Ahmad Yasawi (Turkish Sufi shaykh of Central Asia, d. 1166)

Ahmad Yasawi was a Turkish Sufi shaykh of Central Asia, whose tomb at Yasi (later Turkistan) became a place of pilgrimage. The Diwan-i hikmet of Turkish verse is ascribed to him, though the surviving collection is later than his lifetime.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) describes Ahmad Yasawi as a Turkish Sufi shaykh of Central Asia, whose life is wrapped in legend like that of many popular saints. He was the son of Shaykh Ibrahim, born at Sayram (Isfijab) in Turkistan in the second half of the fifth/eleventh century. He lost his father at seven, and the family settled at Yasi. There he is said to have begun his education, perhaps under Arslan Baba, and he later moved to Bukhara and became a disciple of Shaykh Yusuf Hamadhani, whom he succeeded in 555/1160. He returned to Yasi and remained there until his death in 562/1166. ¹

His tomb became a place of pilgrimage for kings and princes, and it was especially venerated by the Turks of Central Asia and the Volga region. Timur erected a sumptuous mausoleum at Yasi, later known as Turkistan. Among the Turkish nomads his doctrine was adapted to local trends and was strongly influenced by pre-Islamic Turkish creeds and rituals. His first khalifa was the son of Arslan Baba, Mansur, the great-grandfather of Zengi Ata; the second was Said Ata (d. 615/1218), and the third Hakim Ata (d. 582/1188). Yasawism spread to eastern Turkistan and Transoxania and penetrated into Anatolia through the migration of Yasawi shaykhs, among them Haji Bektash and Sari Saltuk. ¹

Ahmad wrote vernacular Turkish verse in the old syllabic metre to spread his doctrine. The Diwan-i hikmet attributed to him can hardly be genuine: the original work is lost, and the oldest manuscripts belong to the seventeenth century. But the poems are thought to reproduce his spirit and style, since the verses of mystic leaders were imitated for centuries. They are didactic, express Islamic mysticism in popular language, and gave rise to a genre of mystic folk literature in Turkish. ¹