THE BIOGRAPHY OF İSMAİL EMRE*

(Is-mail Am-reh)

 

 

The Anatolian Sufi (1900-1970)

 

İsmail Emre was born in 1900, in Adana, Turkey. According to the information received by him, his father, who was a scholar, was Koca Hodja (Great Hodja) Hakkı Efendi and his grandfather’s name was Ahmet Efendi. His descent was known as Great Hodjas in Adana.

 

He lost his father at the age of 5 and his mother at the age of 10. Being an orphan, he had been raised by his uncle’s son, Şükrü Efendi the Blacksmith and he learned the art of this craft from Şükrü Efendi.

 

When he was 17, Emre volunteered to join the army in the last years of the World War I. 

 

In 1921, he started working at State Railway in Adana as a coppersmith and welder for a long period of time. He quitted his job in 1943 and became self-occupied. 

 

He married Ayşe Hanım, and had 4 daughters and a son.

 

Emre did not ever go to school and was illiterate, but he learned by himself to read Arabic letters and was barely able to read the Divans of Niyazi Mısri and Yunus Emre. Afterwards, he improved his reading skill. He learned Islamic history, theosophical issues and prophets’ lives from the wisemen around him and partly from books such as Ahmediyye, Muhammediyye, Shahmaran and Kan Kalesi (The Blood Castle).

 

Even though Emre was not educated, he perfectly knew about “Nothingness-knowledge” which is one of the most important issues of theosophy and spiritual life. Emre began and ceased where the theosophy begins and ceases. He became the sun of Love.

 

He was not a poet in the sense we understand, because the intellectual poets write down their  poems by working on them.  However he uttered his poems from his essence.

 

His poems had a great value of theosophy. Emre uttered his poems ceasing in God, and he did not hear the words while he was uttering. Since he could not control the utterence of these words, Emre called his poems “Doğuş”; a kind of saying by losing oneself and penetrating in God with a divine inspire. As a consequence of this, Emre was called New Yunus Emre in Adana.

 

Emre said that these words continued to be uttered in his inner world, but only the necessary ones were revealed.

 

When someone asked Emre whether he could define the meaning of “State”, Emre said that no language could define it. He added that he was not the owner of that state, because when the particular mind (cüzzi akıl) comes closer to the universal mind (külli akıl), that State will utter in this unimagened unity.

 

Emre says Doğuş is born of our wishes and visions.

 

Doğuş is a Word of Love. Not all people can understand them. To understand them, one has to wrapped up in that state. The theosophical conversations are the explanations of these poems.  The words which are covered by divine Love arise as poem.  

 

When this State appeared, Emre was 40 years old.

 

Professor Dr. Annemaria Schimmel was one of the witnesses of that State. She mentions about Emre in her book called The Dimensions of Theosophy.

 

Doğuş helps us understand the Truth and shows us the steps of theosophical morality and inner evolution.

 

The theosophy of these poems includes a dynamic thinking system.

 

Emre says: “Theosophy is first hearing and then doing.  The evolution of understanding religions leads us to theosophy. Religions are like branches of a river. This river is theosophy and it runs into the Ocean of Unity.”

 

Emre has nearly 2400 recorded theosophical poems. Also his conversations were published. His books will be published by Anadolu Aydınlanma Vakfı Yayınları (Anatolian Enlightenment Foundation Publishing).

 

You can find most of Emre’s “Doğuş”s in these pages.        

 

 

 

                                                                      

 

 

 

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* This excerpt is taken and translated from Şevket Kutkan’s Preface of Doğuşlar II.