Author: Uysal, İdris Nebi

Annotation: Kutadgu Bilig [KB] is one of the most important works of Turkish-Islamic civilization. KB is a masnavi that describes in an allegorical manner how people should relate to each other and to the state, as well as the ideal state administration. This work, consisting of 6645 couplets, has been studied and examined in the scientific world to date, mostly for its language and literary features. However, this text contains material that can serve as a resource for many disciplines. One of the subjects that Balasagunlu Yusuf focuses on in almost every section is the importance and power of speech. The poet has opened a separate heading about language at the beginning of the book; here he talks about the virtues of language and the subtleties of speech. This section, each of which consists of words worth an aphorism, is thirty couplets [162-191]. Returning to this subject in the following lines [955-1044], the poet expanded what he expressed in the first section through the dialogue between Küntogdı and Aytoldı. In these lines, where basic concepts such as knowledge, mind, and morality are mentioned together with words, Yusuf Has Hacip gave advice to the readers that could be the verbal declaration of every age. The first source of these messages that we later encountered in many people, especially Yüknekli Edip Ahmet and Yunus Emre, in Turkish literature was KB. The fact that the poet, like the philosophers who lived before him, was first interested in language, that is, words, and spread this situation throughout the text, showed that the work was also a philosophical text.

Keywords: Kutadgu Bilig, speech, manifesto.

Pages in journal: 101 - 107