The Dīvān-i Hikmet, a collection of poems designated as “wisdoms” by Hoca Ahmed Yesevi, stands as one of the most significant foundational texts in Turkish Sufi literature. In an era where Arabic and Persian served as the languages of scholarship and literary expression, dominating the madrasas, Yesevi consciously chose to address the people in plain Turkish. He transmitted the essence of Islam and Sufism – free from complex philosophical terminology – to nomadic and semi-settled Turkic tribes in a pure language and with the hece (syllabic) meter they could comprehend.
A central theme of the Hikmets is an unwavering adherence to Islamic Sharia and the practice of the Prophet. Yesevi did not view Sufism as a path separate from the Sharia; in his estimation, a Sufi path without the Sharia is like a tree without roots. His poetry frequently speaks of the deceitfulness of worldly desires (the nafs), the inevitability of death, and the terror of the Day of Judgment, thereby inviting people to piety (fear of God) and asceticism.
In the Dīvān-i Hikmet, divine love (love for God – Hakk) and profound affection for the Prophet Muhammad are vividly expressed. Yesevi was so meticulous in shaping his life according to the Prophet’s example (following the Sunna) that upon reaching the age of sixty-three (the age of the Prophet’s death), he declared, “Exceeding the age of the Prophet does not befit me,” and had a subterranean hermitage (halvethane) excavated, spending the remainder of his life in devotion within it.
Yesevi’s hikmets were disseminated across a vast geographical expanse from Central Asia to the Balkans through his dervishes (Alperen), proving to be the most significant factor in the internalization of Islam by Turks in their own language and in the establishment of Sufi orders such as Yeseviyya (later evolving into Bektaşism, Naqshbandism, etc.).