Library of 12 Turkish Sages

When you click on the links, the texts of the works can be accessed.

1. Bilge Tonyukuk Inscription
2. Bilge Khagan Inscription / Kültigin Inscription
3. Farabi: Virtuous State (Medinatü’l Fazila)
4. Maturidi: Kitabut Tawhid
5. Mahmud of Kashgar: Divanı Lügatit Türk
6. Yusuf Has Hacip: Kutadgu Bilig
7. Ahmed Yesevi: Divanı Hikmet
8. Hacı Bektaş Veli: Makalat
9. Mevlana: Masnavi
10. Nasreddin Hodja: Humor and Wisdom
11. Yunus Emre: Poems , Divan
12. Aşık Pasha: Garibname

Turks have a unique worldview, and this unique worldview is shaped around the concept of wisdom, starting from inscriptions and manuscripts . 12 Turkish sages created a library of wisdom with the huge works they wrote.

The first writer, the first thinker, Bilge Tonyukuk, the author of the Orhun Inscriptions, Bilge Kağan, the first written Turkish book, Kutadgu Bilig; The main thing has always been wisdom.

The first work started with the Tonyukuk Inscription erected by Bilge Tonyukuk on the banks of the Tola River in Mongolia, and then extended to infinity with works written in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, East Turkestan and finally Turkey.

Hacı Bektaş Veli, one of our sages, was born in Nişabur, Iran and Mevlana was born in Belh, Afghanistan. The ideal of wisdom, which started with our first writer Tonyukuk, eventually reached its peak with Aşık Pasha in Kırşehir, in the center of Anatolia, with more than ten thousand couplets.

In these wisdom-centered works, the essential thing is human with its universal dimension, and human beings are elaborated in detail with disciplines and perspectives focused on martial arts, philosophy, theology, linguistics, political book, and Sufism.

The concepts of virtue, tawhid, divan, knowledge, wisdom in the titles of the works and the words bilge, has hacip, veli, hodja and aşık in the names of the thinkers give clues about the perspectives of wisdom.

With these works, our traveler language has been fermented and opened the door to a rich mental world. 

The cities of Kırşehir, Eskişehir and Konya , located in the center of the Turkish geography, within the range of the shepherd fires lit by Ahmed Yesevi, the last ring of the 7 sages who formed a continuous line in the lands of Turkestan, further deepened the Cappadocian wisdom tradition in Anatolian lands .

It cannot be explained by coincidence that dozens of thinkers have focused on a single common point in their works. Our wise thinkers have been constantly on the move from city to city, from land to land, in pursuit of the true love of wisdom, and they have not only poured their ideas and thoughts across the continents, but also conveyed and spread them across the continents. 

While the 12 stars on the European Union flag are content with an abstract image of unity, limited to only one continent and one religion, our 12 Sages, based on the synthesis of Great Asia and Asia Minor, become stars by reaching for universality.

The ideas and thoughts enlightened by 12 Turkish Sages continue to keep alive forever the love of wisdom and the ideal of unity of people within the circle of earth-sky-human harmony.

Our works of wisdom, which have accumulated more than ten thousand pages over nearly 700 years, from Bilge Tonyukuk, who was born in Yunzhong city of China’s Inner Mongolia province in 646, to Aşık Pasha, who died in 1333 in Kırşehir city in Cappadocia of Central Anatolia, continues to guide and enlighten the world of minds for the next 700 years.