YUNUS EMRE (d. 1321), Turkish mystic, initiator of popular mystic poetry in Turkish literature, and one of the greatest poets in that language. Apart from a few notes in sixteenth-century biographical works, the life of Yunus Emre remains shrouded in legend. More reliable biographical data can be gathered from his own corpus, which recent research (particularly by Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı) has sifted out from the mass of poems produced by contemporary or later anonymous authors who attributed their own work to him.

According to available evidence, he was born in the village of Sarıköy (modern Emre) in central Anatolia, educated in the classical Islamic sciences, and later trained in the mystic path by a certain Tapduk Emre, whom he often mentions in his poems with great veneration. He seems to have lived mostly in the region of his birth and to have...