.
His poems, written in the tradition of Anatolian folk poetry, mainly concern divine love as well as human destiny:
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