Old Anatolian Turkish · historical script · pronunciation · translation · commentary
Textual note
The script is best called the Perso-Arabic script adapted for Turkish—the writing system later associated with Ottoman Turkish. It is Turkish written in Arabic-Persian letters, not Persian-language poetry.
Mustafa Tatcı’s edition presents this as poem 387, gives the metre Mefâ‘îlün / Mefâ‘îlün / Fe‘ûlün, and cites three manuscript witnesses: F. 206a, T. 89a and Ç. 76a. (Mustafa Tatcı’s Yûnus Emre Dîvânı edition)
The first version below is therefore a normalized back-transcription of Tatcı’s critical Latin text into Perso-Arabic letters. It is not a diplomatic copy of one manuscript page. No manuscript written by Yunus himself—or demonstrably copied during his lifetime—survives, and the important Fatih manuscript is generally dated by its paper and orthography to the fifteenth century. (Ahmet Yesevi University, Dîvân—Yunus Emre)
Photographs from our visit
The shrine photograph places the poem within the setting in which we encountered it.
1. Old Anatolian Turkish in Perso-Arabic script
The letter ڭ represents the historical nasal consonant written in words such as Taŋrı and göŋül. A particular manuscript might use an ordinary ك instead, since scribal spelling was not uniform.
2. Tatcı’s historical Latin transcription
The poem engraved in marble
The marble monument records the complete poem across two panels. Its Latin-script spelling is partly modernized, so the inscription is best read as a public presentation of the poem rather than as a manuscript witness.
Photographs: the author’s personal collection.
3. English-reader pronunciation guide
This is an approximate reading aid, not a reconstruction of every feature of fourteenth-century pronunciation.
- ue = Turkish ü, like German ü or French u
- oe = Turkish ö
- uh = Turkish dotless ı
- sh, ch, j = the sounds in ship, church, and judge
- aa, ee, oo indicate long vowels
4. Smooth modern English translation
O Muslims, the age has turned corrupt:
the lawful goes uneaten, while the forbidden is prized.
No one lends an ear when the Qur’an is recited;
the devils have grown fat and strong.
The world lies in the grip of the forbidden and its ferment;
those who spread corruption are held in honour.
Speak to anyone of God and he bristles;
he tosses his head and comes armed with arguments.
The pupil quarrels with the master;
the son puts on airs before his father.
Those who call themselves faqirs have cast humility aside;
breaking hearts, they have made themselves figures of awe.
Teachers who set themselves in the Prophet’s place
have become a burden upon the people.
The Prophet’s teaching is no longer heeded;
all creation stands ashamed before the Real.
Yunus, come—if you are a lover, repent:
the end of sincere repentance is blessed.
5. Explanation of the poem
The central movement
At first, the poem sounds like a conventional complaint about a corrupt age. Yunus describes a society in which every moral value has been reversed:
- What is lawful is neglected.
- What is forbidden acquires value.
- Revelation is heard but not truly listened to.
- Corrupt people receive honour.
- Spiritual advice provokes anger rather than reflection.
- Teachers, students, children, dervishes and religious leaders all lose the proper adab of their relationships.
But the final couplet radically changes the poem. Yunus does not end by congratulating himself for seeing everyone else’s faults. He turns the command upon himself:
“Yunus, if you are a lover, repent.”
That is the moral hinge of the entire poem. A complaint about “the age” becomes an examination of one’s own conscience.
Couplet 1: The inversion of value
Müsülmânlar zamâne yatlu oldı
Helâl yinmez harâm kıymetlü oldı
Yatlu means bad, corrupt or morally disordered. The more forceful idea, however, appears in the second line. Society has not merely fallen into occasional wrongdoing: it has reversed its scale of value. The forbidden has become kıymetlü—precious, esteemed and desirable—while the lawful is left untouched.
Yunus begins with appetite because what people choose to consume, pursue and prize reveals their true moral orientation.
Couplet 2: Hearing without listening
Okınan Kur’ân’a kulak tutulmaz
Şeytânlar semirdi kuvvetlü oldı
The Qur’an continues to be recited. The failure is not the absence of religious speech but the absence of receptive listening. Kulak tutmak means to lend an ear, attend seriously and heed.
The image of devils “growing fat” is intentionally physical. Every ignored admonition feeds the forces of selfishness, deception and moral indifference. Evil is not presented as abstract: it acquires weight and power through human choices.
Couplet 3: Corruption as fermentation
Harâm ile hamîr tutdı cihânı
Fesâd işler iden hürmetlü oldı
Tatcı glosses hamîr as leaven, ferment, the ferment used in drink, or intoxicating drink itself. (Tatcı’s edition) The line therefore carries a fertile double image: the forbidden has both seized the world and worked through it like ferment through dough.
The following line exposes the public dimension of the corruption. Wrongdoing no longer brings shame; it brings hürmet—social respectability. Yunus is concerned not only with private sin but with a culture that rewards and legitimizes it.
Couplet 4: The ego turns counsel into argument
Kime kim Tanrı’dan haber virürsen
Kakır başın salar hüccetlü oldı
Kakımak means to become angry. Hüccet means proof, evidence or a supposedly decisive argument. Tatcı defines hüccetlü as someone possessing an argument that cannot easily be rejected. (Tatcı’s edition)
The irony is sharp. When someone is reminded of God, instead of becoming receptive, he becomes angry and immediately produces arguments in his own defence. Religious language has ceased to transform the ego and has instead become material with which the ego protects itself.
Couplet 5: The collapse of formative relationships
Şakird üstâdıla ‘arbede kılur
Ogul atayıla ‘izzetlü oldı
The pupil quarrels with the master, while the son assumes airs before his father. The point is not unquestioning obedience to authority. It is the disappearance of humility, gratitude and teachability.
Both relationships—pupil and master, child and parent—should transmit wisdom across generations. When every correction is treated as an insult and every learner insists upon his own status, knowledge may remain, but formation disappears.
Couplet 6: Yunus’s criticism of false dervishes
Fakîrler miskînlikden çekdi elin
Gönüller yıkuban heybetlü oldı
This is one of the poem’s most important couplets. Fakîr does not refer only to someone materially poor. It is also the Sufi who recognizes his complete poverty before God. Likewise, miskînlik means far more than passivity or indigence. In Tatcı’s glossary it denotes the abandonment of selfhood and is associated with fanāʾ fi’Llāh—the surrender of the ego before God. (Tatcı’s edition)
Thus the couplet means:
- Those who bear the name of spiritual poverty have abandoned its inner reality.
- Instead of healing hearts, they break them.
- Instead of becoming humble, they cultivate heybet—an imposing, intimidating presence.
This is an internal Sufi criticism. Yunus does not spare his own religious community.
Couplet 7: Religious authority without Prophetic mercy
Peygamber yirine geçen hocalar
Bu halkun başına zahmetlü oldı
Yunus is not rejecting teachers as such. His criticism is specifically directed at teachers who place themselves in the Prophet’s position while failing to embody the Prophet’s mercy, service and moral character.
They possess religious status but become zahmet—a hardship and burden—to the people. Their authority serves themselves rather than those entrusted to their care.
There is also a carefully constructed verbal contrast:
- hürmetlü: honoured
- heybetlü: imposing
- zahmetlü: burdensome
What looks like religious dignity from the outside may, in practice, become suffering for others.
Couplet 8: Knowledge no longer embodied
Dutulmaz oldı Peygamber hadîsi
Halâyık cümle Hak’dan utlu oldı
Here dutmak means more than physically holding something. It means keeping, observing or living according to it. The Prophet’s teaching may still be repeated, but it is no longer embodied.
Halâyık means created beings or humankind, while utlu means modest, shamefaced or filled with a sense of shame. (Tatcı’s edition) Thus all creation stands ashamed before al-Ḥaqq—“the Real,” one of the names of God.
The word Hak is particularly meaningful. It means both God and Truth. A society that has inverted truth must eventually stand exposed before the Real.
Couplet 9: From accusation to repentance
Yûnus gel ‘âşıkısan tevbe eyle
Nasûha tevbe ucı kutlu oldı
The phrase nasûha tevbe recalls the Qur’anic command:
tūbū ilā Llāhi tawbatan naṣūḥā
“Turn to God in sincere repentance.” — Qur’an 66:8. (Quran.com)
This is not a reference to a person named Nasuh. It means a sincere, healing and irrevocable repentance: leaving the wrong, regretting it and resolving not to return to it.
Uç means “end, outcome or final consequence.” (Tatcı’s edition) Yunus therefore closes with hope: the blessed outcome does not belong to the person who diagnoses the age most eloquently, but to the person who sincerely repents.
The poem’s verbal architecture
The repeated ending oldı—“it became”—sounds almost like a tolling bell. Each couplet registers another stage in society’s transformation:
kıymetlü, kuvvetlü, hürmetlü, hüccetlü, ‘izzetlü, heybetlü, zahmetlü, utlu…
Most of these words describe distorted value, power, reputation or authority. Yet the final rhyme changes direction:
kutlu oldı — “its end became blessed.”
The same verbal pattern that recorded corruption now announces the possibility of renewal. That is why the final couplet is indispensable: without it, the poem would be only a denunciation of others. With it, the poem becomes a Sufi act of self-accounting.
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